"He [George Chorpenning] projected and put into operation the first 'Pony Express' that ever crossed the country, and in December, 1858, delivered President Buchanan's annual message through to California in seventeen days…
"The launching of [the Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express in 1858] was the second disastrous mistake Russell made. Had he resisted the temptation to join Jones in it and worked…
"Some historians of the Pony Express attribute [Russell's] action to patriotism, writing that he considered war inevitable and feared that California would swing to the cause of the South unless…
"It was sometime in December 1859 or early January 1860 that William H. Russell, one of the partners in the firm Russell, Majors and [sic] Waddell, and California Senator William M.…
"The Post Office Department's greatest prize—the $600,000-a-year contract held by John Butterfield's rival California mail operation—still had nearly five years to run. But Russell sensed that opposition to Butterfield's 'ox…
"By the fall of 1859, though, the 'Pony Express' increasingly looked like an idea whose time had come. The opening of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad that February brought…
"Russell was hardly the first dreamer to conceive a horseback relay system for delivering mail across distances: Marco Polo found a similar system in thirteenth-century China, operating with 'post stations…
"[The Butterfield Route] failed to address the question of how to provide mail service to Utah, not to mention the political question of how to maintain the North's influence in…