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diff --git a/3098.txt b/3098.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..726ff26 --- /dev/null +++ b/3098.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4367 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Paths of Inland Commerce, by Archer B. Hulbert + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Paths of Inland Commerce + A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The + Chronicles of America Series + +Author: Archer B. Hulbert + +Editor: Allen Johnson + +Posting Date: February 28, 2009 [EBook #3098] +Release Date: February, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PATHS OF INLAND COMMERCE *** + + + + +Produced by The James J. Kelly Library Of St. Gregory's +University, Alev Akman, Dianne Bean, and Doris Ringbloom + + + + + + +THE PATHS OF INLAND COMMERCE, + +A CHRONICLE OF TRAIL, ROAD, AND WATERWAY + + +By Archer B. Hulbert + + + + +PREFACE + +If the great American novel is ever written, I hazard the guess that its +plot will be woven around the theme of American transportation, for +that has been the vital factor in the national development of the United +States. Every problem in the building of the Republic has been, in the +last analysis, a problem in transportation. The author of such a +novel will find a rich fund of material in the perpetual rivalries of +pack-horseman and wagoner, of riverman and canal boatman, of steamboat +promoter and railway capitalist. He will find at every point the old +jostling and challenging; the new pack-horsemen demolishing wagons in +the early days of the Alleghany traffic; wagoners deriding Clinton's +Ditch; angry boatmen anxious to ram the paddle wheels of Fulton's +Clermont, which threatened their monopoly. Such opposition has always +been an incident of progress; and even in this new country, receptive +as it was to new ideas, the Washingtons, the Fitches, the Fultons, the +Coopers, and the Whitneys, who saw visions and dreamed dreams, all had +to face scepticism and hostility from those whom they would serve. + +A. B. H. + +Worcester, Mass., June, 1919. + + +CONTENTS + + I. THE MAN WHO CAUGHT THE VISION + II. THE RED MAN'S TRAIL + III. THE MASTERY OF THE RIVERS + IV. A NATION ON WHEELS + V. THE FLATBOAT AGE + VI. THE PASSING SHOW OF 1800 + VII. THE BIRTH OF THE STEAMBOAT + VIII. THE CONQUEST OF THE ALLEGHANIES + IX. THE DAWN OF THE IRON AGE + X. THE PATHWAY OF THE LAKES + XI. THE STEAMBOAT AND THE WEST + + BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + + + + +THE PATHS OF INLAND COMMERCE + + + +CHAPTER I. The Man Who Caught The Vision + +Inland America, at the birth of the Republic, was as great a mystery to +the average dweller on the Atlantic seaboard as the elephant was to the +blind men of Hindustan. The reports of those who had penetrated this +wilderness--of those who had seen the barren ranges of the Alleghanies, +the fertile uplands of the Unakas, the luxuriant blue-grass regions, the +rich bottom lands of the Ohio and Mississippi, the wide shores of the +inland seas, or the stretches of prairie increasing in width beyond +the Wabash--seemed strangely contradictory, and no one had been able to +patch these reports together and grasp the real proportions of the giant +inland empire that had become a part of the United States. It was a +pathless desert; it was a maze of trails, trodden out by deer, buffalo, +and Indian. Its great riverways were broad avenues for voyagers and +explorers; they were treacherous gorges filled with the plunder of a +million floods. It was a rich soil, a land of plenty; the natives +were seldom more than a day removed from starvation. Within its broad +confines could dwell a great people; but it was as inaccessible as the +interior of China. It had a great commercial future; yet its +gigantic distances and natural obstructions defied all known means of +transportation. + +Such were the varied and contradictory stories told by the men who had +entered the portals of inland America. It is not surprising, therefore, +that theories and prophecies about the interior were vague and +conflicting nor that most of the schemes of statesmen and financiers for +the development of the West were all parts and no whole. They all agreed +as to the vast richness of that inland realm and took for granted an +immense commerce therein that was certain to yield enormous profits. +In faraway Paris, the ingenious diplomat, Silas Deane, writing to +the Secret Committee of Congress in 1776, pictured the Old +Northwest--bounded by the Ohio, the Alleghanies, the Great Lakes, and +the Mississippi--as paying the whole expense of the Revolutionary War. +* Thomas Paine in 1780 drew specifications for a State of from twenty +to thirty millions of acres lying west of Virginia and south of the Ohio +River, the sale of which land would pay the cost of three years of the +war. ** On the other hand, Pelatiah Webster, patriotic economist that he +was, decried in 1781 all schemes to "pawn" this vast westward region; he +likened such plans to "killing the goose that laid an egg every day, in +order to tear out at once all that was in her belly." He advocated the +township system of compact and regular settlement; and he argued that +any State making a cession of land would reap great benefit "from the +produce and trade" of the newly created settlements. + + + * Deane's plan was to grant a tract two hundred miles square at +the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi to a company on the +condition that a thousand families should be settled on it within +seven years. He added that, as this company would be in a great degree +commercial, the establishing of commerce at the junction of those large +rivers would immediately give a value to all the lands situated on or +near them. + + + ** Paine thought that while the new State could send its exports +southward down the Mississippi, its imports must necessarily come from +the East through Chesapeake Bay because the current of the Mississippi +was too strong to be overcome by any means of navigation then known. + + +There were mooted many other schemes. General Rufus Putnam, for example, +advocated the Pickering or "Army" plan of occupying the West; he wanted +a fortified line to the Great Lakes, in case of war with England, and +fortifications on the Ohio and the Mississippi, in case Spain should +interrupt the national commerce on these waterways. And Thomas +Jefferson theorized in his study over the toy states of Metropotamia and +Polypotamia--brought his + +...trees and houses out And planted cities all about. + +But it remained for George Washington, the Virginia planter, to catch, +in something of its actual grandeur, the vision of a Republic stretching +towards the setting sun, bound and unified by paths of inland commerce. +It was Washington who traversed the long ranges of the Alleghanies, +slept in the snows of Deer Park with no covering but his greatcoat, +inquired eagerly of trapper and trader and herder concerning the courses +of the Cheat, the Monongahela, and the Little Kanawha, and who drew from +these personal explorations a clear and accurate picture of the future +trade routes by which the country could be economically, socially, and +nationally united. + +Washington's experience had peculiarly fitted him to catch this vision. +Fortune had turned him westward as he left his mother's knee. First as +a surveyor for Lord Fairfax in the Shenandoah Valley and later, under +Braddock and Forbes, in the armies fighting for the Ohio against the +French he had come to know the interior as it was known by no other man +of his standing. His own landed property lay largely along the upper +Potomac and in and beyond the Alleghanies. Washington's interest in this +property was very real. Those who attempt to explain his early concern +with the West as purely altruistic must misread his numerous letters and +diaries. Nothing in his unofficial character shows more plainly than his +business enterprise and acumen. On one occasion he wrote to his agent, +Crawford, concerning a proposed land speculation: "I recommend that you +keep this whole matter a secret or trust it only to those in whom you +can confide. If the scheme I am now proposing to you were known, it +might give alarm to others, and by putting them on a plan of the same +nature, before we could lay a proper foundation for success ourselves, +set the different interests clashing and in the end overturn the whole." +Nor can it be denied that Washington's attitude to the commercial +development of the West was characterized in his early days by a +narrow colonial partisanship. He was a stout Virginian; and all stout +Virginians of that day refused to admit the pretensions of other +colonies to the land beyond the mountains. But from no man could the +shackles of self-interest and provincial rivalry drop more quickly than +they dropped from Washington when he found his country free after the +close of the Revolutionary War. He then began to consider how that +country might grow and prosper. And he began to preach the new doctrine +of expansion and unity. This new doctrine first appears in a letter +which he wrote to the Marquis de Chastellux in 1783, after a tour from +his camp at Newburg into central New York, where he had explored the +headwaters of the Mohawk and the Susquehanna: "I could not help taking a +more extensive view of the vast inland navigation of these United States +[the letter runs] and could not but be struck by the immense extent and +importance of it, and of the goodness of that Providence which has dealt +its favors to us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom +enough to improve them. I shall not rest contented till I have explored +the Western country, and traversed those lines, or great part of them, +which have given bounds to a new empire." + +"The vast inland navigation of these United States!" It is an +interesting fact that Washington should have had his first glimpse of +this vision from the strategic valley of the Mohawk, which was soon +to rival his beloved Potomac as an improved commercial route from the +seaboard to the West, and which was finally to achieve an unrivaled +superiority in the days of the Erie Canal and the Twentieth Century +Limited. + +We may understand something of what the lure of the West meant to +Washington when we learn that in order to carry out his proposed journey +after the Revolution, he was compelled to refuse urgent invitations +to visit Europe and be the guest of France. "I found it indispensably +necessary," he writes, "to visit my Landed property West of the +Apalacheon Mountains.... One object of my journey being to obtain +information of the nearest and best communication between Eastern +& Western waters; & to facilitate as much as in me lay the Inland +Navigation of the Potomack." + +On September 1, 1784, Washington set out from Mount Vernon on his +journey to the West. Even the least romantic mind must feel a thrill in +picturing this solitary horseman, the victor of Yorktown, threading the +trails of the Potomac, passing on by Cumberland and Fort Necessity and +Braddock's grave to the Monongahela. The man, now at the height of his +fame, is retracing the trails of his boyhood--covering ground over which +he had passed as a young officer in the last English and French war--but +he is seeing the land in so much larger perspective that, although +his diary is voluminous, the reader of those pages would not know that +Washington had been this way before. Concerning Great Meadows, where +he first saw the "bright face of danger" and which he once described +gleefully as "a charming place for an encounter," he now significantly +remarks: "The upland, East of the meadow, is good for grain." Changed +are the ardent dreams that filled the young man's heart when he wrote to +his mother from this region that singing bullets "have truly a charming +sound." Today, as he looks upon the flow of Youghiogheny, he sees it +reaching out its finger tips to Potomac's tributaries. He perceives a +similar movement all along the chain of the Alleghanies: on the west +are the Great Lakes and the Ohio, and reaching out towards them from the +east, waiting to be joined by portage road and canal, are the Hudson, +the Susquehanna, the Potomac, and the James. He foresees these streams +bearing to the Atlantic ports the golden produce of the interior and +carrying back to the interior the manufactured goods of the seaboard. He +foresees the Republic becoming homogeneous, rich, and happy. "Open +ALL the communication which nature has afforded," he wrote Henry Lee, +"between the Atlantic States and the Western territory, and encourage +the use of them to the utmost... and sure I am there is no other tie by +which they will long form a link in the chain of Federal Union." + +Crude as were the material methods by which Washington hoped to +accomplish this end, in spirit he saw the very America that we know +today; and he marked out accurately the actual pathways of inland +commerce that have played their part in the making of America. Taking +the city of Detroit as the key position, commercially, he traced the +main lines of internal trade. He foresaw New York improving her natural +line of communication by way of the Mohawk and the Niagara frontier on +Lake Erie--the present line of the Erie Canal and the New York Central +Railway. For Pennsylvania, he pointed out the importance of linking the +Schuylkill and the Susquehanna and of opening the two avenues westward +to Pittsburgh and to Lake Erie. In general, he thus forecast the +Pennsylvania Canal and the Pennsylvania and the Erie railways. For +Maryland and Virginia he indicated the Potomac route as the nearest for +all the trade of the Ohio Valley, with the route by way of the James +and the Great Kanawha as an alternative for the settlements on the lower +Ohio. His vision here was realized in a later day by the Potomac and the +Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the Cumberland Road, the Baltimore and Ohio +Railway, and by the James-Kanawha Turnpike and the Chesapeake and Ohio +Railway. + +Washington's general conclusions are stated in a summary at the end of +his Journal, which was reproduced in his classic letter to Harrison, +written in 1784. His first point is that every State which had water +routes reaching westward could enhance the value of its lands, increase +its commerce, and quiet the democratic turbulence of its shut-in pioneer +communities by the improvement of its river transportation. Taking +Pennsylvania as a specific example, he declared that "there are one +hundred thousand souls West of the Laurel Hill, who are groaning under +the inconveniences of a long land transportation.... If this cannot be +made easy for them to Philadelphia... they will seek a mart elsewhere.... +An opposition on the part of [that] government... would ultimately bring +on a separation between its Eastern and Western settlements; towards +which there is not wanting a disposition at this moment in that part of +it beyond the mountains." + +Washington's second proposal was the achievement of a new and lasting +conquest of the West by binding it to the seaboard with chains of +commerce. He thus states his point: "No well informed mind need be told +that the flanks and rear of the United territory are possessed by other +powers, and formidable ones too--nor how necessary it is to apply the +cement of interest to bind all parts of it together, by one indissoluble +bond--particularly the middle States with the Country immediately back +of them--for what ties let me ask, should we have upon those people; +and how entirely unconnected should we be with them if the Spaniards +on their right or Great Britain on their left, instead of throwing +stumbling blocks in their way as they do now, should invite their trade +and seek alliances with them?" + +Some of the pictures in Washington's vision reveal, in the light +of subsequent events, an almost uncanny prescience. He very plainly +prophesied the international rivalry for the trade of the Great Lakes +zone, embodied today in the Welland and the Erie canals. He declared +the possibility of navigating with oceangoing vessels the tortuous +two-thousand-mile channel of the Ohio and the Mississippi River; and +within sixteen years ships left the Ohio, crossed the Atlantic, +and sailed into the Mediterranean. His description of a possible +insurrection of a western community might well have been written later; +it might almost indeed have made a page of his diary after he became +President of the United States and during the Whiskey Insurrection in +western Pennsylvania. He approved and encouraged Rumsey's mechanical +invention for propelling boats against the stream, showing that he had +a glimpse of what was to follow after Fitch, Rumsey, and Fulton should +have overcome the mighty currents of the Hudson and the Ohio with the +steamboat's paddle wheel. His proposal that Congress should undertake +a survey of western rivers for the purpose of giving people at large +a knowledge of their possible importance as avenues of commerce was a +forecast of the Lewis and Clark expedition as well as of the policy of +the Government today for the improvement of the great inland rivers and +harbors. + +"The destinies of our country run east and west. Intercourse between +the mighty interior west and the sea coast is the great principle of +our commercial prosperity." These are the words of Edward Everett in +advocating the Boston and Albany Railroad. In effect Washington had +uttered those same words half a century earlier when he gave momentum to +an era filled with energetic but unsuccessful efforts to join with the +waters of the West the rivers reaching inland from the Atlantic. The +fact that American engineering science had not in his day reached a +point where it could cope with this problem successfully should in no +wise lessen our admiration for the man who had thus caught the vision of +a nation united and unified by improved methods of transportation. + + + +CHAPTER II. The Red Man's Trail + +For the beginnings of the paths of our inland commerce, we must look far +back into the dim prehistoric ages of America. The earliest routes that +threaded the continent were the streams and the tracks beaten out by the +heavier four-footed animals. The Indian hunter followed the migrations +of the animals and the streams that would float his light canoe. Today +the main lines of travel and transportation for the most part still +cling to these primeval pathways. + +In their wanderings, man and beast alike sought the heights, the passes +that pierced the mountain chains, and the headwaters of navigable +rivers. On the ridges the forest growth was lightest and there was +little obstruction from fallen timber; rain and frost caused least +damage by erosion; and the winds swept the trails clear of leaves in +summer and of snow in winter. Here lay the easiest paths for the heavy, +blundering buffalo and the roving elk and moose and deer. Here, high up +in the sun, where the outlook was unobstructed and signal fires could +be seen from every direction, on the longest watersheds, curving around +river and swamp, ran the earliest travel routes of the aboriginal +inhabitants and of their successors, the red men of historic times. For +their encampments and towns these peoples seem to have preferred the +more sheltered ground along the smaller streams; but, when they fared +abroad to hunt, to trade, to wage war, to seek new, material for pipe +and amulet, they followed in the main the highest ways. + +If in imagination one surveys the eastern half of the North American +continent from one of the strategic passageways of the Alleghanies, +say from Cumberland Gap or from above Kittanning Gorge, the outstanding +feature in the picture will be the Appalachian barrier that separates +the interior from the Atlantic coast. To the north lie the Adirondacks +and the Berkshire Hills, hedging New England in close to the ocean. Two +glittering waterways lie east and west of these heights--the Connecticut +and the Hudson. Upon the valleys of these two rivers converged the +two deeply worn pathways of the Puritan, the Old Bay Path and the +Connecticut Path. By way of Westfield River, that silver tributary +which joins the Connecticut at Springfield, Massachusetts, the Bay Path +surmounted the Berkshire highlands and united old Massachusetts to the +upper Hudson Valley near Fort Orange, now Albany. + +Here, north of the Catskills, the Appalachian barrier subsides and gives +New York a supreme advantage over all the other Atlantic States--a level +route to the Great Lakes and the West. The Mohawk River threads the +smiling landscape; beyond lies the "Finger Lake country" and the valley +of the Genesee. Through this romantic region ran the Mohawk Trail, +sending offshoots to Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, to the +Susquehanna, and to the Allegheny. A few names have been altered in the +course of years--the Bay Path is now the Boston and Albany Railroad, +the Mohawk Trail is the New York Central, and Fort Orange is Albany--and +thus we may tell in a dozen words the story of three centuries. + +Upon Fort Orange converged the score of land and water pathways of the +fur trade of our North. These Indian trade routes were slowly widened +into colonial roads, notably the Mohawk and Catskill turnpikes, and +these in turn were transformed into the Erie, Lehigh, Nickel Plate, and +New York Central railways. But from the day when the canoe and the keel +boat floated their bulky cargoes of pelts or the heavy laden Indian +pony trudged the trail, the routes of trade have been little or nothing +altered. + +Traversing the line of the Alleghanies southward, the eye notes first +the break in the wall at the Delaware Water Gap, and then that long arm +of the Susquehanna, the Juniata, reaching out through dark Kittanning +Gorge to its silver playmate, the dancing Conemaugh. Here amid its leafy +aisles ran the brown and red Kittanning Trail, the main route of the +Pennsylvania traders from the rich region of York, Lancaster, and +Chambersburg. On this general