Both to New York engineer-entrepreneur A.W. Hoyt, recording formation of the New Orleans and Texas Railroad Company. "… we subscribed in behalf of our Texas Co. $250,000 and subscribed in my own name $50,000… I have here accomplished more than you all expected without some little difficulties. Yet it is done... your contract is now legal and perfect. You are out of the Woods….This taking of two months to do what ought to be done in one day don't agree with my notions...You Gentlemen may calculate now on coming to time and responsibility for…I shall not stake all I have on Earth alone...I leave here in a day or two for Galveston and Houston… We own and hold now the most valuable enterprise in this Union and by good strait forward action and unity of purpose can build and own this great Road for ourselves and children....You are now in full legal fellowship and have no excuse… to enable you first to see whether you are in or out. You are in now and can't get out. We must all take hold of Pump handle and keep the ship above water or we drown. You must not think hard, Sir, of my frank way of talking, far better for me to be frank than silent in my intercourse with you…I have complained that there has not been a more prompt cooperation in our enterprise thus far...all is right now for a close and snug organization and success is certain if we all will it and act together….There is a healthy state of public opinion here towards the North. This Political excitement is a perfect Humbug...." These letters reveal the forceful character of William Truesdail the railroad promoter and business hustler who was to become one of the most controversial spymasters of the Civil War. When he wrote these letters in 1860, Truesdail was pursuing his brainchild of a railroad that would connect New Orleans to Houston and the Rio Grande. One third of the track was laid within a year when the country was torn by War. The Texas Railroad executives sided with the Confederacy, while Truesdail remained loyal to the Union, leaving Texas to become "Chief of Army Police" under Generals Pope and Rosecrans in Mississippi and Tennessee. He directed secret agents who infiltrated Confederate territory, plotted the strategic deception of enemy commanders, and had broad powers to detect spying, conspiracy, disloyalty, theft of government property, swindling of soldiers, smuggling and black-marketeering, even the sex trade in mulatto women.