182 UNION COUNTY PAST AND PRESENT
p` respectively to finance the undertaking. The bonds, bearing
l interest at 8 per cent, payable semiannually, were floated and I
sold by the promoters of the railroad, who retained the con- .
trolling interest.
R The venture was a bubble on the flood of railroad security
flotation and speculation of those times—a mere strand in the `
pattern the larger designs of which included the Vanderbilt-
Gould—Fisk railroad battles, the Credit Mobilier, and, three
decades later, the war between James J. Hill and E. H. Harriman. ·
The project, called the Shawneetown and Madisonville Rail- A
road, was a failure.
So anxious were the Union Countians for the railroad that ‘
they voted a tax to liquidate the bonds without insuring that the
tax would not be collected if the railroad failed to materialize.
The company did only enough work to force the people to pay
the tax. From Grangertown, about nine miles away, the work
was undertaken in the general direction of the postoflice at
Eberly. After only a little work, the barn at Grangertown which
housed the mules used on the job was leveled by fire. The railroad
company went bankrupt in the panic of 1873 and the project was
abandoned. All the taxpayers received was an embankment-  p
called a road-bed—parts of which may still be seen on the Poplar
Ridge and George Davis farms. .
After $48,000 in taxes had been collected from the people of
Caseyville and Lindle and impounded for interest payments, the
bondholders brought suit in circuit court to recover the tax
money. The court ruled in favor of the bondholders and dissolved
an injunction to restrain the sheriff from collecting further taxes.
The court of appeals affirmed the judgment of the lower court.
The sheriff resigned rather than collect the tax; and his suc- J
cessors who tried it met the citizens' loaded guns. A minor revo-
lution was averted only by the refusal of the magistrates to
assess levies to meet the bonds. Some forty years later a compro-
mise settlement of 25 per cent plus accrued interest was reached. ‘
The total settlement was more than the face value of the bonds. ‘ `
Several years after the first failure another railroad project  A
was launched, this time by the Ohio Valley Railroad. Track had
been laid already to DeKoven, also in the western end of the
county, from Henderson, and it was proposed to extend it to l
Marion. The people of the countryside, having been once bitten, `
were now twice shy. For they forced the company to make the
< . .