Stephen Johnson Field

“ Surely congress can make a grant of lands which it owns or claims to own at any time, if it annex a condition that the grant shall not affect or impair the rights of a previous grantee. It would, as it seems to me, be an extravagant and utterly unwarranted assertion to say that congress, having made a grant for a railroad to run in one direction, is thereby prohibited from making another grant for a railroad to run in a different direction, if a condition is annexed that the second grant shall not affect or impair the rights of the first grantee. ”

“ Before anything was done under the grant to the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company, even to indicate the route of the road it would construct, authority was issued by the government to the Southern Pacific Company to build a road north from a point at or near Tehachapa Pass, by way of Los Angeles, to the Texas & Pacific Railroad, at or near the Colorado river, with a proviso, however, that the authority thus given should not in any respect impair the rights, present or prospective, of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company or of any other railroad. ”

“ Congress desired to connect by a railway the states on the Mississippi with the Pacific coast, and for that purpose, by the act of July 27, 1866, created a corporation known as the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company, and gave it a grant of lands to aid in the construction of a railway between Springfield, in the state of Missouri, and the Pacific coast. ”