The West demanded it should be done without more delay; the older sections responded in the spirit of national progress. Private enterprise had already accomplished something toward the desired object. In the summer of 1859 the same energetic firm that had sent the first stage-coach across the wastes of Western Kansas to Denver, put on a pony express[2] to run between the Missouri River and the Pacific. Stations were established twenty-five miles apart on the open prairie, where fresh animals and riders were kept ready saddled and equipped for the road. Mounted on his hardy little Indian pony, the courier rode with whip and spur to the next station, where, whether by night or day, he stopped only long enough to snatch a mouthful, mount a fresh pony, and secure his letter-pouch behind him. He then dashed on again at the top of his speed. Though one of the oldest known methods of carrying news, the difficulties were here such as seldom have been overcome. By dint of hard riding, despatches were sometimes delivered in Denver in less than three days, and in Sacramento in eight days, from the time of setting out. The Butterfield Overland Stage Company[3] established between St. Louis and San Francisco (1859) was a more serious undertaking. It ran coaches every day in the year, over the longest stage-route in the world, traversing a distance of near three thousand miles from end to end. [Illustration: PONY EXPRESS AND OVERLAND STAGE.] Even such achievements as these were regarded as make-shifts which the coming railway should set aside. That and that only would solve the problem how permanently to unite and hold together such remote sections of the Union. In the East the country has always been settled before railways were built: in the West railways are expected to bring settlement with them, or even to go before it in a case like the present one. But without a country to support it, the proposed Pacific Railway[4] was something too vast for private enterprise to grapple with. From the time it was first talked of, the enterprise, therefore, assumed a national character and importance. But the slavery question had now brought on a national crisis. Too long it had hung over the land like a storm-cloud that is to overwhelm it with ruin. The election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency (1860) was followed by the secession of most of the slave-holding States (1861), secession by civil war, and civil war by the abolition of slavery in the land. All the resources of the country being needed to carry on the war, it would seem, at first sight, no time could be worse chosen for pressing the claims of the Pacific Railway than when men so doubted and feared for the nation itself.