alignment the Broadway Limited flies today +toward Pittsburgh and Chicago. A little to the south another important +pathway from the same region led, by way of Carlisle, Bedford, and +Ligonier, to the Ohio. The "Highland Trail" the Indian traders called +it, for it kept well on the watershed dividing the Allegheny tributaries +on the north from those of the Monongahela on the south. + +Farther to the south the scene shows a change, for the Atlantic plain +widens considerably. The Potomac River, the James, the Pedee, and the +Savannah flow through valleys much longer than those of the northern +rivers. Here in the South commerce was carried on mainly by shallop and +pinnace. The trails of the Indian skirted the rivers and offered for +trader and explorer passageway to the West, especially to the towns of +the Cherokees in the southern Alleghanies or Unakas; but the waterways +and the roads over which the hogsheads of tobacco were rolled (hence +called "rolling roads") sufficed for the needs of the thin fringes of +population settled along the rivers. Trails from Winchester in Virginia +and Frederick in Maryland focused on Cumberland at the head of the +Potomac. Beyond, to the west, the finger tips of the Potomac interlocked +closely with the Monongahela and Youghiogheny, and through this network +of mountain and river valley, by the "Shades of Death" and Great +Meadows, coiled Nemacolin's Path to the Ohio. Even today this ancient +route is in part followed by the Baltimore and Ohio and the Western +Maryland Railway. + +A bird's-eye view of the southern Alleghanies shows that, while the +Atlantic plain of Virginia and the Carolinas widens out, the mountain +chains increase in number, fold on fold, from the Blue Ridge to the +ragged ranges of the Cumberlands. Few trails led across this manifold +barrier. There was a connection at Balcony Falls between the James River +and the Great Kanawha; but as a trade route it was of no such value +to the men of its day as the Chesapeake and Ohio system over the +same course is to us. As in the North, so in the South, trade avoided +obstacles by taking a roundabout, and often the longest route. In order +to double the extremity of the Unakas, for instance, the trails reached +down by the Valley of Virginia and New River to the uplands of the +Tennessee, and here, near Elizabethton, they met the trails leading up +the Broad and the Yadkin rivers from Charleston, South Carolina. + +To the west rise the somber heights of Cumberland Gap. Through this +portal ran the famous "Warrior's Path," known to wandering hunters, the +"trail of iron" from Fort Watauga and Fort Chiswell, which Daniel Boone +widened for the settlers of Kentucky. To the southwest lay the Blue +Grass region of Tennessee with its various trails converging on +Nashville from almost every direction. Today the Southern Railway enters +the "Sapphire Country," in which Asheville lies, by practically the same +route as the old Rutherfordton Trail which was used for generations by +red man and pioneer from the Carolina coast. In our entire region of +the Appalachians, from the Berkshire Hills southward, practically every +old-time pathway from the seaboard to the trans-Alleghany country is +now occupied by an important railway system, with the exception of the +Warrior's Trail through Cumberland Gap to central Ohio and the +Highland Trail across southern Pennsylvania. And even Cumberland Gap is +accessible by rail today, and a line across southern Pennsylvania was +once planned and partially constructed only to be killed by jealous +rivals. + +These numerous keys to the Alleghanies were a challenge to the men of +the seaboard to seize upon the rich trade of the West which had been +early monopolized by the French in Canada. But the challenge brought its +difficult problems. What land canoes could compete with the flotillas +that brought their priceless cargoes of furs each year to Montreal and +Quebec? What race of landlubbers could vie with the picturesque bands +of fearless voyageurs who sang their songs on the Great Lakes, the Ohio, +the Illinois, and the Mississippi? + +In the solution of this problem of diverting trade probably the factor +of greatest importance, next to open pathways through the mountain +barriers, was the rich stock-breeding ground lying between the Delaware +and the Susquehanna rivers, a region occupied by the settlers familiarly +known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. In this famous belt, running from +Pennsylvania into Virginia, originated the historic pack-horse trade +with the "far Indians" of the Ohio Valley. Here, in the first granary +of America, Germans, Scotch-Irish, and English bred horses worthy of +the name. "Brave fat Horses" an amazed officer under Braddock called +the mounts of five Quakers who unexpectedly rode into camp as though +straight "from the land of Goshen." These animals, crossed with the +Indian "pony" from New Spain, produced the wise, wiry, and sturdy +pack-horse, fit to transport nearly two hundred pounds of merchandise +across the rough and narrow Alleghany trails. This animal and the heavy +Conestoga horse from the same breeding ground revolutionized inland +commerce. + +The first American cow pony was not without his cowboy. Though the +drivers were not all of the same type and though the proprietors, so to +speak, of the trans-Alleghany pack-horse trade came generally from the +older settlements, the bulk of the hard work was done by a lusty army of +men not reproduced again in America until the picturesque figure of the +cow-puncher appeared above the western horizon. This breed of men was +nurtured on the outer confines of civilization, along the headwaters of +the Susquehanna, the Potomac, the James, and the Broad--the country of +the "Cowpens." Rough as the wilderness they occupied, made strong by +their diet of meat and curds, these Tatars of the highlands played +a part in the commercial history of America that has never had its +historian. In their knowledge of Indian character, of horse and +packsaddle lore, of the forest and its trails in every season, these men +of the Cowpens were the kings of the old frontier. + +An officer under Braddock has left us one of the few pictures of these +people *: + + + * "Extracts of Letters from an Officer" (London, 1755). + + +"From the Heart of the Settlements we are now got into the Cow-pens; the +Keepers of these are very extraordinary Kind of Fellows, they drive up +their Herds on Horseback, and they had need do so, for their Cattle +are near as wild as Deer; a Cow-pen generally consists of a very large +Cottage or House in the Woods, with about four-score or one hundred +Acres, inclosed with high Rails and divided; a small Inclosure they keep +for Corn, for the family, the rest is the Pasture in which they keep +their calves; but the Manner is far different from any Thing you ever +saw; they may perhaps have a Stock of four or five hundred to a thousand +Head of Cattle belonging to a Cow-pen, these run as they please in the +Great Woods, where there are no Inclosures to stop them. In the Month of +March the Cows begin to drop their Calves, then the Cow-pen Master, with +all his Men, rides out to see and drive up the Cows with all their +new fallen Calves; they being weak cannot run away so as to escape, +therefore are easily drove up, and the Bulls and other Cattle follow +them; and they put these Calves into the Pasture, and every Morning and +Evening suffer the Cows to come and suckle them, which done they let the +Cows out into the great Woods to shift for their Food as well as they +can; whilst the Calf is sucking one Tit of the Cow, the Woman of the +Cow-Pen is milking one of the other Tits, so that she steals some Milk +from the Cow, who thinks she is giving it to the Calf; soon as the Cow +begins to go dry, and the Calf grows Strong, they mark them, if they +are Males they cut them, and let them go into the Wood. Every Year in +September and October they drive up the Market Steers, that are fat and +of a proper Age, and kill them; they say they are fat in October, but I +am sure they are not so in May, June and July; they reckon that out of +100 Head of Cattle they can kill about 10 or 12 steers, and four or five +Cows a Year; so they reckon that a Cow-Pen for every 100 Head of Cattle +brings about 40 pounds Sterling per Year. The Keepers live chiefly +upon Milk, for out of their Vast Herds, they do condescend to tame Cows +enough to keep their Family in Milk, Whey, Curds, Cheese and Butter; +they also have Flesh in Abundance such as it is, for they eat the old +Cows and lean Calves that are like to die. The Cow-Pen Men are hardy +People, are almost continually on Horseback, being obliged to know the +Haunts of their Cattle". "You see, Sir, what a wild set of Creatures Our +English Men grow into, when they lose Society, and it is surprising +to think how many Advantages they throw away, which our industrious +Country-Men would be glad of: Out of many hundred Cows they will not +give themselves the trouble of milking more than will maintain their +Family." + +With such a race of born horsemen, every whit as bold and resourceful +as the voyageurs, to bear the brunt of a new era of transportation, all +that was needed to challenge French trade beyond the Alleghanies was +competent and aggressive leadership. The situation called for men of +means, men of daring, men closely in touch with governors and assemblies +and acquainted with the web of politics that was being spun at +Philadelphia, Williamsburg, New York, London, and Paris. Generations of +tenacious struggle along the American frontier had developed such men. +The Weisers, Croghans, Gists, Washingtons, Franklins, Walkers, and +Cresaps were men of varied descent and nationality. They had the +cunning, the boldness, and the resources to undertake successfully the +task of conquering commercially the Great West. They were the first men +of the colonies to be unafraid of that bugbear of the trader, Distance. +We may aptly call them the first Americans because, though not a few +were actually born abroad, they were the first whose plans, spirit, +and very life were dominated by the vision of an America of continental +dimensions. + +The long story of French and English rivalry and of the war which ended +it concerns us here chiefly as a commercial struggle. The French at +Niagara (1749) had access to the Ohio by way of Lake Erie and any one of +several rivers--the Allegheny, the Muskingum, the Scioto, or the Miami. +The main routes of the English were the Nemacolin and Kittanning paths. +The French, laboring under the disadvantages of the longer distance over +which their goods had to be transported to the Indians and of the higher +price necessarily demanded for them, had to meet the competition of the +traders from the rival colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia, each of +them jealous of and underbidding the other. + +When Celoron de Blainville was sent to the Allegheny in 1749, by the +Governor of New France, his message was that "the Governor of Canada +desired his children on Ohio to turn away the English Traders from +amongst them and discharge them from ever coming to trade there again, +or on any of the Branches." He sent away all the traders whom he found, +giving them letters addressed to their respective governors denying +England's right to trade in the West. To offset this move, within two +years Pennsylvania sent goods to the value of nine hundred pounds in +order to hold the Indians constant. The Governor had already ordered +the traders to sell whiskey to the Indians at "5 Bucks" per cask and had +told the Indians, through his agent Conrad Weiser, that if any trader +refused to sell the liquor at that price they might "take it from him +and drink it for nothing." There was but one way for the French to meet +such competition. Without delay they fortified the Allegheny and began +to coerce the natives. Driving away the carpenters of the Ohio Company +from the present site of Pittsburgh, they built Fort Duquesne. The +beginning of the Old French War ended what we may call the first era of +the pack-horse trade. + +The capture of Fort Duquesne by the English army under General Forbes +in 1758 and the final conquest of New France two years later removed the +French barrier and opened the way to expansion beyond the Alleghanies. +Thereafter settlements in the Monongahela country grew apace. +Pittsburgh, Uniontown, Morgantown, Brownsville, Ligonier, Greensburg, +Connellsville--we give the modern names--became centers of a great +migration which was halted only for a season by Pontiac's Rebellion, +the aftermath of the French War, and was resumed immediately on the +suppression of that Indian rising. The pack-horse trade now entered its +final and most important era. The earlier period was one in which the +trade was confined chiefly to the Indians; the later phase was concerned +with supplying the needs of the white man in his rapidly developing +frontier settlements. Formerly the principal articles of merchandise for +the western trade were guns, ammunition, knives, kettles, and tools for +their repair, blankets, tobacco, hatchets, and liquor. In the new +era every known product of the East found a market in the thriving +communities of the upper Ohio. As time went on the West began to send to +the East, in addition to skins and pelts, whiskey that brought a dollar +a gallon. Each pony could carry sixteen gallons and every drop could +be sold for real money. On the return trip the pack-horses carried back +chiefly salt and iron. + +Doddridge's "Notes", one of the chief sources of our information, gives +this lively picture: + +"In the fall of the year, after seeding time, every family formed +an association with some of their neighbors, for starting the little +caravan. A master driver was to be selected from among them, who was +to be assisted by one or more young men and sometimes a boy or two. The +horses were fitted out with packsaddles, to the latter part of which was +fastened a pair of hobbles made of hickory withes,--a bell and collar +ornamented their necks. The bags provided for the conveyance of the +salt were filled with bread, jerk, boiled ham, and cheese furnished a +provision for the drivers. At night, after feeding, the horses, whether +put in pasture or turned out into the woods, were hobbled and the bells +were opened. The barter for salt and iron was made first at Baltimore; +Frederick, Hagerstown, Oldtown, and Fort Cumberland, in succession, +became the places of exchange. Each horse carried two bushels of alum +salt, weighing eighty-four pounds to the bushel. This, to be sure, was +not a heavy load for the horses, but it was enough, considering the +scanty subsistence allowed them on the journey. The common price of a +bushel of alum salt, at an early period, was a good cow and a calf." + +Thus, with the English flag afloat at Fort Pitt, as Duquesne was renamed +after its capture, a new day dawned for the great region to the West. +Beyond the Alleghanies and as far as the Rockies, a new science of +transportation was now to be learned--the art of finding the dividing +ridge. Here the first routes, like the "Great Trail" from Pittsburgh +to Detroit, struck out with an assurance that is in marvelous agreement +with the findings of the surveyors of a later day. The railways, when +they came, found the valleys and penetrated with their tunnels the +watersheds from the heads of the streams of one drainage area to the +streams of another. Thus on the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, +the Southern, the Chesapeake and Ohio, and other railroads, important +tunnels are to be found lying immediately under the Red Man's trail +which clung to the long ascending slope and held persistently to the +dividing ridges. + +Even this necessarily brief survey shows plainly how that preeminently +American institution, the ridge road, came about. East and west, it +was the legitimate and natural successor to the ancient trail. With the +coming of the wagon, whose rattle was heard among the hills as early +as Braddock's campaign, the process of lowering these paths from the +heights was inevitably begun, and it was to the riverways that men first +looked for a solution of the difficult problems of inland commerce. +Eventually the paths of inland commerce constituted a vast network +of canals, roads, and railway lines in those very valleys to which +Washington had called the nation's attention in 1784. + + + +CHAPTER III. The Mastery Of The Rivers + +It would perhaps have been well, in the light of later difficulties and +failures, if the men who at Washington's call undertook to master the +capricious rivers of the seaboard had studied a stately Spanish +decree which declared that, since God had not made the rivers of Spain +navigable, it were sacrilege for mortals to attempt to do so. +Even before the Revolution, Mayor Rhodes of Philadelphia was in +correspondence with Franklin in London concerning the experiences of +European engineers in harnessing foreign streams. That sage philosopher, +writing to Rhodes in 1772, uttered a clear word of warning: "rivers +are ungovernable things," he had said, and English engineers "seldom or +never use a River where it can be avoided." But it was the birthright +of New World democracy to make its own mistakes and in so doing to prove +for itself the errors of the Old World. + +As energetic men all along the Atlantic Plain now took up the problem +of improving the inland rivers, they faced a storm of criticism and +ridicule that would have daunted any but such as Washington and Johnson +of Virginia or White and Hazard of Pennsylvania or Morris and Watson of +New York. Every imaginable objection to such projects was advanced--from +the inefficiency of the science of engineering to the probable +destruction of all the fish in the streams. In spite of these +discouragements, however, various men set themselves to form in rapid +succession the Potomac Company in 1785, the Society for Promoting +the Improvement of Inland Navigation in 1791, the Western Inland Lock +Navigation Company in 1792, and the Lehigh Coal Mine Company in 1793. +A brief review of these various enterprises will give a clear if not a +complete view of the first era of inland water commerce in America. + +The Potomac Company, authorized in 1785 by the legislatures of Maryland +and Virginia, received an appropriation of $6666 from each State for +opening a road from the headwaters of the Potomac to either the Cheat +or the Monongahela, "as commissioners... shall find most convenient and +beneficial to the Western settlers." This was the only public aid which +the enterprise received; and the stipulated purpose clearly indicates +the fact that, in the minds of its promoters, the transcontinental +character of the undertaking appeared to be vital. The remainder of the +money required for the work was raised by public subscription in the +principal cities of the two States. In this way 40,300 pounds was +subscribed, Virginia men taking 266 shares and Maryland men 137 shares. +The stock holders elected George Washington as president of the company, +at a salary of thirty shillings a year, with four directors to aid him, +and they chose as general manager James Rumsey, the boat mechanician. +These men then proceeded to attack the chief impediments in the +Potomac--the Great Falls above Washington, the Seneca Falls at the mouth +of Seneca Creek, and the Shenandoah Falls at Harper's Ferry. But, as +they had difficulty in obtaining workmen and sufficient liquor to +cheer them in their herculean tasks, they made such slow progress that +subscribers, doubting Washington's optimistic prophecy that the stock +would increase in value twenty per cent, paid their assessments only +after much deliberation or not at all. Thirty-six years later, though +$729,380 had been spent and lock canals had been opened about the +unnavigable stretches of the Potomac River, a commission appointed +to examine the affairs of the company reported "that the floods and +freshets nevertheless gave the only navigation that was enjoyed." As +for the road between the Potomac and the Cheat or the Monongahela, the +records at hand do not show that the money voted for that enterprise had +been used. + +The Potomac Company nevertheless had accomplished something: it had +acquired an asset of the greatest value--a right of way up the strategic +Potomac Valley; and it had furnished an object lesson to men in other +States who were struggling with a similar problem. When, as will soon be +apparent, New York men undertook the improvement of the Mohawk waterway +there was no pattern of canal construction for them to follow in America +except the inadequate wooden locks erected along the Potomac. It is +interesting to know that Elkanah Watson, prominent in inland navigation +to the North, went down from New York in order to study these wooden +locks and that New Yorkers adopted them as models, though they changed +the material to brick and finally to stone. + +Pennsylvania had been foremost among the colonies in canal building, for +it had surveyed as early as 1762 the first lock canal in America, from +near Reading on the Schuylkill to Middletown on the Susquehanna. Work, +however, had to be suspended when Pontiac's Rebellion threw the inland +country into a panic. But the enterprise of Maryland and Virginia in +1785 in developing the Potomac aroused the Pennsylvanians to renewed +activity. The Society for Promoting the Improvement of Roads and Inland +Navigation set forth a programme that was as broad as the Keystone State +itself. Their ultimate object was to capture the trade of the Great +Lakes. "If we turn our view," read the memorial which the Society +presented to the Legislature, "to the immense territories connected with +the Ohio and Mississippi waters, and bordering on the Great Lakes, +it will appear... that our communication with those vast countries +(considering Fort Pitt as the port of entrance upon them) is as easy +and may be rendered as cheap, as to any other port on the Atlantic tide +waters." + +Pennsylvania, lying between Virginia and New