Civil War, the state had been trying to expand the Western North Carolina Railroad, which was incorporated in 1855. The railroad, which was supposed to link Asheville to both Paint Rock, Alabama, and Ducktown, Tennessee, saw its construction stalled at Henry Station, a few miles from Old Fort, around 1872, plagued with construction problems in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The railroad became insolvent due to underfunding, misappropriation of bonds, and poor management. The state purchased the railroad in June 1875 for $825,000. However, the purchase also made the state liable for the railroad's nearly $45 million in debtsa substantial amount of that due to fraud because, in 1868, two men had defrauded the state legislature into issuing bonds for the railroad's western expansion. Controversy mounted when Zebulon Vance was re-elected as Governor in 1877 and made the railroad's completion a personal crusade. Vance had an inherent conflict of interest in supporting the railroad, as his family were major landholders in the area around Asheville, where the railroad would pass through. Additionally, although Vance publicly decried that the original bondholders were still owed money by the state, paying them would further cost the financially-strapped state, which would only further delay the construction of the railroad. Possibly because of this, Vance never took any action to resolve the crisis during the rest of his governorship, leaving many bondholders straddled with the debt of the state. Vance later left office to become a U.S. Senator, and after the railroad was completed using leased convict labor, he negotiated a sale of the railroad to a private company. After Vance left, the state issued a complete settlement of less than 15 percent of the roughly $45 million in bonds, leaving bondholders upset. Democrats blamed Republicans for the mishap, as they held legislative power when it happened. However, Fusionists associated railroads with the capitalist greed of Democrats. In addition, many of the Democrats blaming Republicans had voted to authorize the bonds, notably Tom Jarvis. Debt relief: Whites and blacks had differing experiences with debt after the American Civil War. For whites, before the war, being in debt invoked undertones of personal moral failings. However, after the war, the fact that most Southern whites were in debt created a sense of community. That community banded together to push for political and economic reforms and negotiate favorable interest rates. Conversely, black people deemed debt another form of slavery,