Crony Capitalism and the Transcontinental Railroads - Ryan McMaken - Mises Daily
The only transcontinental that wasn't a complete boondoggle was James Hill's Great Northern Railway, built without subsidies or land grants, and profitable from day one. Hill was America's greatest railroad man, and he gets his own chapter in The Golden Pinnacle (Chapter 14, Mr. Hill's Railroad).
Moreover, this book spawned another by two different writers: THE MAN WHO FOUND THE MONEY: John Stewart Kennedy and the Financing of the Western Railroads by Engelbourg and Bushkoff (East Lansing: MSU Press, 1996). In the Hill biography, Martin wrote briefly about Kennedy and called him under-appreciated in the story of American capitalism. Twenty years later, these professors did that.
The error we all often make is projecting the present onto the past. People always make use of whatever is available. Jay Cooke and other robber barons wanted to run railroads in order to sell off the lands granted by governments. Hill actually wanted to run railroads - the lands were just extra profit that came with the deal when he bought Cooke's bankrupt line.
But to evaluate that morally, you must judge the individuals, not the financial transactions.
All of that being as it may, I grant the +1 for the Mises article on its own merits.