York, occupied a peculiar +position. Her Susquehanna Valley stretched northwest--not so directly +west as did the Potomac on the south and the Mohawk on the north. This +more northerly trend led these early Pennsylvania promoters to believe +that, while they might "only have a share in the trade of those [the +Ohio] waters," they could absolutely secure for themselves the trade +of the Great Lakes, "taking Presq' Isle [Erie, Pennsylvania] which is +within our own State, as the great mart or place of embarkation." + +The plan which the Society proposed involved the improvement of water +and land routes by way of the Delaware to Lake Ontario and Lake Otsego, +and of eight routes by the Susquehanna drainage, north, northwest, +and west. A bill which passed the Legislature on April 13, 1791, +appropriated money for these improvements. Work was begun immediately on +the Schuylkill-Susquehanna Canal, but only four miles had been completed +by 1794, when the Lancaster Turnpike directed men's attention to +improved highways as an alternative more likely than canals to provide +the desired facilities for inland transportation. The work on the canal +was renewed, however, in 1821, when the rival Erie Canal was nearing +completion, and was finished in 1827. It became known as the Union Canal +and formed a link in the Pennsylvania canal system, the development of +which will be described in a later chapter. + +In New York State, throughout the period of the Old French and the +Revolutionary wars, barges and keel boats had plied the Mohawk, Wood +Creek, and the Oswego to Lake Ontario. Around such obstructions as +Cohoes Falls, Little Falls, and the portage at Rome to Wood Creek, +wagons, sleds, and pack-horses had transferred the cargoes. To avoid +this labor and delay men soon conceived of conquering these obstacles by +locks and canals. As early as 1777 the brilliant Gouverneur Morris had a +vision of the economic development of his State when "the waters of the +great western inland seas would, by the aid of man, break through their +barriers and mingle with those of the Hudson." + +Elkanah Watson was in many ways the Washington of New York. He had +the foresight, patience, and persistence of the Virginia planter. +His "Journal" of a tour up the Mohawk in 1788 and a pamphlet which he +published in 1791 may be said to be the ultimate sources in any history +of the internal commerce of New York. As a result, a company known +as "The President, Directors, and Company of the Western Inland Lock +Navigation in the State of New York," with a capital stock of $25,000, +was authorized by act of legislature in March, 1792, and the State +subscribed for $12,500 in stock. Many singular provisions were inserted +in this charter, but none more remarkable than one which stipulated that +all profits over fifteen per cent should revert to the State Treasury. +This hint concerning surplus profits, however, did not cause a stampede +when the books were opened for subscriptions in New York and Albany. In +later years, when the Erie Canal gave promise of a new era in American +inland commerce, Elkanah Watson recalled with a grim satisfaction the +efforts of these early days. The subscription books at the old Coffee +House in New York, he tells us, lay open three days without an entry, +and at Lewis's tavern in Albany, where the books were opened for a +similar period, "no mortal" had subscribed for more than two shares. + +The system proposed for the improvement of the waterways of New York was +similar to that projected for the Potomac. A canal was to be cut from +the Mohawk to the Hudson in order to avoid Cohoes Falls; a canal with +locks would overcome the forty-foot drop at Little Falls; another canal +over five thousand feet in length was to connect the Mohawk and Wood +Creek at Rome; minor improvements were to be made between Schenectady +and the mouth of the Schoharie; and finally the Oswego Falls at +Rochester were to be circumvented also by canal. All the objections, +difficulties, and discouragements which had attended efforts to improve +waterways elsewhere in America confronted these New York promoters. They +began in 1793 at Little Falls but were soon forced to cease owing to the +failure of funds. Under the encouraging spur of a state subscription to +two hundred shares of stock, they renewed their efforts in 1794 but +were again forced to abandon the work before the year had passed. By +November, 1795, however, they had completed the canal and in thirty days +had received toll to the amount of about four hundred dollars. + +The total actual work done is not clearly shown by the documents, but +it is evident that the measure of success achieved was not equaled +elsewhere on similar improvements on a large scale. From 1796 to 1804 +the tolls received at Rome amounted to over fifteen thousand dollars, +and at Little Falls to over fifty-eight thousand dollars--a sum which +exceeded the original cost of construction. Dividends had crept up from +three per cent in 1798 to five and a half per cent in 1817, the year in +which work was begun on the Erie Canal. + +No struggle for the mastery of an American river matches in certain +respects the effort of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company to bridle +the Lehigh and make it play its part in the commercial development of +Pennsylvania. The failures and trials of the promoters of this company +were no less remarkable than was the great success that eventually +crowned the effort. In 1793 the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was organized +and purchased some ten thousand acres in the Mauch Chunk anthracite +region, nine miles from the Lehigh River. It then appropriated a sum +of money to build a road from the mines to the river in the expectation +that the State would improve the navigation of the waterway, for which, +it has already been noted, an appropriation had been made in 1791, +in accordance with the programme of the Society for Promoting the +Improvement of Roads and Inland Navigation. Nothing was done, however, +to improve the river, and the company, after various attempts at +shipping coal to Philadelphia, gave up the effort and allowed the +property, which was worth millions, to lie idle. In 1807 the Lehigh +Coal Mine Company, in another effort to get its wares before the public, +granted to Rowland and Butland, a private firm, free right to operate +one of its veins of coal; but this operation also resulted in failure. +In 1813 the company made a third attempt and granted to a private +concern a lease of the entire property on the condition that +ten thousand bushels of coal should be taken to market annually. +Difficulties immediately made themselves apparent. No contractor could +be found who would haul the output to the Lehigh River for less than +four dollars a ton, and the man who accepted those terms lost money. +Of five barges filled at Mauch Chunk three went to pieces on the way +to Philadelphia. Although the contents of the other two sold for twenty +dollars a ton, the proceeds failed to meet expenses, and the operating +company threw up the lease. + +But it happened that White and Hazard, the wire manufacturers who +purchased this Lehigh coal, were greatly pleased with its quality. +Believing that coal could be obtained more cheaply from Mauch Chunk than +from the mines along the Schuylkill, White, Hauto, and Hazard formed a +company, entered into negotiation with the owners of the Lehigh mines, +and obtained the lease of their properties for a period of twenty years +at an annual rental of one ear of corn. The company agreed, moreover, to +ship every year at least forty thousand bushels of coal to Philadelphia +for its own consumption, to prove the value of the property. + +White and his partners immediately applied to the Legislature for +permission to improve the navigation of the Lehigh, stating the purpose +of the improvement and citing the fact that their efforts would tend to +serve as a model for the improvement of other Pennsylvania streams. +The desired opportunity "to ruin themselves," as one member of the +Legislature put it, was granted by an act passed March 20, 1818. The +various powers applied for, and granted, embraced the whole range of +tried and untried methods for securing "a navigation downward once in +three days for boats loaded with one hundred barrels, or ten tons." The +State kept its weather eye open in this matter, however, for a small +minority felt that these men would not ruin themselves. Accordingly, +the act of grant reserved to the commonwealth the right to compel the +adoption of a complete system of slack-water navigation from Easton to +Stoddartsville if the service given by the company did not meet "the +wants of the country." + +Capital was subscribed by a patriotic public on condition that a +committee of stockholders should go over the ground and pass judgment on +the probable success of the effort. The report was favorable, so far as +the improvement of the river was concerned; but the nine-mile road to +the mines was unanimously voted impracticable. "To give you an idea +of the country over which the road is to pass," wrote one of the +commissioners, "I need only tell you that I considered it quite an +easement when the wheel of my carriage struck a stump instead of a +stone." The public mind was divided. Some held that the attempt to +operate the coal mine was farcical, but that the improvement of the +Lehigh River was an undertaking of great value and of probable profit to +investors. Others were just as positive that the river improvement would +follow the fate of so many similar enterprises but that a fortune was in +store for those who invested in the Lehigh mines. + +The direct result of the examiners' report and of the public debate it +provoked was the organization of the first interlocking companies in the +commercial history of America. The Lehigh Navigation Company was formed +with a capital stock of $150,000 and the Lehigh Coal Company with a +capital stock of $55,000. This incident forms one of the most striking +illustrations in American history of the dependence of a commercial +venture upon methods of inland transportation. The Lehigh Navigation +Company proceeded to build its dams and walls while the Lehigh +Coal Company constructed the first roadway in America built on the +principle--later adopted by the railway--of dividing the total distance +by the total descent in order to determine the grade. Not to be outdone +in point of ingenuity, the Lehigh Navigation Company, then suffering +from an unprecedented dearth of water, adopted White's invention of +sluice gates connecting with pools which could be filled with reserve +water to be drawn upon as navigation required. By 1819 the necessary +depth of water between Mauch Chunk and Easton was obtained. The two +companies were immediately amalgamated under the title of the Lehigh +Coal and Navigation Company and by 1823 had sent over two thousand tons +of coal to market. + +As most of the efforts to improve the rivers, however, met with +indifferent success and many failures were recorded, the pendulum of +public confidence in this aid to inland commerce swung away, and highway +improvement by means of stone roads and toll road companies came into +favor in the interval between the nation's two eras of river improvement +and canal building. + + + +CHAPTER IV. A Nation On Wheels + +In early days the Indian had not only followed the watercourses in his +canoe but had made his way on foot over trails through the woods and +over the mountains. In colonial days, Englishman and Frenchman followed +the footsteps of the Indian, and as settlement increased and trade +developed, the forest path widened into the highway for wheeled +vehicles. Massachusetts began the work of road making in 1639 by passing +an act which decreed that "the ways" should be six to ten rods wide "in +common grounds," thus allowing sufficient room for more than one track. +Similar broad "ways" were authorized in New York and Pennsylvania +in 1664; stumps and shrubs were to be cut close to the ground, and +"sufficient bridges" were to be built over streams and marshy places. +Virginia passed legislation for highways at an early date, but it was +not until 1669 that strict laws were enacted with a view to keeping the +roads in a permanently good condition. Under these laws surveyors were +appointed to establish in each county roads forty feet wide to the +church and to the courthouse. In 1700, Pennsylvania turned her local +roads over to the county justices, put the King's highway and the main +public roads under the care of the governor and his council, and ordered +each county to erect bridges over its streams. + +The word "roadmaking" was capable of several interpretations. In +general, it meant outlining the course for the new thoroughfare, +clearing away fallen timber, blazing or notching the trees so that the +traveler might not miss the track, and building bridges or laying logs +"over all the marshy, swampy, and difficult dirty places." + +The streams proved serious obstacles to early traffic. It has been shown +already that the earliest routes of animal or man sought the watersheds; +the trails therefore usually encountered one stream near its junction +with another. At first, of course, fording was the common method of +crossing water, and the most advantageous fording places were generally +found near the mouths of tributary streams, where bars and islands are +frequently formed and where the water is consequently shallow. When +ferries began to be used, they were usually situated just above or below +the fords; but when the bridge succeeded the ferry, the primitive bridge +builder went back to the old fording place in order to take advantage +of the shallower water, bars, and islands. With the advent of improved +engineering, the character of river banks and currents was more +frequently taken into consideration in choosing a site for a bridge than +was the case in the olden times, but despite this fact the bridges of +today, generally speaking, span the rivers where the deer or the buffalo +splashed his way across centuries ago. + +On the broader streams, where fording was impossible and traffic was +perforce carried by ferry, the canoe and the keel boat of the earliest +days gave way in time to the ordinary "flat" or barge. At first the +obligation of the ferryman to the public, though recognized by English +law, was ignored in America by legislators and monopolists alike. Men +obtained the land on both sides of the rivers at the crossing places +and served the public only at their own convenience and at their own +charges. In many cases, to encourage the opening of roads or of ferries, +national and state authorities made grants of land on the same principle +followed in later days in the case of Western railroads. Such, for +instance, was the grant to Ebenezer Zane, at Zanesville, Lancaster, and +Chillicothe in the Northwest Territory. These monopolies sometimes were +extremely profitable: a descendant of the owners of the famous +Ingles ferry across New River, on the Wilderness Road to Kentucky, +is responsible for the statement that in the heyday of travel to the +Southwest the privilege was worth from $10,000 to $15,000 annually to +the family. But as local governments became more efficient, monopolies +were abolished and the collection of tolls was taken over by the +authorities. The awakening of inland trade is most clearly indicated +everywhere by the action of assemblies regarding the operation of +ferries, and in general, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, +tolls and ferries were being regulated by law. + +But neither roads nor ferries were of themselves sufficient to put a +nation on wheels. The early polite society of the settled neighborhoods +traveled in horse litters, in sedan chairs, or on horseback, the women +seated on pillions or cushions behind the saddle riders, while oxcarts +and horse barrows brought to town the produce of the outlying farms. +Although carts and rude wagons could be built entirely of wood, there +could be no marked advance in transportation until the development +of mining in certain localities reduced the price of iron. With the +increase of travel and trade, the old world coach and chaise and +wain came into use, and iron for tire and brace became an imperative +necessity. The connection between the production of iron and the care of +highways was recognized by legislation as early as 1732, when Maryland +excused men and slaves in the ironworks from labor on the public roads, +though by the middle of the century owners of ironworks were obliged to +detail one man out of every ten in their employ for such work. + +While the coastwise trade between the colonies was still preeminently +important as a means of transporting commodities, by the beginning of +the eighteenth century the land routes from New York to New England, +from New York across New Jersey to Philadelphia, and those radiating +from Philadelphia in every direction, were coming into general use. +The date of the opening of regular freight traffic between New York and +Philadelphia is set by the reply of the Governor of New Jersey in 1707 +to a protest against monopolies granted on one of the old widened Indian +trails between Burlington and Amboy. "At present," he says, "everybody +is sure, ONCE A FORTNIGHT, to have an opportunity of sending any +quantity of goods, great or small, at reasonable rates, without being in +danger of imposition; and the sending of this wagon is so far from being +a grievance or monopoly, THAT BY THIS MEANS AND NO OTHER, a trade has +been carried on between Philadelphia, Burlington, Amboy, and New York, +which was never known before." + +The long Philadelphia Road from the Lancaster region into the Valley of +Virginia, by way of Wadkins on the Potomac, was used by German and Irish +traders probably as early as 1700. In 1728 the people of Maryland were +petitioning for a road from the ford of the Monocacy to the home of +Nathan Wickham. Four years later Jost Heydt, leading an immigrant party +southward, broke open a road from the York Barrens toward the Potomac +two miles above Harper's Ferry. This avenue by way of the Berkeley, +Staunton, Watauga, and Greenbrier regions to Tennessee and Kentucky--was +the longest and most important in America during the Revolutionary +period. The Virginia Assembly in 1779 appointed commissioners to view +this route and to report on the advisability of making it a wagon road +all the way to Kentucky. In 1795, efforts were made in Kentucky to +turn the Wilderness Trail into a wagon road, and in this same year the +Kentucky Legislature passed an act making the route from Crab Orchard to +Cumberland Gap a wagon road thirty feet in width. + +From Pennsylvania and from Virginia commerce westward bound followed +in the main the army roads hewn out by Braddock and Forbes in their +campaigns against Fort Duquesne. In 1755, Braddock, marching from +Alexandria by way of Fort Cumberland, had opened a passage for his +artillery and wagons to Laurel Hill, near Uniontown, Pennsylvania. His +force included a corps of seamen equipped with block and tackle to raise +and lower his wagons in the steep inclines of the Alleghanies. Three +years later, Forbes, in his careful, dogged campaign, followed a +more northerly route. Advancing from Philadelphia and Carlisle, he +established Fort Bedford and Fort Ligonier as bases of supply and broke +a new road through the interminable forest which clothed the rugged +mountain ranges. From the first there was bitter rivalry between these +two routes, and the young Colonel Washington was roundly criticized by +both Forbes and Bouquet, his second in command, for his partisan +effort to "drive me down," as Forbes phrased it, into the Virginia or +Braddock's Road. This rivalry between the two routes continued when the +destruction of the French power over the roads in the interior threw +open to Pennsylvania and her southern neighbors alike the lucrative +trade of the Ohio country. + +From the journals of the time may be caught faint glimpses of the toils +and dangers of travel through these wild hill regions. Let the traveler +of today, as he follows the track that once was Braddock's Road, picture +the scene of that earlier time when, in the face of every natural +obstacle, the army toiled across the mountain chains. Where the earth +in yonder ravine is whipped to a black froth, the engineers have +thrown down the timber cut in widening the trail and have constructed a +corduroy bridge, or rather a loose raft on a sea of muck. The wreck of +the last wagon which tried to pass gives some additional safety to the +next. Already the stench from the horse killed in the accident deadens +the heavy, heated air of the forest. The sailors, stripped to the waist, +are ready with ropes and tackle to let the next wagon down the +incline; the pulleys creak, the ropes groan. The horses, weak and +terror-stricken, plunge and rear; in the final crash to the level the +leg of the wheel horse is caught and broken; one of the soldiers shoots +the animal; the traces are unbuckled; another beast is substituted. +Beyond, the seamen are waiting with tackle attached to trees on the +ridge above to assist the horses on the cruel upgrade--and Braddock, the +deceived, maligned, misrepresented, and misjudged, creeps onward in his +brave conquest of the Alleghanies in a campaign that, in spite of its +military failure, deserves honorable mention among the achievements of +British arms. + +Everywhere, north and south, the early American road was a veritable +Slough of Despond. Watery pits were to be encountered wherein horses +were drowned and loads sank from sight. Frequently traffic was stopped +for hours by wagons which had broken down and blocked the way. Thirteen +wagons at one time were stalled on Logan's Hill on the York Road. +Frightful accidents occurred in attempting to draw out loads. Jonathan +Tyson, for instance, in 1792, near Philadelphia saw a horse's lower jaw +torn off by the slipping of a chain. + +Save in the winter, when in the northern colonies snow filled the ruts +and frost built solid