In 1875, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, Collis Huntington, and Leland Stanford of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company began taking steps to construct a southern transcontinental railroad line east from California. The implementation problems encountered over the next six years, the company's internal disagreements along with those it had with its rivals, and the anticipated regional economic benefits the tracks would bring comprise the concluding chapters of "Slavery, Scandal, and Steel Rails." The book's beginning details how the southwestern territory those rails crossed was purchased...