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Union Line, which for many years carried the passengers, and of which John Stevens was the active spirit. He conceived the first idea of a railway, and in 1817 procured the first railway charter in America for a railroad upon his stage route between Trenton and New Brunswick. In subsequent years there were advocates both of a railway and a canal across New Jersey, his son, Robert L. Stevens, being the railway chieftain, while Commodore Robert F. Stockton championed the canal, the rival projects appearing before the New Jersey Legislature in 1829-30, and causing a most bitter controversy. It is related that the conflict was ended in a most surprising manner. Between the acts of a play at the old Park Theatre in New York, Stevens and Stockton accidentally met in the vestibule, and after a few minutes' talk agreed to end their dispute by joining forces. The result was that on February 4, 1830, both companies were chartered--the
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Camden and Amboy Railroad and Transportation Company and the
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Delaware and Raritan Canal Company. In furtherance of this compromise, what is known as the celebrated
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Marriage Act was passed a year later, creating the
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Joint Companies, their stock being combined at the same valuation, though each had a separate organization. They were given a monopoly of the business, paying transit dues to the State of ten cents per passenger and fifteen cents per ton of freight carried, and this afterwards practically paid all the expenses of the New Jersey State Government. The railroad was completed between Bordentown and Amboy in 1832, and on December 17th the first passengers went through, fifty or sixty of them. It was a rainy day, and the cars were drawn by horses, for they could not in those days trust their locomotive out in the rain. The next year regular travel began, galloping horses taking the cars from Bordentown over to Amboy in about three hours, there being three relays. Later in the year the locomotive
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John Bull