bridges over the streams, travel on these early +roads was never safe, rapid, nor comfortable. The comparative ease of +winter travel for the carriage of heavy freight and for purposes of +trade and social intercourse gave the colder regions an advantage over +the southern that was an important factor in the development of the +country. + +No genuine improvement of roads and highways seems to have been +attempted until the era heralded by Washington's letter to Harrison +in 1784. But the problem slowly forced itself upon all sections of +the country, and especially upon Pennsylvania and Maryland, whose +inhabitants began to fear lest New York, Alexandria, or Richmond should +snatch the Western trade from Philadelphia or Baltimore. The truth that +underlies the proverb that "history repeats itself" is well illustrated +by the fact that the first macadamized road in America was built in +Pennsylvania, for here also originated the pack-horse trade and the +Conestoga horse and wagon; here the first inland American canal was +built, the first roadbed was graded on the principle of dividing the +whole distance by the whole descent, and the first railway was operated. +Macadam and Telford had only begun to show the people of England how +to build roads of crushed stone--an art first developed by the French +engineer Tresaguet--when Pennsylvanians built the Lancaster Turnpike. +The Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road Company was chartered +April 9, 1792, as a part of the general plan of the Society for the +Improvement of Roads and Inland Navigation already described. This road, +sixty-two miles in length, was built of stone at a cost of $465,000 and +was completed in two years. Never before had such a sum been invested in +internal improvement in the United States. The rapidity with which the +undertaking was carried through and the profits which accrued from the +investment were alike astonishing. The subscription books were opened +at eleven o'clock one morning and by midnight 2226 shares had been +subscribed, each purchaser paying down thirty dollars. At the same time +Elkanah Watson was despondently scanning the subscription books of his +Mohawk River enterprise at Albany where "no mortal" had risked more than +two shares. + +The success of the Lancaster Turnpike was not achieved without a protest +against the monopoly which the new venture created. It is true that in +all the colonies the exercise of the right of eminent domain had been +conceded in a veiled way to officials to whose care the laying out +of roads had been delegated. As early as 1639 the General Court of +Massachusetts had ordered each town to choose men who, cooperating with +men from the adjoining town, should "lay out highways where they may +be most convenient, notwithstanding any man's property, or any corne +ground, so as it occasion not the pulling down of any man's house, or +laying open any garden or orchard." But the open and extended exercise +of these rights led to vigorous opposition in the case of this +Pennsylvania road. A public meeting was held at the Prince of Wales +Tavern in Philadelphia in 1793 to protest in round terms against the +monopolistic character of the Lancaster Turnpike. Blackstone and Edward +III were hurled at the heads of the "venal" legislators who had made +this "monstrosity" possible. The opposition died down, however, in the +face of the success which the new road instantly achieved. The Turnpike +was, indeed, admirably situated. Converging at the quaint old "borough +of Lancaster," the various routes--northeast from Virginia, east from +the Carlisle and Chambersburg region and the Alleghanies, and southeast +from the upper Susquehanna country--poured upon the Quaker City a +trade that profited every merchant, landholder, and laborer. The nine +tollgates, on the average a little less than seven miles apart, turned +in a revenue that allowed the "President and Managers" to declare +dividends to stockholders running, it is said, as high as fifteen per +cent. + +The Lancaster Turnpike is interesting from three points of view: it +began a new period of American transportation; it ushered in an era of +speculation unheard of in the previous history of the country; and it +introduced American lawmakers to the great problem of controlling public +corporations. + +Along this thirty-seven-foot road, of which twenty-four feet were laid +with stone, the new era of American inland travel progressed. The +array of two-wheeled private equipages and other family carriages, +the stagecoaches of bright color, and the carts, Dutch wagons, and +Conestogas, gave token of what was soon to be witnessed on the great +roads of a dozen States in the next generation. Here, probably, the +first distinction began to be drawn between the taverns for passengers +and those patronized by the drivers of freight. The colonial taverns, +comparatively few and far between, had up to this time served the +traveling public, high and low, rich and poor, alike. But in this new +era members of Congress and the elite of Philadelphia and neighboring +towns were not to be jostled at the table by burly hostlers, drivers, +wagoners, and hucksters. Two types of inns thus came quickly into +existence: the tavern entertained the stagecoach traffic, while the +democratic roadhouse served the established lines of Conestogas, +freighters, and all other vehicles which poured from every town, +village, and hamlet upon the great thoroughfare leading to the +metropolis on the Delaware. + +Among American inventions the Conestoga wagon must forever be remembered +with respect. Originating in the Lancaster region of Pennsylvania and +taking its name either from the horses of the Conestoga Valley or from +the valley itself, this vehicle was unlike the old English wain or the +Dutch wagon because of the curve of its bed. This peculiarly shaped +bottom, higher by twelve inches or more at each end than in the middle, +made the vehicle a safer conveyance across the mountains and over all +rough country than the old straight-bed wagon. The Conestoga was covered +with canvas, as were other freight vehicles, but the lines of the bed +were also carried out in the framework above and gave the whole the +effect of a great ship swaying up and down the billowy hills. The wheels +of the Conestoga were heavily built and wore tires four and six inches +in width. The harness of the six horses attached to the wagon was +proportionately heavy, the back bands being fifteen inches wide, the +hip straps ten, and the traces consisting of ponderous iron chains. The +color of the original Conestoga wagons never varied: the underbody was +always blue and the upper parts were red. The wagoners and drivers who +manned this fleet on wheels were men of a type that finds no parallel +except in the boatmen on the western rivers who were almost their +contemporaries. Fit for the severest toil, weathered to the color of the +red man, at home under any roof that harbored a demijohn and a fiddle, +these hardy nomads of early commerce were the custodians of the largest +amount of traffic in their day. + +The turnpike era overlaps the period of the building of national roads +and canals and the beginning of the railway age, but it is of greatest +interest during the first twenty-five years of the nineteenth century, +up to the time when the completion of the Erie Canal set new standards. +During this period roads were also constructed westward from Baltimore +and Albany to connect, as the Lancaster Turnpike did at its terminus, +with the thoroughfares from the trans-Alleghany country. The metropolis +of Maryland was quickly in the field to challenge the bid which the +Quaker City made for western trade. The Baltimore-Reisterstown and +Baltimore-Frederick turnpikes were built at a cost of $10,000 and +$8,000 a mile respectively; and the latter, connecting with roads to +Cumberland, linked itself with the great national road to Ohio which +the Government built between 1811 and 1817. These famous stone roads of +Maryland long kept Baltimore in the lead as the principal outlet for the +western trade. New York, too, proved her right to the title of Empire +State by a marvelous activity in improving her magnificent strategic +position. In the first seven years of the nineteenth century +eighty-eight incorporated road companies were formed with a total +capital of over $8,000,000. Twenty large bridges and more than three +thousand miles of turnpike were constructed. The movement, indeed, +extended from New England to Virginia and the Carolinas, and turnpike +companies built all kinds of roads--earth, corduroy, plank, and stone. + +In many cases the kind of road to be constructed, the tolls to be +charged, and the amount of profit to be permitted, were laid down in +the charters. Thus new problems confronted the various legislatures, and +interesting principles of regulation were now established. In most +cases companies were allowed, on producing their books of receipts and +expenditures, to increase their tolls until they obtained a profit of +six per cent on the investment, though in a number of cases nine per +cent was permitted. When revenues increased beyond the six per cent +mark, however, the tendency was to reduce tolls or to use the extra +profit to purchase the stock for the State, with the expectation +of ultimately abolishing tollgates entirely. The theories of state +regulation of corporations and the obligations of public carriers, +extending even to the compensation of workmen in case of accident, were +developed to a considerable degree in this turnpike era; but, on the +other hand, the principle of permitting fair profit to corporations upon +public examination of their accounts was also recognized. + +The stone roads, which were passable at all seasons, brought a new era +in correspondence and business. Lines of stages and wagons, as well +known at that time as are the great railways of today, plied the new +thoroughfares, provided some of the comforts of travel, and assured the +safer and more rapid delivery of goods. This period is sometimes known +in American history as "The Era of Good Feeling" and the turnpike +contributed in no small degree to make the phrase applicable not only to +the domain of politics but to all the relations of social and commercial +life. + +While road building in the East gives a clear picture of the rise and +growth of commerce and trade in that section, it is to the rivers of the +trans-Alleghany country that we must look for a corresponding picture in +this early period. The canoe and pirogue could handle the packs and kegs +brought westward by the files of Indian ponies; but the heavy loads of +the Conestoga wagons demanded stancher craft. The flatboat and barge +therefore served the West and its commerce as the Conestoga and turnpike +served the East. + + + +CHAPTER V. The Flatboat Age + +In the early twenties of the last century one of the popular songs of +the day was "The Hunters of Kentucky." Written by Samuel Woodworth, the +author of "The Old Oaken Bucket," it had originally been printed in the +New York Mirror but had come into the hands of an actor named Ludlow, +who was playing in the old French theater in New Orleans. The poem +chants the praises of the Kentucky riflemen who fought with Jackson at +New Orleans and indubitably proved + +That every man was half a horse And half an alligator. + +Ludlow knew his audience and he saw his chance. Setting the words to +Risk's tune, "Love Laughs" at Locksmiths, donning the costume of a +Western riverman, and arming himself with a long "squirrel" rifle, he +presented himself before the house. The rivermen who filled the pit +received him, it is related, with "a prolonged whoop, or howl, such as +Indians give when they are especially pleased." And to these sturdy men +the words of his song made a strong appeal: + +We are a hardy, freeborn race, Each man to fear a stranger; +Whate'er the game, we join in chase, Despising toil and danger; +And if a daring foe annoys, No matter what his force is, +We'll show him that Kentucky boys Are Alligator-horses. + +The title "alligator-horse," of which Western rivermen were very proud, +carried with it a suggestion of amphibious strength that made it both +apt and figuratively accurate. On all the American rivers, east and +west, a lusty crew, collected from the waning Indian trade and the +disbanded pioneer armies, found work to its taste in poling the long +keel boats, "corralling" the bulky barges--that is, towing them by +pulling on a line attached to the shore--or steering the "broadhorns" +or flatboats that transported the first heavy inland river cargoes. Like +longshoremen of all ages, the American riverman was as rough as the +work which calloused his hands and transformed his muscles into bands +of tempered steel. Like all men given to hard but intermittent labor, he +employed his intervals of leisure in coarse and brutal recreation. Their +roistering exploits, indeed, have made these rivermen almost better +known at play than at work. One of them, the notorious Mike Fink, known +as "the Snag" on the Mississippi and as the "Snapping Turtle" on the +Ohio, has left the record, not that he could load a keel boat in a +certain length of time, or lift a barrel of whiskey with one arm, or +that no tumultuous current had ever compelled him to back water, but +that he could "out-run, out-hop, out-jump, throw down, drag out, and +lick any man in the country," and that he was "a Salt River roarer." + +Such men and the craft they handled were known on the Atlantic rivers, +but it was on the Mississippi and its branches, especially the Ohio, +that they played their most important part in the history of American +inland commerce. Before the beginning of the nineteenth century wagons +and Conestogas were bringing great loads of merchandise to such points +on the headwaters as Brownsville, Pittsburgh, and Wheeling. As early as +1782, we are told, Jacob Yoder, a Pennsylvania German, set sail from +the Monongahela country with the first flatboat to descend the Ohio +and Mississippi. As the years passed, the number of such craft grew +constantly larger. The custom of fixing the widespreading horns +of cattle on the prow gave these boats the alternative name of +"broadhorns," but no accurate classification can be made of the various +kinds of craft engaged in this vast traffic. Everything that would +float, from rough rafts to finished barges, was commandeered into +service, and what was found unsuitable for the strenuous purposes +of commercial transportation was palmed off whenever possible on +unsuspecting emigrants en route to the lands of promise beyond. + +Flour, salt, iron, cider and peach brandy were staple products of the +Ohio country which the South desired. In return they shipped molasses, +sugar, coffee, lead, and hides upon the few keel boats which crept +upstream or the blundering barges which were propelled northward +by means of oar, sail, and cordelle. It was not, however, until the +nineteenth century that the young West was producing any considerable +quantity of manufactured goods. Though the town of Pittsburgh had been +laid out in 1764, by the end of the Revolution it was still little more +than a collection of huts about a fort. A notable amount of local trade +was carried on, but the expense of transportation was very high even +after wagons began crossing the Alleghanies. For example, the cost +from Philadelphia and Baltimore was given by Arthur Lee, a member of +Congress, in 1784 as forty-five shillings a hundredweight, and a few +months later it is quoted at sixpence a pound when Johann D. Schoph +crossed the mountains in a chaise--a feat "which till now had been +considered quite impossible." Opinions differed widely as to the future +of the little town of five hundred inhabitants. The important product of +the region at first was Monongahela flour which long held a high place +in the New Orleans market. Coal was being mined as early as 1796 and was +worth locally threepence halfpenny a bushel, though within seven years +it was being sold at Philadelphia at thirty-seven and a half cents a +bushel. The fur trade with the Illinois country grew less important as +the century came to its close, but Maynard and Morrison, cooperating +with Guy Bryan at Philadelphia, sent a barge laden with merchandise to +Illinois annually between 1790 and 1796, which returned each season with +a cargo of skins and furs. Pittsburgh was thus a distributing center +of some importance; but the fact that no drayman or warehouse was to +be found in the town at this time is a significant commentary on the +undeveloped state of its commerce and manufacture. + +After Wayne's victory at the battle of the Fallen Timber in 1794 and +the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which ended the earlier +Indian wars of the Old Northwest and opened for settlement the country +beyond the Ohio, a great migration followed into Ohio, Indiana, and +Kentucky, and the commercial activity of Pittsburgh rapidly increased. +By 1800 a score of profitable industries had arisen, and by 1803 the +first bar-iron foundry was, to quote the advertisement of its owner, +"sufficiently upheld by the hand of the Almighty" to supply in part +the demand for iron and castings. Glass factories were established, and +ropewalks, sail lofts, boatyards, anchor smithies, and brickyards, were +soon ready to supply the rapidly increasing demands of the infant cities +and the countryside on the lower Ohio. When the new century arrived the +Pittsburgh district had a population of upwards of two thousand. + +One by one the other important centers of trade in the great valley +beyond began to show evidences of life. Marietta, Ohio, founded in 1788 +by Revolutionary officers from New England, became the metropolis of +the rich Muskingum River district, which was presently sending many +flatboats southward. Cincinnati was founded in the same year as +Marietta, with the building of Fort Washington and the formal +organization of Hamilton County. The soil of the Miami country was as +"mellow as an ash heap" and in the first four months of 1802 over +four thousand barrels of flour were shipped southward to challenge the +prestige of the Monongahela product. Potters, brickmakers, gunsmiths, +cotton and wool weavers, coopers, turners, wheelwrights, dyers, +printers, and ropemakers were at work here within the next decade. A +brewery turned out five thousand barrels of beer and porter in 1811, and +by the next year the pork-packing business was thoroughly established. + +Louisville, the "Little Falls" of the West, was the entrepot of the Blue +Grass region. It had been a place of some importance since Revolutionary +days, for in seasons of low water the rapids in the Ohio at this point +gave employment to scores of laborers who assisted the flatboatmen in +hauling their cargoes around the obstruction which prevented the passage +of the heavily loaded barges. The town, which was incorporated in 1780, +soon showed signs of commercial activity. It was the proud possessor of +a drygoods house in 1783. The growth of its tobacco industry was rapid +from the first. The warehouses were under government supervision and +inspection as early as 1795, and innumerable flatboats were already +bearing cargoes of bright leaf southward in the last decade of the +century. The first brick house in Louisville was erected in 1789 with +materials brought from Pittsburgh. Yankees soon established the "Hope +Distillery"; and the manufacture of whiskey, which had long been +a staple industry conducted by individuals, became an incorporated +business of great promise in spite of objections raised against the +"creation of gigantic reservoirs of this damning drink." + +Thus, about the year 1800, the great industries of the young West +were all established in the regions dominated by the growing cities +of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville. But, since the combined +population of these centers could not have been over three thousand in +the year 1800, it is evident that the adjacent rural population and the +people living in every neighboring creek and river valley were chiefly +responsible for the large trade that already existed between this corner +of the Mississippi basin and the South. + +In this trade the riverman was the fundamental factor. Only by means of +his brawn and his genius for navigation could these innumerable tons of +flour, tobacco, and bacon have been kept from rotting on the shores. Yet +the man himself remains a legend grotesque and mysterious, one of the +shadowy figures of a time when history was being made too rapidly to be +written. If we ask how he loaded his flatboat or barge, we are told that +"one squint of his eye would blister a bull's heel." When we inquire how +he found the channel amid the shifting bars and floating islands of that +tortuous two-thousand-mile journey to New Orleans, we are informed that +he was "the very infant that turned from his mother's breast and called +out for a bottle of old rye." When we ask how he overcame the natural +difficulties of trade--lack of commission houses, varying standards of +money, want of systems of credit and low prices due to the glutting +of the market when hundreds of flatboats arrived in the South +simultaneously on the same freshet--we are informed that "Billy +Earthquake is the geniwine, double-acting engine, and can out-run, +out-swim, chaw more tobacco and spit less, drink more whiskey and keep +soberer than any other man in these localities." + +The reason for this lack of information is that our descriptions of +flatboating and keel boating are written by travelers who, as is always +the case, are interested in what is unusual, not in what is typical and +commonplace. It is therefore only dimly, as through a mist, that we +can see the two lines of polemen pass from the prow to the stern on the +narrow running-board of a keel boat, lifting and setting their poles to +the cry of steersman or captain. The struggle in a swift "rife" or rapid +is momentous. If the craft swerves, all is lost. Shoulders bend with +savage strength; poles quiver under the