A Costly Mistake

Stephen Ambrose has a chapter in To America dedicated to the Transcontinental Railroad, and he makes a very interesting assertion:

[B]y 1850 the transcontinental railroad was something everyone in America wanted built, and the technology was ready to do it... The Southerners in Congress wanted it to run from New Orleans through Texas to southern California, thus increasing the slave states' economy and political clout. The Northerners wanted it to run from Chicago to Sacramento and San Francisco, or from Minneapolis to Portland, increasing the free states' economy. The two sides blocked each other throughout the decade of the 1850s...

...There are many reasons why the South lagged so far behind the North in the century after the Civil War, and losing the war was certainly at the top of that list, but right behind came walking out of Congress and allowing the North to have the transcontinental railroad.

Has anyone encountered this assertion elsewhere? It seems entirely plausible to me, but I've never heard it made before. Are there any worthy books out there on the building of the railroad?

UPDATE: Well, it turns out there are lots of books written on the subject. Ambrose himself wrote one, but it got pretty roundly tanked by the Amazon reviewers (perhaps a bunch of WWII buffs led astray by the Ambrose name?). Anyone read Empire Express? I think I'll pick up both.

UPDATE II: Whatever his faults as a historian, Ambrose sure spins a readable text. I literally couldn't put To America down and have just finished in it one sitting. I can recommend it, though primarily as a starting point for adventures into deeper, more substantive history (e.g. my new interest in the Transcontinental Railroad) .