Excerpt from: sacramento valley transportation sacramento history online 4 passengers were moved by stagecoach. by 1854, many of the stage operators were merged by james birch into the california stage company. birch's stage line controlled eighty percent of the stagecoach traffic over 3,000 miles of routes connecting the western portion of the united states. in 1856, birch lobbied congress to establish a national wagon road. he presented congress with a petition from northern california with 75,000 signatures. as one of the largest petitions yet received by congress, they responded by establishing three wagon roads to the pacific coast and appropriating $600,000 for a twice-weekly overland mail service from st. louis to san francisco. in order to achieve more precise language, which sentence would be the best substitution for this sentence from paragraph four? a) passengers moved by stagecoach. b) passengers had been moved by stagecoach. c) companies moved passengers by stagecoach. d) moved by stagecoaches were the passengers.