tension; the captain's voice is +raucous, and every other word is an oath; a pole breaks, and the next +man, though half-dazed in the mortal crisis, does for a few moments +the work of two. At last they reach the head of the rapid, and the boat +floats out on the placid pool above, while the "alligator-horse" who +had the mishap remarks to the scenery at large that he'd be "fly-blowed +before sun-down to a certingty" if that were not the very pole with +which he "pushed the broadhorn up Salt River where the snags were +so thick that a fish couldn't swim without rubbing his scales off." +Audubon, the naturalist-merchant of the Mississippi, has left us a clear +picture of the process by which these heavy tubs, loaded with forty or +fifty tons of freight, were forced upstream against a swift current: + +"Wherever a point projected so as to render the course or bend below it +of some magnitude, there was an eddy, the returning current of which +was sometimes as strong as that of the middle of the great stream. The +bargemen, therefore, rowed up pretty close under the bank and had merely +to keep watch in the bow lest the boat should run against a planter or +sawyer. But the boat has reached the point, and there the current is +to all appearance of double strength and right against it. The men, who +have rested a few minutes, are ordered to take their stations and lay +hold of their oars, for the river must be crossed, it being seldom +possible to double such a point and proceed along the same shore. The +boat is crossing, its head slanting to the current, which is, however, +too strong for the rowers, and when the other side of the river has been +reached, it has drifted perhaps a quarter of a mile. The men are by this +time exhausted and, as we shall suppose it to be 12 o'clock, fasten the +boat to a tree on the shore. A small glass of whiskey is given to +each, when they cook and eat their dinner and, after resting from their +fatigue for an hour, recommence their labors. The boat is again seen +slowly advancing against the stream. It has reached the lower end of a +sandbar, along the edge of which it is propelled by means of long poles, +if the bottom be hard. Two men, called bowsmen, remain at the prow to +assist, in concert with the steersman, in managing the boat and keeping +its head right against the current. The rest place themselves on the +land side of the footway of the vessel, put one end of their poles on +the ground and the other against their shoulders and push with all their +might. As each of the men reaches the stern, he crosses to the other +side, runs along it and comes again to the landward side of the bow, +when he recommences operations. The barge in the meantime is ascending +at a rate not exceeding one mile in the hour." + +Trustworthy statistics as to the amount and character of the Western +river trade have never been gathered. They are to be found, if anywhere, +in the reports of the collectors of customs located at the various +Western ports of entry and departure. Nothing indicates more definitely +the hour when the West awoke to its first era of big business than the +demand for the creation of "districts" and their respective ports, for +by no other means could merchandise and produce be shipped legally to +Spanish territory beyond or down the Mississippi or to English territory +on the northern shores of the Great Lakes. + +Louisville is as old a port of the United States as New York or +Philadelphia, having been so created when our government was established +in 1789, but oddly enough the first returns to the National Treasury +(1798) are credited to the port of Palmyra, Tennessee, far inland on the +Cumberland River. In 1799 the following Western towns were made ports +of entry: Erie, Sandusky, Detroit, Mackinaw Island, and Columbia +(Cincinnati). The first port on the Ohio to make returns was Fort +Massac, Illinois, and it is from the collector at this point that we get +our first hint as to the character and volume of Western river traffic. +In the spring months of March, April, and May, 1800, cargoes to the +value of 28,581 pounds, Pennsylvania currency, went down the Ohio. This +included 22,714 barrels of flour, 1017 barrels of whiskey, 12,500 pounds +of pork, 18,710 pounds of bacon, 75,814 pounds of cordage, 3650 yards +of country linen, 700 bottles, and 700 barrels of potatoes. In the three +autumn months of 1800, for instance, twenty-one boats ascended the Ohio +by Fort Massac, with cargoes amounting to 36 hundredweight of lead and +a few hides. Descending the river at the same time, flatboats and barges +carried 245 hundredweight of drygoods valued at $32,550. When we compare +these spring and fall records of commerce downstream we reach the +natural conclusion that the bulk of the drygoods which went down in the +fall of the year had been brought over the mountains during the summer. +The fact that the Alleghany pack-horses and Conestogas were transporting +freight to supply the Spanish towns on the Mississippi River in the +first year of the nineteenth century seems proved beyond a doubt by +these reports from Fort Massac. + +The most interesting phase of this era is the connection between western +trade and the politics of the Mississippi Valley which led up to the +Louisiana Purchase. By the Treaty of San Lorenzo in 1795 Spain made New +Orleans an open port, and in the next seven years the young West made +the most of its opportunity. But before the new century was two years +old the difficulties encountered were found to be serious. The lack of +commission merchants, of methods of credit, of information as to the +state of the market, all combined to handicap trade and to cause loss. +Pittsburgh shippers figured their loss already at $60,000 a year. In +consequence men began to look elsewhere, and an advocate of big business +wrote in 1802: "The country has received a shock; let us immediately +extend our views and direct our efforts to every foreign market." + +One of the most remarkable plans for the capture of foreign trade to +be found in the annals of American commerce originated almost +simultaneously in the Muskingum and Monongahela regions. With a view to +making the American West independent of the Spanish middlemen, it was +proposed to build ocean-going vessels on the Ohio that should carry the +produce of the interior down the Mississippi and thence abroad through +the open port of New Orleans. The idea was typically Western in its +arrogant originality and confident self-assertion. Two vessels were +built: the brig St. Clair, of 110 tons, at Marietta, and the Monongahela +Farmer, of 250 tons, at Elizabeth on the Monongahela. The former reached +Cincinnati April 27, 1801; the latter, loaded with 750 barrels of flour, +passed Pittsburgh on the 13th of May. Eventually, the St. Clair reached +Havana and thus proved that Muskingum Valley black walnut, Ohio hemp, +and Marietta carpenters, anchor smiths, and skippers could defy the +grip of the Spaniard on the Mississippi. Other vessels followed these +adventurers, and shipbuilding immediately became an important industry +at Pittsburgh, Marietta, Cincinnati, and other points. The Duane of +Pittsburgh was said by the Liverpool "Saturday Advertiser" of July 9, +1803, to have been the "first vessel which ever came to Europe from the +western waters of the United States." Probably the Louisiana of Marietta +went as far afield as any of the one hundred odd ships built in these +years on the Ohio. The official papers of her voyage in 1805, dated at +New Orleans, Norfolk (Virginia), Liverpool, Messina, and Trieste at +the head of the Adriatic, are preserved today in the Marietta College +Library. + +The growth of the shipbuilding industry necessitated a readjustment of +the districts for the collection of customs. Columbia (Cincinnati) at +first served the region of the upper Ohio; but in 1803 the district was +divided and Marietta was made the port for the Pittsburgh-Portsmouth +section of the river. In 1807 all the western districts were +amalgamated, and Pittsburgh, Charleston (Wellsburg), Marietta, +Cincinnati, Louisville, and Fort Massac were made ports of entry. + +The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 gave a marked impulse to inland +shipbuilding; but the embargo of 1807, which prohibited foreign trade, +following so soon, killed the shipyards, which, for a few years, had +been so busy. The great new industry of the Ohio Valley was ruined. By +this time the successful voyage of Fulton's steamboat, the Clermont, +between New York and Albany, had demonstrated the possibilities of steam +navigation. Not a few men saw in the novel craft the beginning of a new +era in Western river traffic; but many doubted whether it was possible +to construct a vessel powerful enough to make its way upstream against +such sweeping currents as those of the Mississippi and the Ohio. Surely +no one for a moment dreamed that in hardly more than a generation the +Western rivers would carry a tonnage larger than that of the cities of +the Atlantic seaboard combined and larger than that of Great Britain! + +As early as 1805, two years before the trip of the Clermont, Captain +Keever built a "steamboat" on the Ohio, and sent her down to New Orleans +where her engine was to be installed. But it was not until 1811 that the +Orleans, the first steamboat to ply the Western streams, was built at +Pittsburgh, from which point she sailed for New Orleans in October +of that year. The Comet and Vesuvius quickly followed, but all three +entered the New Orleans-Natchez trade on the lower river and were never +seen again at the headwaters. As yet the swift currents and flood tides +of the great river had not been mastered. It is true that in 1815 the +Enterprise had made two trips between New Orleans and Louisville, but +this was in time of high water, when counter currents and backwaters had +assisted her feeble engine. In 1816, however, Henry Shreve conceived +the idea of raising the engine out of the hold and constructing an +additional deck. The Washington, the first doubledecker, was the result. +The next year this steamboat made the round trip from Louisville to New +Orleans and back in forty-one days. The doubters were now convinced. + +For a little while the quaint and original riverman held on in the new +age, only to disappear entirely when the colored roustabout became the +deckhand of post-bellum days. The riverman as a type was unknown except +on the larger rivers in the earlier years of water traffic. What +an experience it would be today to rouse one of those remarkable +individuals from his dreaming, as Davy Crockett did, with an oar, and +hear him howl "Halloe stranger, who axed you to crack my lice?"--to +tell him in his own lingo to "shut his mouth or he would get his teeth +sunburnt"--to see him crook his neck and neigh like a stallion--to +answer his challenge in kind with a flapping of arms and a cock's +crow--to go to shore and have a scrimmage such as was never known on +a gridiron--and then to resolve with Crockett, during a period of +recuperation, that you would never "wake up a ringtailed roarer with an +oar again." + +The riverman, his art, his language, his traffic, seem to belong to days +as distant as those of which Homer sang. + + + +CHAPTER VI. The Passing Show Of 1800 + +Foreign travelers who have come to the United States have always proved +of great interest to Americans. From Brissot to Arnold Bennett while in +the country they have been fed and clothed and transported wheresoever +they would go--at the highest prevailing prices. And after they have +left, the records of their sojourn that these travelers have published +have made interesting reading for Americans all over the land. Some +of these trans-Atlantic visitors have been jaundiced, disgruntled, and +contemptuous; others have shown themselves of an open nature, discreet, +conscientious, and fair-minded. + +One of the most amiable and clear-headed of such foreign guests was +Francis Baily, later in life president of the Royal Astronomical Society +of Great Britain, but at the time of his American tour a young man of +twenty-two. His journey in 1796-97 gave him a wide experience of +stage, flatboat, and pack-horse travel, and his genial disposition, +his observant eye, and his discriminating criticism, together with his +comments on the commercial features of the towns and regions he visited, +make his record particularly interesting and valuable to the historian. +* Using Baily's journal as a guide, therefore, one can today journey +with him across the country and note the passing show as he saw it in +this transitional period. + + + * "Journal of a Tour in Unsettled Parts of North America in 1796 +and 1797" by the late Francis Baily (London, 1856). + + +Landing at Norfolk, Virginia, Baily was immediately introduced to an +American tavern. Like most travelers, he was surprised to find that +American taverns were "boarding-places," frequented by crowds of "young, +able-bodied men who seemed to be as perfectly at leisure as the +loungers of ancient Europe." In those days of few newspapers, the tavern +everywhere in America was the center of information; in fact, it was a +common practice for travelers in the interior, after signing their names +in the register, to add on the same page any news of local interest +which they brought with them. The tavern habitues, Baily remarks, did +not sit and drink after meals but "wasted" their time at billiards and +cards. The passion for billiards was notorious, and taverns in the +most out-of-the-way places, though they lacked the most ordinary +conveniences, were nevertheless provided with billiard tables. This +custom seems to have been especially true in the South; and it is +significant that the first taxes in Tennessee levied before the +beginning of the nineteenth century were the poll tax and taxes on +billiard tables and studhorses! + +From Norfolk Baily passed northward to Baltimore, paying a fare of ten +dollars, and from there he went on to Philadelphia, paying six dollars +more. On the way his stagecoach stuck fast in a bog and the passengers +were compelled to leave it until the next morning. This sixty-mile road +out of Baltimore was evidently one of the worst in the East. Ten years +prior to this date, Brissot, a keen French journalist, mentions the +great ruts in its heavy clay soil, the overturned trees which blocked +the way, and the unexampled skilfulness of the stage drivers. All +travelers in America, though differing on almost every other subject, +invariably praise the ability of these sturdy, weather-beaten American +drivers, their kindness to their horses, and their attention to their +passengers. Harriet Martineau stated that, in her experience, American +drivers as a class were marked by the merciful temper which accompanies +genius, and their perfection in their art, their fertility of resource, +and the gentleness with which they treated female fears and fretfulness, +were exemplary. + +In the City of Brotherly Love Baily notes the geniality of the people, +who by many travelers are called aristocratic, and comments on Quaker +opposition to the theater and the inconsequence of the Peale Museum, +which travelers a generation later highly praise. Proceeding to New York +at a cost of six dollars, he is struck by the uncouthness of the public +buildings, churches excepted, the widespread passion for music, dancing, +and the theater, the craze for sleighing, and the promise which the +harbor gave of becoming the finest in America. Not a few travelers +in this early period gave expression to their belief in the future +greatness of New York City. These prophecies, taken in connection with +the investment of eight millions of dollars which New Yorkers made in +toll-roads in the first seven years of this new century, incline one +to believe that the influence of the Erie Canal as a factor in the +development of the city may have been unduly emphasized, great though it +was. + +From New York Baily returned to Baltimore and went on to Washington. +The records of all travelers to the site of the new national capital +give much the same picture of the countryside. It was a land worn out by +tobacco culture and variously described as "dried up," "run down," and +"hung out to dry." Even George Washington, at Mount Vernon, was giving +up tobacco culture and was attempting new crops by a system of rotation. +Cotton was being grown in Maryland, but little care was given to its +culture and manufacture. Tobacco was graded in Virginia in accordance +with the rigidity of its inspection at Hanover Court House, Pittsburgh, +Richmond, and Cabin-Point: leaf worth sixteen shillings at Richmond +was worth twenty-one at Hanover Court House; if it was refused at all +places, it was smuggled to the West Indies or consumed in the country. +Meadows were rapidly taking the place of tobacco-fields, for the +planters preferred to clear new land rather than to enrich the old. + +At Washington Baily found that lots to the value of $278,000 had been +sold, although only one-half of the proposed city had been "cleared." It +was to be forty years ere travelers could speak respectfully of what is +now the beautiful city of Washington. In these earlier days, the streets +were mudholes divided by vacant fields and "beautified by trees, swamps, +and cows." + +Departing for the West by way of Frederick, Baily, like all travelers, +was intensely interested upon entering the rich limestone region which +stretched from Pennsylvania far down into Virginia. It was occupied in +part by the Pennsylvania Dutch and was so famous for its rich milk +that it was called by many travelers the "Bonnyclabber Country." Most +Englishmen were delighted with this region because they found here the +good old English breed of horses, that is, the English hunter developed +into a stout coach-horse. Of native breeds, Baily found animals of all +degrees of strength and size down to hackneys of fourteen hands, as well +as the "vile dog-horses," or packhorses, whose faithful service to the +frontier could in no wise be appreciated by a foreigner. + +This region of Pennsylvania was as noted for its wagons as for +its horses. It was this wheat-bearing belt that made the common +freight-wagon in its colors of red and blue a national institution. It +was in this region of rich, well-watered land that the maple tree gained +its reputation. Men even prophesied that its delightful sap would prove +a cure for slavery, for, if one family could make fifteen hundred pounds +of maple sugar in a season, eighty thousand families could, at the same +rate, equal the output of cane sugar each year from Santo Domingo! + +The traveler at the beginning of the century noticed a change in +the temper of the people as well as a change in the soil when the +Bonnyclabber Country was reached. The time-serving attitude of the good +people of the East now gave place to a "consciousness of independence" +due, Baily remarks, to the fact that each man was self-sufficient and +passed his life "without regard to the smiles and frowns of men in +power." This spirit was handsomely illustrated in the case of one burly +Westerner who was "churched" for fighting. Showing a surly attitude +to the deacon-judges who sat on his case, he was threatened with civil +prosecution and imprisonment. "I don't want freedom," he is said to have +replied, bitterly; "I don't even want to live if I can't knock down a +man who calls me a liar." + +Pushing on westward by way of historic Sideling Hill and Bedford to +Statlers, Baily found here a prosperous millstone quarry, which sold its +stones at from fifteen to thirty dollars a pair. Twelve years earlier +Washington had prophesied that the Alleghanies would soon be furnishing +millstones equal to the best English burr. As he crossed the mountains +Baily found that taverns charged the following schedule: breakfast, +eighteen pence; dinner and supper from two shillings to two shillings +and sixpence each. Traversing Laurel Hill, he reached Pittsburgh just at +the time when it was awakening to activity as the trading center of the +West. + +In order to descend the Ohio, Baily obtained a flatboat, thirty-six feet +long and twelve feet broad, which drew eighteen inches of water and was +of ten tons burden. On the way downstream, Charleston and Wheeling were +the principal settlements which Baily first noted. Ebenezer Zane, the +founder of Wheeling, had just opened across Ohio the famous landward +route from the Monongahela country to Kentucky, which it entered at +Limestone, the present Maysville. This famous road, passing through +Zanesville, Lancaster, and Chillicothe, though at that time safe only +for men in parties, was a common route to and from Kentucky. + +On such inland pathways as this, early travelers came to take for +granted a hospitality not to be found on more frequented thoroughfares. +In this hospitality, roughness and good will, cleanliness and filth, +attempts to ape the style of Eastern towns and habits of the most +primitive kind, were singularly blended. In one instance, the traveler +might be cordially assigned by the landlord to a good position in "the +first rush for a chance at the head of the table"; at the next stopping +place he might be coldly turned away because the proprietor "had the +gout" and his wife the "delicate blue-devils"; farther on, where "soap +was unknown, nothing clean but birds, nothing industrious but pigs, and +nothing happy but squirrels," Daniel Boone's daughter might be seen in +high-heeled shoes, attended by white servants whose wages were a dollar +a week, skirting muddy roads under a ten-dollar bonnet and a six-dollar +parasol. Or, he might emerge from a lonely forest in Ohio or Indiana and +come suddenly upon a party of neighbors at a dreary tavern, enjoying a +corn shucking or a harvest home. Immediately dubbed "Doctor," "Squire," +or "Colonel" by the hospitable merrymakers, the passer-by would be +informed that he "should drink and lack no good thing." After he had +retired, as likely as not his quarters would be invaded at one or +two o'clock in the morning by the uproarious company, and the best +refreshment of the house would