Illinois with its North and its South was also facing a crisis. To the social and political differences that bisected the State, was added a keen commercial rivalry between the sections. While the State legislature under northern control was appropriating funds for the Illinois and Michigan canal, it exhibited far less liberality in building railroads, which alone could be the arteries of traffic in southern Illinois. At a time when railroads were extending their lines westward from the Atlantic seaboard, and reaching out covetously for the produce of the Mississippi Valley, Illinois held geographically a commanding position. No roads could reach the great river, north of the Ohio at least, without crossing her borders. The avenues of approach were given into her keeping. To those who directed State policy, it seemed possible to determine the commercial destinies of the Commonwealth by controlling the farther course of the railroads which now touched the eastern boundary. Well-directed effort, it was thought, might utilize these railroads so as to build up great commercial cities on the eastern shore of the Mississippi. State policy required that none of these cross-roads should in any event touch St. Louis, and thus make it, rather than the Illinois towns now struggling toward commercial greatness, the entrepot between East and West. With its unrivalled site at the mouth of the Missouri, Alton was as likely a competitor for the East and West traffic, and for the Mississippi commerce, as St. Louis. Alton, then, must be made the terminus of the cross-roads.[327] The people of southern Illinois thought otherwise. Against the background of such distant hopes, they saw a concrete reality. St. Louis was already the market for their produce. From every railroad which should cross the State and terminate at St. Louis, they anticipated tangible profits. They could not see why these very real advantages should be sacrificed on the altar of northern interests. After the opening of the northern canal, they resented this exclusive policy with increased bitterness. Upon one point, and only one, the people of northern and southern Illinois were agreed: they believed that every possible encouragement should be given to the construction of a great central railroad, which should cross the State from north to south. Such a railroad had been projected as early as 1836 by a private corporation. Subsequently the State took up the project, only to abandon it again to a private company, after the bubble of internal improvements had been pricked. Of this latter corporation,--the Great Western Railroad Company,--Senator Breese was a director and the accredited agent in Congress. It was in behalf of this corporation that he had petitioned Congress unsuccessfully for pre-emption rights on the public domain.[328]