He was particularly interested in the scheme for building a railroad which should run north and south the entire length of Illinois, and favored a grant of public lands to aid the State in the enterprise. For years, however, he had to contend with a corporation which had got from the State a charter for such a railroad and was now trying to get help from Congress. In 1843, and for several sessions thereafter, bills were introduced to give aid directly to the Great Western Railway Company, and it was mainly the work of Douglas that finally secured a majority in Congress for the plan of granting lands to the State, and not to the company. That was in 1851. To his chagrin, however, the promoters of the company then persuaded the Illinois legislature to pass a bill transferring to them whatever lands Congress might grant to the State for the railroad. He at once sent for Holbrook, the leading man in the company, and informed him that no bill would be permitted to pass until he and his associates should first execute a release of all the rights they had obtained from the legislature. Such a release they were at last forced to sign, the bill passed, and the Illinois Central was built. It became an important agency in the development, not of Illinois merely, but of the whole Mississippi Valley; and it is the most notable material result of Douglas's skill in legislation. But throughout the whole course of his service at Washington he never neglected, in his concern about the great national questions with which his name is forever associated, the material interests of the people whom he especially represented. His district and his State never had cause to complain of his devotion to his party and his country.