When Douglas renewed his Illinois Central bill in a revised form on January 3, 1850, Senator Breese had been succeeded by Shields, who was well-disposed toward the project.[335] The fruits of the Mobile conference were at once apparent. Senator King of Alabama offered an amendment, proposing a similar donation of public lands to his State and to Mississippi, for the purpose of continuing the projected central railroad from the mouth of the Ohio to the port of Mobile. Douglas afterward said that he had himself drafted this amendment, but that he had thought best to have Senator King present it.[336] Be that as it may, the suspicion of collusion between them can hardly be avoided, since the amendment occasioned no surprise to the friends of the bill and was adopted without division. The project now before Congress was of vastly greater consequence than the proposed grant to Illinois. Here was a bill of truly national importance. It spoke for itself; it appealed to the dullest imagination. What this amended bill contemplated, was nothing less than a trunk line connecting the Great Lakes with the Gulf of Mexico. Now, indeed, as Douglas well said, "nationality had been imparted to the project," At the same time, it offered substantial advantages to the two landless States which would be traversed by the railroad, as well as to all the Gulf States. As thus devised, the bill seemed reasonably sure to win votes. Yet it must not be inferred that the bill passed smoothly to a third reading. There was still much shaking of heads among senators of the strict construction school. Many were conquered by expediency and threw logic to the winds; some preferred to be consistent and spoil a good cause. The bill did not sail on untroubled seas, even after it had been steered clear of constitutional shoals. It narrowly ran foul of that obstinate Western conviction, that the public lands belonged of right to the home-seeker, to whose interests all such grants were inimical, by reason of the increased price of adjoining sections of land.[337] The real battleground, however, was not the Senate, but the House. As before, the bill passed the upper chamber by an ample margin of votes.[338] In the lower house, there was no prolonged debate upon the bill. Constitutional scruples do not seem to have been ruffled. The main difficulty was to rivet the attention of the members. Several times the bill was pushed aside and submerged by the volume of other business. Finally, on the same day that it passed the last of the compromise measures, on the 17th of September, 1850, the House passed the Illinois Central Railroad bill by a vote of 101 to 75.[339]