Collis had dinner with Durant one evening, and they discussed in detail how they should most effectively hand out their ‘educational funds’, as Durant liked to call them. The Union Pacific, which had been granted a charter under the 1862 Act to build a railroad westward, out of Omaha, was completely bogged down by debt. They hadn’t even reached the city limits, although Omaha in 1864 was not much more than a couple of square miles of wooden houses on the banks of the Missouri.

Durant wrestled with a veal cutlet for a while, and then drank a very large glass of red wine. ‘We have a divine duty to force through this railroad by whatever means at our disposal,’ he told Collis. ‘We cannot be judged by the same legal or moral standards as other men. Our task is too great and too urgent. And, besides, if we conduct ourselves too scrupulously, we’ll never make a profit.’

Collis smiled. ‘I think you’re a man after my own heart.’

Durant shook his head. ‘Not me. I’m not a visionary. I believe in the pursuit of wealth by the few, because that’s what brings the larger benefit to the many. This railroad can make us rich, Collis, beyond any imagination. That will be our just reward for our efforts. The nation’s reward will be to have a fast and effective means of transporting its people and its goods from one side of the continent to the other.’

Collis spent almost all of his $250,000, and gave out promises of special bonuses and favours to every Congressman he met. Durant did the same, even more professionally and even more energetically. He had come to Washington with $437,000 of U.P. funds, and although he was later accused of having pocketed the larger part of it for himself, he was proved to have spent nearly $19,000 entertaining Congressmen at Willard’s Hotel.

Collis himself was particularly proud of having enlisted the enthusiastic support of Congressman Oakes Ames of Massachusetts, by promising the contract for all the Sierra Pacific’s shovels to the toolworks owned by Congressman Ames’s brother Oliver.

By early summer, Collis and Durant had the situation fixed. President Lincoln was as eager as anybody to get the railroad started; and Congress had been happily paid off. A Pacific Railroad Act of 1864 was drawn up, passed through Congress ‘like a bullet through butter’, and signed by the President without a single qualm or query. It gave Collis everything he wanted.

Land grants for the railroad would be doubled. Instead of ten square miles in alternate sections on either side of the track, they were to be granted twenty square miles. Best of all, the federal loans of $32,000 and $48,000 a mile would not be deferred until the company had actually laid track. They would be given two-thirds of their money as soon as each twenty miles of roadbed had been prepared, and only one-third would be held back until later.