As it was by the railroads that the Slavery Question was eventually settled, it is interesting to note that the first intelligent move towards railroad construction in the United States was contemporaneous with the great speech of Robert Y. Hayne in the United States Senate in 1827 on the Negro Question. Some evidence has been adduced to indicate the probability of his responsibility for the first suggestion of a railroad to be operated by steam power, in the United States, in 1821 to run from Charleston to Augusta, with a fork to Columbia.[88] While Hayne may have been this early suggester, it is quite possible and not all improbable that the suggester, “H”, might have been Elias Horry. But six years later, when the movement took definite shape, Hayne in the United States Senate made an utterance, which may be considered as, at that time, representing the view of his section concerning the Negro Question, viz., that: “The history of the country has proved that where the relative proportion of the colored population to the white was greatly diminished, slaves ceased to be valuable and emancipation followed of course ... wherever free labor was put into full and successful operation, slave labor ceased to be valuable.”[89] “Time and patience,” he had then contended, were alone necessary to solve the Negro Problem. But Nullification in 1832 and the Abolition ebullition of 1835 had, however, later affected the sections profoundly and from this latter date the political history of the Republic depended more and more upon the influences which could be brought to bear upon the West by the South and the North, and upon the South and the North by the West. Every influence which contributed to homogeniety was an influence towards peaceful development. That the Hayne of 1835 was, _ipsissimus verbis_, the Hayne of 1827 cannot be claimed; but to no statesman in the Union was the necessity more apparent for the promotion of this homogeneity than to him to whom had been confided by the representatives of nine States the stupendous task of pushing the great Western railroad from Charleston to Cincinnati, the front door of the great West for “free social and commercial intercourse,”[90] with: “Reciprocal dependence from Michigan to Florida, by establishing connections in business, promoting friendships, abolishing prejudices, creating greater uniformity in political opinions and blending the feeling of distant portions of the country into a union of heart.”[91] The “rival system,” in favor of which Calhoun abandoned Hayne’s railroad in 1838, was not in all probability originally designed for but eventually became the vehicle of a scheme of political conquest, which aimed at an approach to the back door of the West through the new State of Arkansas. This statement may be received with impatience, but examination will show its truth.