be forced upon him with a hilarity +"created by omnipotent whiskey." Sometimes, however, the traveler would +encounter pitiful instances of loneliness in the widespreading forests. +One man in passing a certain isolated cabin was implored by the woman +who inhabited it to rest awhile and talk, since she was, she confessed, +completely overwhelmed by "the lone!" + +Every traveler has remarked upon the yellow pallor of the first +inhabitants of the western forests and doubtless correctly attributed +this sickly appearance to the effects of malaria and miasma. The psychic +influences of the forest wilderness also weighed heavily upon the +spirits of the settlers, although, as Baily notes, it was the newcomers +who felt the depression to an exaggerated degree. As he says: + +"It is a feeling of confinement, which begins to damp the spirits, from +this complete exclusion of distant objects. To travel day after day, +among trees of a hundred feet high, is oppressive to a degree which +those cannot conceive who have not experienced it; and it must depress +the spirits of the solitary settler to pass years in this state. His +visible horizon extends no farther than the tops of the trees which +bound his plantation--perhaps five hundred yards. Upwards he sees the +sun, and sky, and stars, but around him an eternal forest, from which +he can never hope to emerge:---not so in a thickly settled district; he +cannot there enjoy any freedom of prospect, yet there is variety, and +some scope for the imprisoned vision. In a hilly country a little more +range of view may occasionally be obtained; and a river is a stream +of light as well as of water, which feasts the eye with a delight +inconceivable to the inhabitants of open countries." + +In direct contradiction to this longing for society was the passion +which the first generation of pioneers had for the wilderness. When the +population of one settlement became too thick, they were seized by an +irresistible impulse to "follow the migration," as the expression went. +The easy independence of the first hunter-agriculturalist was upset +by the advance of immigration. His range was curtailed, his freedom +limited. His very breath seems to have become difficult. So he sold out +at a phenomenal profit, put out his fire, shouldered his gun, called his +dog, and set off again in search of the solitude he craved. + +Severe winter weather overtook Baily as he descended the Ohio River, +until below Grave Creek floating ice wrecked his boat and drove him +ashore. Here in the primeval forest, far from "Merrie England," Baily +spent the Christmas of 1796 in building a new flatboat. This task +completed, he resumed his journey. Passing Marietta, where the bad +condition of the winter roads prevented a visit to a famous Indian +mound, he reached Limestone. In due time he sighted Columbia, the +metropolis of the Miami country. According to Baily, the sale of +European goods in this part of the Ohio Valley netted the importers a +hundred per cent. Prices varied with the ease of navigation. When ice +blocked the Ohio the price of flour went up until it was eight dollars a +barrel; whiskey was a dollar a gallon; potatoes, a dollar a bushel; and +bacon, twelve cents a pound. At these prices, the total produce which +went by Fort Massac in the early months of 1800 would have been worth on +the Ohio River upwards of two hundred thousand dollars! In the preceding +summer Baily quoted flour at Norfolk as selling at sixty-three shillings +a barrel of 196 pounds, or double the price it was bringing on the +ice-gorged Ohio. It is by such comparisons that we get some inkling of +the value of western produce and of the rates in western trade. + +After a short stay at Cincinnati, Baily set out for the South on an +"Orleans boat" loaded with four hundred barrels of flour. At the +mouth of Pigeon Creek he noted the famous path to "Post St. Vincent's" +(Vincennes), over which he saw emigrants driving cattle to that ancient +town on the Wabash. At Fort Massac he met Captain Zebulon M. Pike, whose +tact in dealing with intoxicated Indians he commended. At New Madrid +Baily made a stay of some days. This settlement, consisting of some two +hundred and fifty houses, was in the possession of Spain. It was within +the province of Louisiana, soon to be ceded to Napoleon. New Orleans +supplied this district with merchandise, but smuggling from the United +States was connived at by the Spanish officials. + +From New Madrid Baily proceeded to Natchez, which then contained about +eighty-five houses. The town did not boast a tavern, but, as was true +of other places in the interior, this lack was made up for by the +hospitality of its inhabitants. Rice and tobacco were being grown, Baily +notes, and Georgian cotton was being raised in the neighborhood. Several +jennies were already at work, and their owners received a royalty of +one-eighth of the product. The cotton was sent to New Orleans, where it +usually sold for twenty dollars a hundred weight. From Natchez to New +Orleans the charge for transportation by flatboat was a dollar and a +half a bag. The bags contained from one hundred and fifty to two hundred +and fifty pounds, and each flatboat carried about two hundred and +fifty bags. Baily adds two items to the story of the development of the +mechanical operation of watercraft. He tells us that in the fall of 1796 +a party of "Dutchmen," in the Pittsburgh region, fashioned a boat with +side paddle wheels which were turned by a treadmill worked by eight +horses under the deck. This strange boat, which passed Baily when he was +wrecked on the Ohio near Grave Creek, appeared "to go with prodigious +swiftness." Baily does not state how much business the boat did on its +downward trip to New Orleans but contents, himself with remarking that +the owners expected the return trip to prove very profitable. When +he met the boat on its upward voyage at Natchez, it had covered three +hundred miles in six days. It was, however, not loaded, "so little +occasion was there for a vessel of this kind." As this run between New +Orleans and Natchez came to be one of the most profitable in the United +States in the early days of steamboating, less than fifteen years later, +the experience of these "Flying Dutchmen" affords a very pretty proof +that something more than a means of transportation is needed to create +commerce. The owners abandoned their craft at Natchez in disgust and +returned home across country, wiser and poorer. + +Baily also noted that a Dr. Waters of New Madrid built a schooner "some +few years since" at the head of the Ohio and navigated it down the Ohio +and Mississippi and around to Philadelphia, "where it is now employed +in the commerce of the United States." It is thus apparent, solely +from this traveler's record, that an ocean-going vessel and a +side-paddle-wheel boat had been seen on the Western Waters of the United +States at least four years before the nineteenth century arrived. + +Baily finally reached New Orleans. The city then contained about a +thousand houses and was not only the market for the produce of the river +plantations but also the center of an extensive Indian trade. The goods +for this trade were packed in little barrels which were carried into the +interior on pack-horses, three barrels to a horse. The traders traveled +for hundreds of miles through the woods, bartering with the Indians on +the way and receiving, in exchange for their goods, bear and deer skins, +beaver furs, and wild ponies which had been caught by lariat in the +neighboring Apalousa country. + +Baily had intended to return to New York by sea, but on his arrival +at New Orleans he was unable to find a ship sailing to New York. He +therefore decided to proceed northward by way of the long and dangerous +Natchez Trace and the Tennessee Path. Though few Europeans had made this +laborious journey before 1800, the Natchez Trace had been for many years +the land route of thousands of returning rivermen who had descended the +Mississippi in flatboat and barge. In practically all cases these men +carried with them the proceeds of their investment, and, as on every +thoroughfare in the world traveled by those returning from market, so +here, too, highwaymen and desperadoes, red and white, built their lairs +and lay in wait. Some of the most revolting crimes of the American +frontier were committed on these northward pathways and their branches. + +Joining a party bound for Natchez, a hundred and fifty miles distant +overland, Baily proceeded to Lake Pontchartrain and thence "north by +west through the woods," by way of the ford of the Tangipahoa, Cooper's +Plantation, Tickfaw River, Amite River, and the "Hurricane" (the path of +a tornado) to the beginning of the Apalousa country. This tangled region +of stunted growth was reputed to be seven miles in width from "shore to +shore" and three hundred miles in length. It took the party half a day +to reach the opposite "shore," and they had to quench their thirst on +the way with dew. + +At Natchez, Baily organized a party which included the five "Dutchmen" +whose horse boat had proved a failure. For their twenty-one days' +journey to Nashville the party laid in the following provisions: 15 +pounds of biscuit, 6 pounds of flour, 12 pounds of bacon, 10 pounds of +dried beef, 8 pounds of rice, 1 1/2 pounds of coffee, 4 pounds of sugar, +and a quantity of pounded corn, such as the Indians used on all their +journeys. After celebrating the Fourth of July, 1797, with "all the +inhabitants who were hostile to the Spanish Government," and bribing the +baker at the Spanish fort to bake them a quarter of a hundredweight of +bread, the party started on their northward journey. + +They reached without incident the famous Grindstone Ford of Bayou +Pierre, where crayfishes had destroyed a pioneer dam. Beyond, at the +forks of the path where the Choctaw Trail bore off to the cast the party +pursued the alternate Chickasaw Trail by Indian guidance, and soon noted +the change in the character of the soil from black loam to sandy gravel, +which indicated that they had reached the Piedmont region. Indian +marauders stole one horse from the camp, and three of the party fell +ill. The others, pressed for food, were compelled to leave the sick men +in an improvised camp and to hasten on, promising to send to their +aid the first Indian they should meet "who understood herbs." After +appalling hardships, they crossed the Tennessee and entered the +Nashville country, where the roads were good enough for coaches, for +they met two on the way. Thence Baily proceeded to Knoxville, seeing, as +he went, droves of cattle bound for the settlements of west Tennessee. +With his arrival at Knoxville, his journal ends abruptly; but from other +sources we learn that he sailed from New York on his return to England +in January, 1798. His interesting record, however, remained unpublished +until after his death in 1844. + +Not only to Francis Baily but to scores of other travelers, even those +of unfriendly eyes, do modern readers owe a debt of gratitude. These men +have preserved a multitude of pictures and a wealth of data which would +otherwise have been lost. The men of America in those days were writing +the story of their deeds not on parchment or paper but on the virgin +soil of the wilderness. But though the stage driver, the tavern keeper, +and the burly riverman left no description of the life of their highways +and their commerce, these visitors from other lands have bequeathed +to us their thousands of pages full of the enterprising life of these +pioneer days in the history of American commerce. + + + +CHAPTER VII. The Birth Of The Steamboat + +The crowds who welcomed the successive stages in the development of +American transportation were much alike in essentials--they were all +optimistic, self-congratulatory, irrepressible in their enthusiasm, and +undaunted in their outlook. Dickens, perhaps, did not miss the truth +widely when, in speaking of stage driving, he said that the cry of "Go +Ahead!" in America and of "All Right!" in England were typical of the +civilizations of the two countries. Right or wrong, "Go Ahead!" +has always been the underlying passion of all men interested in the +development of commerce and transportation in these United States. + +During the era of river improvement already described, men of +imagination were fascinated with the idea of propelling boats by +mechanical means. Even when Washington fared westward in 1784, he met +at Bath, Virginia, one of these early experimenters, James Rumsey, who +haled him forthwith to a neighboring meadow to watch a secret trial of +a boat moved by means of machinery which worked setting-poles similar to +the ironshod poles used by the rivermen to propel their boats upstream. +"The model," wrote Washington, "and its operation upon the water, which +had been made to run pretty swift, not only convinced me of what I +before thought next to, if not quite impracticable, but that it might +be to the greatest possible utility in inland navigation." Later he +mentions the "discovery" as one of those "circumstances which have +combined to render the present epoch favorable above all others for +securing a large portion of the produce of the western settlements, and +of the fur and peltry of the Lakes, also." + +From that day forward, scarcely a week passed without some new +development in the long and difficult struggle to improve the means of +navigation. Among the scores of men who engaged in this engrossing but +discouraging work, there is one whom the world is coming to honor more +highly than in previous years--John Fitch, of Connecticut, Pennsylvania, +and Kentucky. As early as August, 1785, Fitch launched on a rivulet in +Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a boat propelled by an engine which moved +an endless chain to which little paddles were attached. The next year, +Fitch's second boat, operated by twelve paddles, six on a side--an +arrangement suggesting the "side-wheeler" of the future--successfully +plied the Delaware off "Conjuror's Point," as the scene of Fitch's +labors was dubbed in whimsical amusement and derision. In 1787 Rumsey, +encouraged by Franklin, fashioned a boat propelled by a stream of water +taken in at the prow and ejected at the stern. In 1788 Fitch's third +boat traversed the distance from Philadelphia to Burlington on numerous +occasions and ran as a regular packet in 1790, covering over a thousand +miles. In this model Fitch shifted the paddles from the sides to the +rear, thus anticipating in principle the modern stern-wheeler. + +It was doubtless Fitch's experiments in 1785 that led to the first plan +in America to operate a land vehicle by steam. Oliver Evans, a neighbor +and acquaintance of Fitch's, petitioned the Pennsylvania Legislature +in 1786 for the right of operating wagons propelled by steam on the +highways of that State. This petition was derisively rejected; but +a similar one made to the Legislature of Maryland was granted on the +ground that such action could hurt nobody. Evans in 1802 took fiery +revenge on the scoffers by actually running his little five-horse-power +carriage through Philadelphia. The rate of speed, however, was so slow +that the idea of moving vehicles by steam was still considered useless +for practical purposes. Eight years later, Evans offered to wager $3000 +that, on a level road, he could make a carriage driven by steam equal +the speed of the swiftest horse, but he found no response. In 1812 +he asserted that he was willing to wager that he could drive a steam +carriage on level rails at a rate of fifteen miles an hour. Evans thus +anticipated the belief of Stephenson that steam-driven vehicles would +travel best on railed tracks. + +In the development of the steamboat almost all earlier means of +propulsion, natural and artificial, were used as models by the +inventors. The fins of fishes, the webbed feet of amphibious birds, the +paddles of the Indian, and the poles and oars of the riverman, were all +imitated by the patient inventors struggling with the problem. Rumsey's +first effort was a copy of the old setting-pole idea. Fitch's model of +1785 had side paddle wheels operated by an endless chain. Fitch's second +and third models were practically paddle-wheel models, one having the +paddles at the side and the other at the stern. Ormsbee of Connecticut +made a model, in 1792, on the plan of a duck's foot. Morey made what may +be called the first real stern-wheeler in 1794. Two years later Fitch +ran a veritable screw propeller on Collect Pond near New York City. +Although General Benjamin Tupper of Massachusetts had been fashioning +devices of this character eight years previously, Fitch was the first to +apply the idea effectively. In 1798 he evolved the strange, amphibious +creation known as his "model of 1798," which has never been adequately +explained. It was a steamboat on iron wheels provided with flanges, as +though it was intended to be run on submerged tracks. What may have been +the idea of its inventor, living out his last gloomy days in Kentucky, +may never be known; but it is possible to see in this anomalous machine +an anticipation of the locomotive not approached by any other American +of the time. Thus, prior to 1800 almost every type of mechanism for +the propulsion of steamboats had been suggested and tried; and in 1804, +Stevens's twin-screw propeller completed the list. + +It is not alone Fitch's development of the devices of the endless chain, +paddle wheel, and screw propeller and of his puzzling earth-and-water +creature that gives luster to his name. His prophetic insight into the +future national importance of the steamboat and his conception, as +an inventor, of his moral obligations to the people at large were as +original and striking in the science of that age as were his models. + +The early years of the national life of the United States were the +golden age of monopoly. Every colony, as a matter of course, had granted +to certain men special privileges, and, as has already been pointed out, +the questions of monopolies and combinations in restraint of trade +had arisen even so early as the beginning of the eighteenth century. +Interwoven inextricably with these problems was the whole problem of +colonial rivalry, which in its later form developed into an insistence +on state rights. Every improvement in the means of transportation, every +development of natural resources, every new invention was inevitably +considered from the standpoint of sectional interests and with a view to +its monopolistic possibilities. This was particularly true in the case +of the steamboat, because of its limitation to rivers and bays which +could be specifically enumerated and defined. For instance, Washington +in 1784 attests the fact that Rumsey operated his mechanical boat at +Bath in secret "until he saw the effect of an application he was about +to make to the Assembly of this State, for a reward." The application +was successful, and Rumsey was awarded a monopoly in Virginia waters for +ten years. + +Fitch, on the other hand, when he applied to Congress in 1785, desired +merely to obtain official encouragement and intended to allow his +invention to be used by all comers. Meeting only with rebuff, he +realized that his only hope of organizing a company that could provide +working capital lay in securing monopolistic privileges. In 1786 he +accordingly applied to the individual States and secured the sole right +to operate steamboats on the waterways of New Jersey, Delaware, New +York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. How different would have been the +story of the steamboat if Congress had accepted Fitch at his word and +created a precedent against monopolistic rights on American rivers! + +Fitch, in addition to the high purpose of devoting his new invention to +the good of the nation without personal considerations, must be credited +with perceiving at the very beginning the peculiar importance of the +steamboat to the American West. His original application to Congress in +1785 opened: "The subscriber begs leave to lay at the feet of Congress, +an attempt he has made to facilitate the internal Navigation of the +United States, adapted especially to the Waters of the Mississippi." At +another time with prophetic vision he wrote: "The Grand and Principle +object must be on the Atlantick, which would soon overspread the wild +forests of America with people, and make us the most oppulent Empire on +Earth. Pardon me, generous public, for suggesting ideas that cannot be +dijested at this day." + +Foremost in exhibiting high civic and patriotic motives, Fitch was +also foremost in appreciating the importance of the steamboat in +the expansion of American trade. This significance was also clearly +perceived by his brilliant successor, Robert Fulton. That the West and +its commerce were always predominant in Fulton's great schemes is proved +by words which he addressed in 1803 to James Monroe, American Ambassador +to Great Britain: "You have perhaps heard of the success of my +experiments for navigating boats by steam engines and you will feel +the importance of establishing such boats on the Mississippi and other +rivers of the United States as soon as possible." Robert Fulton had been +interested in steamboats for a period not definitely known, possibly +since his sojourn in Philadelphia in the days of Fitch's early efforts. +That he profited by the other inventor's efforts at the time, however, +is not suggested by any of his biographers. He subsequently went to +London and gave himself up to the study and practice of engineering. +There he later met James Rumsey, who came to England in 1788, and by him +no doubt was informed, if he was not already aware, of the experiments +and models of Rumsey and Fitch. He obtained the loan of Fitch's plans +and drawings and made his own trial of various existing devices, such +as oars, paddles, duck's feet, and Fitch's endless chain with +"resisting-boards" attached. Meanwhile Fulton was also devoting his +attention to problems of canal construction and to the development +of submarine boats and submarine