The initial weakness of Huntington's counterattack was William McKendree Gwin, whom the Southern Pacific hired to confront Dodge in the South.

For need of man in South, CPH to Hopkins, Oct. 8, 1875, v. 8: 39, Box 23, Hopkins Collection.

Originally a physician and congressman from Mississippi, Gwin went to California as a Forty-Niner and served as a Democratic senator during the 1850s. After that, he demonstrated an uncanny knack for choosing the losing side. He served as a Confederate emissary to France. He failed to persuade Napoleon III to recognize the Confederacy, but Napoleon III persuaded him to cast his lot with Maximillian's ill-fated attempt to establish a French sponsored Mexican Empire. Gwin's hopes of getting mining concessions in Sonora made him a mercenary in Mexico when he was already a traitor at home, and he soon faced the nasty choice between an American prison and a Mexican prison, or worse. He surrendered to U.S. authorities and spent a brief time in jail.

Octopus Speaks, 273.

Huntington's admission that the doctor was "obnoxious" to the Republicans in Congress was something of an understatement, but then Huntington never intended that the Republicans know that Gwin was his man. Gwin was to contact Huntington only through an intermediary, R.T. Colburn, a journalist and lobbyist for the Central Pacific. Gwin, however, arrived in Washington in the President's car of the Central Pacific, accompanied by Charley Crocker and with the press ""heralding . . . Dr. Gwin . . . as a great friend of the railroad." Huntington may have gotten over the Civil War; western Republicans had not.

CPH to Colton, Nov. 10, Nov. 11, Nov. 13, 1875, Letters from Collis P. Huntington, 4: 404-408.

Boyd to Gates, Aug. 29, 1878, CPH Papers, ser. 1, r. 15.

Conness to CPH, Nov. 9, 1875, CPH Papers, ser. 1, r. 8.

Gwin did generate anti-Texas & Pacific stories and editorials in the South, but he also maintained his knack for overplaying his hand.

CPH to Colton, Dec. 22, 1875, Feb. 26, 1876, Octopus Speaks, 222, 233, 285-86.

CPH to Colton, Dec. 17, 1875, Letters from Collis P. Huntington, 4: 429.

When Gwin began pressing for an interest in the Southern Pacific, he was replaced by the less colorful and more reliable Isaac D. Budd.

CPH to Stanford, Dec. 1, 1876, Letters from Collis P. Huntington 4: 417, Octopus Speaks, 273.