explosives. He was engaged in these +researches in France in 1801 when the new American minister, Robert R. +Livingston, arrived, and the two men soon formed a friendship destined +to have a vital and enduring influence upon the development of steam +navigation on the inland waterways of America. + +Livingston already had no little experience in the same field of +invention as Fulton. In 1798 he had obtained, for a period of twenty +years, the right to operate steamboats on all the waters of the State of +New York, a monopoly which had just lapsed owing to the death of Fitch. +In the same year Livingston had built a steamboat which had made three +miles an hour on the Hudson. He had experimented with most of the models +then in existence--upright paddles at the side, endless-chain paddles, +and stern paddle wheels. Fulton was soon inspired to resume his efforts +by Livingston's account of his own experiments and of recent advances in +England, where a steamboat had navigated the Thames in 1801 and a year +later the famous sternwheeler Charlotte Dundas had towed boats of 140 +tons' burden on the Forth and Clyde Canal at the rate of five miles +an hour. In this same year Fulton and Livingston made successful +experiments on the Seine. + +It is fortunate that, in one particular, Livingston's influence did not +prevail with Fulton, for the American Minister was distinctly prejudiced +against paddle wheels. Although Livingston had previously ridden as a +passenger on Morey's sternwheeler at the rate of five miles an hour, yet +he had turned a deaf ear when his partner in experimentation, Nicholas +J. Roosevelt, had insisted strongly on "throwing wheels over the sides." +At the beginning, Fulton himself was inclined to agree with Livingston +in this respect; but, probably late in 1803, he began to investigate +more carefully the possibilities of the paddle wheel as used twice in +America by Morey and by four or five experimenters in Europe. In 1804 an +eight-mile trip which Fulton made on the Charlotte Dundas in an hour and +twenty minutes established his faith in the undeniable superiority of +two fundamental factors of early navigation--paddle wheels and British +engines. Fulton's splendid fame rests, and rightly so, on his perception +of the fact that no mere ingenuity of design could counterbalance +weakness, uncertainty, and inefficiency in the mechanism which was +intended to make a steamboat run and keep running. As early as November, +1803, Fulton had written to Boulton and Watt of Birmingham that he +had "not confidence in any other engines" than theirs and that he was +seeking a means of getting one of those engines to America. "I cannot +establish the boat without the engine," he now emphatically wrote to +James Monroe, then Ambassador to the Court of St. James. "The question +then is shall we or shall we not have such boats." + +But there were difficulties in the way. Though England forbade the +exportation of engines, Fulton knew that, in numerous instances, this +rule had not been enforced, and he had hopes of success. "The British +Government," Fulton wrote Monroe, "must have little friendship or even +civility toward America, if they refuse such a request." Before the +steamboat which Fulton and Livingston proposed to build in America could +be operated there was another obstacle to be surmounted. The rights of +steam navigation of New York waters which Livingston had obtained on +the death of Fitch in 1798 had lapsed because of his failure to run a +steamboat at the rate of four miles an hour, which was one provision +of the grant. In April, 1803, the grant was renewed to Livingston, +Roosevelt, and Fulton jointly for another period of twenty years, and +the date when the boat was to make the required four miles an hour was +extended finally to 1807. + +Any one who is inclined to criticize the Livingston-Roosevelt-Fulton +monopoly which now came into existence should remember that the +previous state grants formed a precedent of no slight moment. The whole +proceeding was in perfect accord with the spirit of the times, for it +was an era of speculation and monopoly ushered in by the toll-road and +turnpike organizations, when probably no less than two hundred companies +were formed. It was young America showing itself in an unmistakable +manner--"conceived in liberty" and starting on the long road to learn +that obedience to law and respect for public rights constitute true +liberty. Finally, it must be pointed out that Fulton, like his famous +predecessor, Fitch, was impelled by motives far higher than the love +of personal gain. "I consider them [steamboats] of such infinite use in +America," he wrote Monroe, "that I should feel a culpable neglect toward +my country if I relaxed for a moment in pursuing every necessary measure +for carrying it into effect." And later, when repeating his argument, he +says: "I plead this not for myself alone but for our country." + +It is now evident why the alliance of Fulton with Livingston was of such +epoch-making importance, for, although it may have in some brief measure +delayed Fulton's adoption of paddle wheels, it gave him an entry to the +waters of New York. Livingston and Fulton thus supplemented each other; +Livingston possessed a monopoly and Fulton a correct estimate of the +value of paddle wheels and, secondly, of Boulton and Watt engines. It +was a rare combination destined to crown with success a long period of +effort and discouragement in the history of navigation. + +After considerable delay and difficulty, the two Americans obtained +permission to export the necessary engine from Great Britain and shipped +it to New York, whither Fulton himself proceeded to construct his +steamboat. The hull was built by Charles Brown, a New York shipbuilder, +and the Boulton and Watt machinery, set in masonry, was finally +installed. + +The voyage to Albany, against a stiff wind, occupied thirty-two hours; +the return trip was made in thirty. H. Freeland, one of the spectators +who stood on the banks of the Hudson when the boat made its maiden +voyage in 1807, gives the following description: + +"Some imagined it to be a sea-monster whilst others did not hesitate +to express their belief that it was a sign of the approaching judgment. +What seemed strange in the vessel was the substitution of lofty and +straight smoke-pipes, rising from the deck, instead of the gracefully +tapered masts... and, in place of the spars and rigging, the curious play +of the walking-beam and pistons, and the slow turning and splashing +of the huge and naked paddlewheels, met the astonished gaze. The dense +clouds of smoke, as they rose, wave upon wave, added still more to +the wonderment of the rustics.... On her return trip the curiosity she +excited was scarcely less intense... fishermen became terrified, and +rode homewards, and they saw nothing but destruction devastating their +fishing grounds, whilst the wreaths of black vapor and rushing noise +of the paddle-wheels, foaming with the stirred-up water, produced great +excitement...." + +With the launching of the Clermont on the Hudson a new era in American +history began. How quick with life it was many of the preceding pages +bear testimony. The infatuation of the public for building toll and +turnpike roads was now at its height. Only a few years before, a +comprehensive scheme of internal improvements had been outlined by +Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin. When a boy, it +is said, he had lain on the floor of a surveyor's cabin on the western +slopes of the Alleghanies and had heard Washington describe to a rough +crowd of Westerners his plan to unite the Great Lakes with the Potomac +in one mighty chain of inland commerce. Jefferson's Administration was +now about to devote the surplus in the Treasury to the construction of +national highways and canals. The Cumberland Road, to be built across +the Alleghanies by the War Department, was authorized by the president +in the same year in which the Clermont made her first trip; and Jesse +Hawley, at his table in a little room in a Pittsburgh boarding +house, was even now penning in a series of articles, published in the +Pittsburgh Commonwealth, beginning in January, 1807, the first clear +challenge to the Empire State to connect the Hudson and Lake Erie by +a canal. Thus the two next steps in the history of inland commerce in +America were ready to be taken. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. The Conquest Of The Alleghanies + +The two great thoroughfares of American commerce in the first half of +the nineteenth century were the Cumberland Road and the Erie Canal. +The first generation of the new century witnessed the great burst of +population into the West which at once gave Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, +Michigan, and Wisconsin a place of national importance which they have +never relinquished. So far as pathways of commerce contributed to +the creation of this veritable new republic in the Middle West, the +Cumberland Road and the Erie Canal, cooperating respectively with Ohio +River and Lake Erie steamboats, were of the utmost importance. The +national spirit, said to have arisen from the second war with England, +had its clearest manifestation in the throwing of a great macadamized +roadway across the Alleghanies to the Ohio River and the digging of the +Erie Canal through the swamps and wildernesses of New York. + +Both of these pathways were essentially the fruition of the doctrine +to which Washington gave wide circulation in his letter to Harrison +in 1784, wherein he pictured the vision of a vast Republic united +by commercial chains. Both were essentially Western enterprises. The +highway was built to fulfil the promise which the Government had made +in 1802 to use a portion of the money accruing from the sale of public +lands in Ohio in order to connect that young State with Atlantic waters. +It was proposed to build the canal, according to one early plan, with +funds to be obtained by the sale of land in Michigan. So firmly did +the promoters believe in the national importance of this project that +subscriptions, according to another plan, were to be solicited as far +afield as Vermont in the North and Kentucky in the Southwest. All that +Washington had hoped for, and all that Aaron Burr is supposed to have +been hopeless of, were epitomized in these great works of internal +improvement. They bespoke cooperation of the highest existing types of +loyalty, optimism, financial skill, and engineering ability. + +Yet, on the other hand, the contrasts between these undertakings were +great. The two enterprises, one the work of the nation and the other +that of a single State, were practically contemporaneous and were +therefore constantly inviting comparison. The Cumberland Road was, +for its day, a gigantic government undertaking involving problems +of finance, civil engineering, eminent domain, state rights, local +favoritism, and political machination. Its purpose was noble and its +successful construction a credit to the nation; but the paternalism to +which it gave rise and the conflicts which it precipitated in Congress +over questions of constitutionality were remembered soberly for a +century. The Erie Canal, after its projectors had failed to obtain +national aid, became the undertaking of one commonwealth conducted, amid +countless doubts and jeers, to a conclusion unbelievably successful. As +a result many States, foregoing Federal aid, attempted to duplicate +the successful feat of New York. In this respect the northern canal +resembled the Lancaster Turnpike and tempted scores of States and +corporations to expenditures which were unwise in circumstances less +favorable than those of the fruitful and strategic Empire State. + +In the conception of both the roadway and the canal, it should be noted, +the old idea of making use of navigable rivers still persisted. The act +foreshadowing the Cumberland Road, passed in 1802, called for "making +public roads leading from the navigable waters emptying into the +Atlantic, to the Ohio, to said State Ohio and through the same"; and +Hawley's original plan was to build the Erie Canal from Utica to Buffalo +using the Mohawk from Utica to the Hudson. + +Historic Cumberland, in Maryland, was chosen by Congress as the +eastern terminus of the great highway which should bind Ohio to the Old +Thirteen. Commissioners were appointed in 1806 to choose the best +route by which the great highway could reach the Ohio River between +Steubenville, Ohio and the mouth of Grave Creek; but difficulties +of navigation in the neighborhood of the Three Sister Islands near +Charlestown, or Wellsburg, West Virginia, led to the choice of Wheeling, +farther down, as a temporary western terminus. + +The route selected was an excellent compromise between the long standing +rival claims of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to the trade of +the West. If Baltimore and Alexandria were to be better served than +Philadelphia, the advantage was slight; and Pennsylvania gained +compensation, ere the State gave the National Government permission +to build the road within its limits, by dictating that it should pass +through Uniontown and Washington. In this way Pennsylvania obtained, +without cost, unrivaled advantages for a portion of the State which +might otherwise have been long neglected. + +The building of the road, however satisfactory in the main, was not +undertaken without arousing many sectional and personal hopes and +prejudices and jealousies, of which the echoes still linger in local +legends today. Land-owners, mine-owners, factory-owners, innkeepers and +countless townsmen and villagers anxiously watched the course of +the road and were bitterly disappointed if the new sixty-four-foot +thoroughfare did not pass immediately through their property. On the +other hand, promoters of toll and turnpike companies, who had promising +schemes and long lists of shareholders, were far from eager to have +their property taken for a national road. No one believed that, if it +proved successful, it would be the only work of its kind, and everywhere +men looked for the construction of government highways out of the +overflowing wealth of the treasury within the next few years. + +In April, 1811, the first contracts were let for building the first ten +miles of the road from its eastern terminus and were completed in 18191. +More contracts were let in 1812, 1813, and 1815. Even in those days +of war when the drain on the national treasury was excessive, over a +quarter of a million dollars was appropriated for the construction of +the road. Onward it crawled, through the beautiful Cumberland gateway of +the Potomac, to Big Savage and Little Savage Mountains, to Little Pine +Run (the first "Western" water), to Red Hill (later called "Shades +of Death" because of the gloomy forest growth), to high-flung +Negro Mountain at an elevation of 2325 feet, and thence on to the +Youghiogheny, historic Great Meadows, Braddock's Grave, Laurel Hill, +Uniontown, and Brownsville, where it crossed the Monongahela. Thence, +on almost a straight line, it sped by way of Washington to Wheeling. Its +average cost was upwards of thirteen thousand dollars a mile from the +Potomac to the Ohio. The road was used in 1817, and in another year +the mail coaches of the United States were running from Washington to +Wheeling, West Virginia. Within five years one of the five commission +houses doing business at Wheeling is said to have handled over a +thousand wagons carrying freight of nearly two tons each. The Cumberland +Road at once leaped into a position of leadership, both in volume of +commerce and in popularity, and held its own for two famous decades. The +pulse of the nation beat to the steady throb of trade along its highway. +Maryland at once stretched out her eager arms, along stone roads, +through Frederick and Hagerstown to Cumberland, and thus formed a single +route from the Ohio to Baltimore. Great stagecoach and freight lines +were soon established, each patronizing its own stage house or wagon +stand in the thriving towns along the road. The primitive box stage gave +way to the oval or football type with curved top and bottom, and this +was displaced in turn by the more practical Concord coach of national +fame. The names of the important stagecoach companies were quite as well +known, a century ago, as those of our great railways today. Chief among +them were the National, Good Intent, June Bug, and Pioneer lines. The +coaches, drawn by four and sometimes six horses, were usually painted in +brilliant colors and were named after eminent statesmen. The drivers +of these gay chariots were characters quite as famous locally as the +personages whose names were borne by the coaches. Westover and his +record of forty-five minutes for the twenty miles between Uniontown +and Brownsville, and "Red" Bunting, with his drive of a hundred and +thirty-one miles in twelve hours with the declaration of war against +Mexico, will be long famous on the curving stretches of the Cumberland +Road. + +Although the freight and express traffic of those days lacked the +picturesqueness of the passenger coaches, nothing illustrates so +conclusively what the great road meant to an awakening West as the long +lines of heavy Conestogas and rattling express wagons which raced +at "unprecedented" speed across hill and vale. Searight, the local +historian of the road, describes these large, broad-wheeled wagons +covered with white canvas as + +"visible all the day long, at every point, making the highway look +more like a leading avenue of a great city than a road through rural +districts.... I have staid over night with William Cheets on Nigger +[Negro] Mountain when there were about thirty six-horse teams in the +wagon yard, a hundred Kentucky mules in an adjoining lot, a thousand +hogs in their enclosures, and as many fat cattle in adjoining fields. +The music made by this large number of hogs eating corn on a frosty +night I shall never forget. After supper and attention to the teams, +the wagoners would gather in the bar-room and listen to the music on the +violin furnished by one of their fellows, have a Virginia hoe-down, sing +songs, tell anecdotes, and hear the experiences of drivers and drovers +from all points of the road, and, when it was all over, unroll their +beds, lay them down on the floor before the bar-room fire side by +side, and sleep with their feet near the blaze as soundly as under the +parental roof." + +Meanwhile New York, the other great rival for Western trade, was intent +on its own darling project, the Erie Canal. In 1808, three years before +the building of the Cumberland Road, Joshua Forman offered a bill +in favor of the canal in the Legislature of New York. In plain but +dignified language this document stated that New York possessed "the +best route of communication between the Atlantic and western waters," +and that it held "the first commercial rank in the United States." The +bill also noted that, while "several of our sister States" were seeking +to secure "the trade of that wide extended country," their natural +advantages were "vastly inferior." Six hundred dollars was the amount +appropriated for a brief survey, and Congress was asked to vote aid for +the construction of the "Buffalo-Utica Canal." The matter was widely +talked about but action was delayed. Doubt as to the best route to +be pursued caused some discussion. If the western terminus were to be +located on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Oswego, as some advocated, +would produce not make its way to Montreal instead of to New York? In +1810 a new committee was appointed and, though their report favored +the paralleling of the course of the Mohawk and Oswego rivers, their +engineer, James Geddes, gave strength to the party which believed a +direct canal would best serve the interests of the State. It is worth +noting that Livingston and Fulton were added to the committee in 1811. + +The hopes of outside aid from Congress and adjacent States met with +disappointment. In vain did the advocates of the canal in 1812 plead +that its construction would promote "a free and general intercourse +between different parts of the United States, tend to the aggrandizement +and prosperity of the country, and consolidate and strengthen the +Union." The plan to have the Government subsidize the canal by vesting +in the State of New York four million acres of Michigan land brought out +a protest from the West which is notable not so much because it +records the opposition of this section as because it illustrates the +shortsightedness of most of the arguments raised against the New York +enterprise. The purpose of the canal, the detractors asserted, was to +build up New York City to the detriment of Montreal, and the navigation +of Lake Ontario, whose beauty they touchingly described, was to be +abandoned for a "narrow, winding obstructed canal... for an expense which +arithmetic dares not approach." It was, in their minds, unquestionably +a selfish object, and they believed that "both correct science, and the +dictates of patriotism and philanthropy [should] lead to the adoption of +more liberal principles." It was a shortsighted object, "predicated on +the eternal adhesion of the Canadas to England." It would never give +satisfaction since trade would always ignore artificial and seek natural +routes. The attempting of such comparatively useless projects would +discourage worthy schemes, relax the bonds of Union, and depress the +national character. But though these Westerners thus misjudged the +possibilities of the Erie Canal, we must doff our hats to them for their +foresight in suggesting that, instead of aiding the Erie Canal, the +nation ought to build canals at Niagara Falls and Panama! + +The War of 1812 suspended all talk of the canal, but the subject was +again brought up by Judge Platt in the autumn of 1816. With alacrity +strong men came to the aid of the measure. De Witt Clinton's Memorial of +1816 addressed to the State Legislature may well rank with Washington's +letter to Harrison in the documentary history of American commercial +development. It sums up the geographical position of New York with +reference to the Great Lakes and the Atlantic, her relationship to +the West and to Canada, the feasibility of the proposed route from an +engineering standpoint, the timeliness of the moment for such a work of +improvement, the value that the canal would give to the state lands of +the interior, and the trade that it would bring to the towns along its +pathway. + +The Erie Canal was born in the Act of April 14, 1817, but the decision +of the Council of Revision, which held the power of veto, was in doubt. +An anecdote related by Judge Platt tends to prove that fear of +another war with England was the straw that broke the camel's back of +opposition. Acting-Governor Taylor, Chief Justice Thompson, Chancellor +Kent, Judge Yates, and Judge Platt composed the Council. The two first +named were open opponents of the measure; Kent, Yates, and Platt were +warm advocates of the project, but one of them doubted if the time was +ripe to undertake it. + +Taylor opposed the canal on the ground that the late treaty with England +was a mere truce and that the resources of the State should be husbanded +against renewed war. + +"Do you think so, Sir?" Chancellor Kent is said to have asked the +Governor. + +"Yes, Sir," was the reported reply. "England will never forgive us for +our victories, and, my word for it, we shall have another war with her +within two years." + +The Chancellor rose to his feet with determination and sealed the fate +of the great enterprise in a word. + +"If we must have war," he exclaimed, "I am in favor of the canal and I +cast my vote for this bill." + +On July 4, 1817, work was formally inaugurated at Rome with simple +ceremonies. Thus the year 1817 was marked by three great undertakings: +the navigation of the Mississippi River upstream and down by steamboats, +the opening of the national road across the Alleghany Mountains, and the +beginning of the Erie Canal. No single year in the early history of +the United States witnessed three such important events in the material +progress of the country. + +What days the ancient "Long House of the Iroquois" now saw! The +engineers of the Cumberland Road, now nearing the Ohio River, had +enjoyed the advantage of many precedents and examples; but the +Commissioners of the Erie Canal had been able to study only such crude +examples of canal-building as America then afforded. Never on any +continent had such an inaccessible region been pierced by such a +highway. The total length of the whole network of canals in Great +Britain did not equal that of the waterway which the New Yorkers now +undertook to build. The lack of roads, materials, vehicles, methods of +drilling and efficient business systems was overcome by sheer patience +and perseverance in experiment. The frozen winter roads saved the day +by making it possible to accumulate a proper supply of provisions and +materials. As tools of construction, the plough and scraper with +their greater capacity for work soon supplanted the shovel and the +wheelbarrow, which had been the chief implements for such construction +in Europe. Strange new machinery born of Mother Necessity was now heard +groaning in the dark swamps of New York. These giants, worked by means +of a cable, wheel, and endless screw, were made to hoist green stumps +bodily from the ground and, without the use of axe, to lay trees +prostrate, root and branch. A new plough was fashioned with which a yoke +of oxen could cut roots two inches in thickness well beneath the surface +of the ground. + +Handicaps of various sorts wore the patience of commissioners, +engineers, and contractors. Lack of snow during one winter all but +stopped the work by cutting off the source of supplies. Pioneer +ailments, such as fever and ague, reaped great harvests, incapacitated +more than a thousand workmen at one time and for a brief while stopped +work completely. + +For the most part, however, work was carried on simultaneously on all +the three great links or sections into which the enterprise was divided. +Local contractors were given preference by the commissioners, and +three-fourths of the work was done by natives of the State. Forward up +the Mohawk by Schenectady and Utica to Rome, thence bending southward to +Syracuse, and from there by way of Clyde, Lyons, and Palmyra, the canal +made its way to the giant viaduct over the Genesee River at Rochester. +Keeping close to the summit level on the dividing ridge between Lake +Ontario streams and the Valley of the Tonawanda, the line ran to +Lockport, where a series of locks placed the canal on the Lake Erie +level, 365 miles from and 564 feet above Albany. By June, 1823, the +canal was completed from Rochester to Schenectady; in October boats +passed into the tidewaters of the Hudson at Albany; and in the autumn of +1825 the canal was formally opened by the passage of a triumphant fleet +from Lake Erie to New York Bay. Here two kegs of lake water were emptied +into the Atlantic, while the Governor of the State of New York spoke +these words: + +"This solemnity, at this place, on the first arrival of vessels from +Lake Erie, is intended to indicate and commemorate the navigable +communication, which has been accomplished between our Mediterranean +Seas and the Atlantic Ocean, in about eight years, to the extent of more +than four hundred and twenty-five miles, by the wisdom, public spirit, +and energy of the people of the State of New York; and may the God of +the Heavens and the Earth smile most propitiously on this work, and +render it subservient to the best interests of the human race." + +Throughout these last seven years, the West was subconsciously getting +ready to meet the East halfway by improving and extending her steamboat +operations. Steamboats were first run on the Great Lakes by enterprising +Buffalo citizens who, in 1818, secured rights from the Fulton-Livingston +monopoly to build the Walk-in-the-Water, the first of the great fleet +of ships that now whiten the inland seas of the United States. Regular +lines of steamboats were now formed on the Ohio to connect with the +Cumberland Road at Wheeling, although the steamboat monopoly threatened +to stifle the natural development of transportation on Western rivers. + +The completion of the Erie Canal--coupled with the new appropriation +by Congress for extending the Cumberland Road from the Ohio River to +Missouri and the beginning of the Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake and +Ohio canals, reveal the importance of these concluding days of the +first quarter of the nineteenth century in the annals of American +transportation. Never since that time have men doubted the ability of +Americans to accomplish the physical domination of their continent. With +the conquest of the Alleghanies and of the forests and swamps of the +"Long House" by pick and plough and scraper, and the mastery of the +currents of the Mississippi by the paddle wheel, the vast plains beyond +seemed smaller and the Rockies less formidable. Men now looked +forward confidently, with an optimist of these days, to the time "when +circulation and association between the Atlantic and Pacific and the +Mexican Gulf shall be as free and perfect as they are at this moment in +England" between the extremities of that country. The vision of a nation +closely linked by wellworn paths of commerce was daily becoming clearer. +What further westward progress was soon to be made remains to be seen. + + + +CHAPTER IX. The Dawn Of The Iron Age + +Despite the superiority of the new iron age that quickly followed the +widespreading canal movement, there was a generous spirit and a chivalry +in the "good old days" of the stagecoach, the Conestoga, and the lazy +canal boat, which did not to an equal degree pervade the iron age of the +railroad. When machinery takes the place of human brawn and patience, +there is an indefinable eclipse of human interest. Somehow, cogs and +levers and differentials do not have the same appeal as fingers and eyes +and muscles. The old days of coach and canal boat had a picturesqueness +and a comradeship of their own. In the turmoil and confusion and odd +mixing of every kind of humanity along the lines of travel in the days +of the hurtling coach-and-six, a friendliness, a robust sympathy, a +ready interest in the successful and the unfortunate, a knowledge of how +the other half lives, and a familiarity with men as well as with mere +places, was common to all who took the road. As Thackeray so vividly +describes it: + +"The land rang yet with the tooting horns and rattling teams +of mail-coaches; a gay sight was the road in those days, before +steam-engines arose and flung its hostelry and chivalry over. To travel +in coaches, to know coachmen and guards, to be familiar with inns along +the road, to laugh with the jolly hostess in the bar, to chuck the +pretty chamber-maid under the chin, were the delight of men who were +young not very long ago. The road was an institution, the ring was +an institution. Men rallied around them; and, not without a kind of +conservatism expatiated on the benefits with which they endowed the +country, and the evils which would occur when they should be no more +decay of British spirit, decay of manly pluck, ruin of the breed of +horses, and so forth and so forth. To give and take a black eye was +not unusual nor derogatory in a gentleman: to drive a stage-coach the +enjoyment, the emulation, of generous youth. Is there any young fellow +of the present time, who aspires to take the place of a stoker? One +sees occasionally in the country a dismal old drag with a lonely driver. +Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O rattling Quicksilver, O +swift Defiance? You are passed by racers stronger and swifter than you. +Your lamps are out, and the music of your horns has died away." + +Behind this change from the older and more picturesque days which is +thus lamented there lay potent economic forces and a strong commercial +rivalry between different parts of the country. The Atlantic States were +all rivals of each other, reaching out by one bold stroke after another +across forest, mountain, and river to the gigantic and fruitful West. +Step after step the inevitable conquest went on. Foremost in time +marched the sturdy pack-horsemen, blazing the way for the heavier forces +quietly biding their time in the rear--the Conestogas, the steamboat, +the canal boat, and, last and greatest of them all, the locomotive. + +Through a long preliminary period the principal center of interest was +the Potomac Valley, towards whose strategic head Virginia and Maryland, +by river-improvement and road-building, were directing their commercial +routes in amiable rivalry for the conquest of the Western trade. +Suddenly out from the southern region of the Middle Atlantic States went +the Cumberland National Road to the Ohio. New York instantly, in her +zone, took up the challenge and thrust her great Erie Canal across to +the Great Lakes. In rapid succession, Pennsylvania and Maryland and +Virginia, eager not to be outdone in winning the struggle for Western +trade, sent their canals into the Alleghanies toward the Ohio. + +It soon developed, however, that Baltimore, both powerful and ambitious, +was seriously handicapped. In order to retain her commanding position as +the metropolis of Western trade she was compelled to resort to a new and +untried method of transportation which marks an era in American history. + +It seems plain that the Southern rivals of New York City--Philadelphia, +Baltimore, and Alexandria--had relied for a while on the deterring +effect of a host of critics who warned all men that a canal of such +proportions as the Erie was not practicable, that no State could bear +the financial drain which its construction would involve, that theories +which had proved practical on a small scale would fail in so large an +undertaking, that the canal would be clogged by floods or frozen up for +half of each year, and that commerce would ignore artificial courses +and cling to natural channels. But the answer of the Empire State to her +rivals was the homely but triumphant cry "Low Bridge!"--the warning to +passengers on the decks of canal boats as they approached the numerous +bridges which spanned the route. When this cry passed into a byword +it afforded positive proof that the Erie Canal traffic was firmly +established. The words rang in the counting-houses of Philadelphia +and out and along the Lancaster and the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh +turnpikes--"Low Bridge! Low Bridge!" Pennsylvania had granted, it has +been pointed out, that her Southern neighbors might have their share of +the Ohio Valley trade but maintained that the splendid commerce of the +Great Lakes was her own peculiar heritage. Men of Baltimore who had +dominated the energetic policy of stone-road building in their State +heard this alarming challenge from the North. The echo ran "Low Bridge!" +in the poor decaying locks of the Potomac Company where, according to +the committee once appointed to examine that enterprise, flood-tides +"gave the only navigation that was enjoyed." Were their efforts to keep +the Chesapeake metropolis in the lead to be set at naught? + +There could be but one answer to the challenge, and that was to rival +canal with canal. These more southerly States, confronted by the +towering ranges of the Alleghanies to the westward, showed a courage +which was superb, although, as time proved in the case of Maryland, they +might well have taken more counsel of their fears. Pennsylvania acted +swiftly. Though its western waterway--the roaring Juniata, which entered +the Susquehanna near Harrisburg--had a drop from head to mouth greater +than that of the entire New York canal, and, though the mountains of +the Altoona region loomed straight up nearly three thousand feet, +Pennsylvania overcame the lowlands by main strength and the mountain +peaks by strategy and was sending canal boats from Philadelphia to +Pittsburgh within nine years of the completion of the Erie Canal. + +The eastern division of the Pennsylvania Canal, known as the Union +Canal, from Reading on the Schuylkill to Middletown on the Susquehanna, +was completed in 1827. The Juniata section was then driven on up +to Hollidaysburg. Beyond the mountain barrier, the Conemaugh, the +Kiskiminitas, and the Allegheny were followed to Pittsburgh. But the +greatest feat in the whole enterprise was the conquest of the mountain +section, from Hollidaysburg to Johnstown. This was accomplished by the +building of five inclined planes on each slope, each plane averaging +about 2300 feet in length and 200 feet in height. Up or down these +slopes and along the intermediate level sections cars and giant cradles +(built to be lowered into locks where they could take an entire canal +boat as a load) were to be hauled or lowered by horsepower, and later, +by steam. After the plans had been drawn up by Sylvester Welch and +Moncure Robinson, the Pennsylvania Legislature authorized the work in +1831, and traffic over this aerial route was begun in March, 1834. In +autumn of that year, the stanch boat Hit or Miss, from the Lackawanna +country, owned by Jesse Crisman and captained by Major Williams, made +the journey across the whole length of the canal. It rested for a night +on the Alleghany summit "like Noah's Ark on Ararat," wrote Sherman Day, +"descended the next morning into the Valley of the Mississippi, and +sailed for St. Louis." + +Well did Robert Stephenson, the famous English engineer, say that, in +boldness of design and difficulty of execution, this Pennsylvania scheme +of mastering the Alleghanies could be compared with no modern triumph +short of the feats performed at the Simplon Pass and Mont Cenis. Before +long this line of communication became a very popular thoroughfare; +even Charles Dickens "heartily enjoyed" it--in retrospect--and left +interesting impressions of his journey over it: + +"Even the running up, bare-necked, at five o'clock in the morning from +the tainted cabin to the dirty deck; scooping up the icy water, plunging +one's head into it, and drawing it out, all fresh and glowing with +the cold; was a good thing. The fast, brisk walk upon the towing-path, +between that time and breakfast, when every vein and artery seemed to +tingle with health; the exquisite beauty of the opening day, when light +came gleaming off from everything; the lazy motion of the boat, when +one lay idly on the deck, looking through, rather than at, the deep +blue sky; the gliding on, at night, so noiselessly, past frowning hills, +sullen with dark trees, and sometimes angry in one red burning spot high +up, where unseen men lay crouching round a fire; the shining out of +the bright stars, undisturbed by noise of wheels or steam, or any other +sound than the liquid rippling of the water as the boat went on; all +these were pure delights." * + + + * "American Notes" (Gadshill Edition), pp. 180-181. + + +Dickens also thus graphically depicts the unique experience of being +carried over the mountain peaks on the aerial railway: + +"There are ten inclined planes; five ascending and five descending; the +carriages are dragged up the former, and let slowly down the latter, +by means of stationary engines; the comparatively level spaces between +being traversed, sometimes by horse, and sometimes by engine power, as +the case demands. Occasionally the rails are laid upon the extreme verge +of a giddy precipice; and looking from the carriage window, the traveler +gazes sheer down, without a stone or scrap of fence between, into the +mountain depths below. The journey is very carefully made, however; +only two carriages traveling together; and while proper precautions are +taken, is not to be dreaded for its dangers. + +"It was very pretty traveling thus, at a rapid pace along the heights +of the mountain in a keen wind, to look down into a valley full of light +and softness; catching glimpses, through the tree-tops, of scattered +cabins; children running to the doors; dogs bursting out to bark, whom +we could see without hearing; terrified pigs scampering homewards; +families sitting out in their rude gardens; cows gazing upward with +a stupid indifference; men in their shirt-sleeves looking on at their +unfinished houses, planning out tomorrow's work; and we riding onward, +high abode them, like a whirl-wind. It was amusing, too, when we had +dined, and rattled down a steep pass, having no other motive power than +the weight of the carriages themselves, to see the engine released, +long after us, come buzzing down alone, like a great insect, its back +of green and gold so shining in the sun, that if it had spread a pair of +wings and soared away, no one would have had occasion, as I fancied, for +the least surprise. But it stopped short of us in a very business-like +manner when we reached the canal; and, before we left the wharf, went +panting up this hill again, with the passengers who had waited our +arrival for the means of traversing the road by which we had come." * + + + * Op. cit. + + +This Pennsylvania route was likewise famous because it included the +first tunnel in America; but with the advance of years, tunnel, planes, +and canal were supplanted by what was to become in time the Pennsylvania +Railroad, the pride of the State and one of the great highways of the +nation. + +In the year before Pennsylvania investigated her western water route, +a joint bill was introduced into the legislatures of the Potomac Valley +States, proposing a Potomac Canal Company which should construct a +Chesapeake and Ohio canal at the expense of Maryland, Virginia, and the +District of Columbia. The plan was of vital moment to Alexandria and +Georgetown on the Potomac, but unless a lateral canal could be built to +Baltimore, that city--which paid a third of Maryland's taxes--would be +called on to supply a great sum to benefit only her chief rivals. The +bitter struggle which now developed is one of the most significant in +commercial history because of its sequel. + +The conditions underlying this rivalry must not be lost sight of. +Baltimore had done more than any other Eastern city to ally herself with +the West and to obtain its trade. She had instinctively responded +to every move made by her rivals in the great game. If Pennsylvania +promoted a Lancaster Turnpike, Baltimore threw out her superb +Baltimore-Reisterstown boulevard, though her northern road to +Philadelphia remained the slough that Brissot and Baily had found it. If +New York projected an Erie Canal, Baltimore successfully championed the +building of a Cumberland Road by a governmental godmother. So thoroughly +and quickly, indeed, did she link her system of stone roads to that +great artery, that even today many well-informed writers seem to be +under the impression that the Cumberland Road ran from the Ohio to +Washington and Baltimore. Now, with canals building to the north of her +and canals to the south of her, what of her prestige and future? + +For the moment Baltimore compromised by agreeing to a Chesapeake and +Ohio canal which, by a lateral branch, should still lead to her market +square. Her scheme embraced a vision of conquest regal in its sweep, +beyond that of any rival, and comprehending two ideas worthy of the most +farseeing strategist and the most astute politician. It called not only +for the building of a transmontane canal to the Ohio but also for a +connecting canal from the Ohio to the Great Lakes. Not only would the +trade of the Northwest be secured by this means--for this southerly +route would not be affected by winter frosts as would those of +Pennsylvania and New York--but the good godmother at Washington would +be almost certain to champion it and help to build it since the proposed +route was so thoroughly interstate in character. With the backing of +Maryland, Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and probably several +States bordering the Inland Lakes, government aid in the undertaking +seemed feasible and proper. + +Theoretically the daring scheme captured the admiration of all who were +to be benefited by it. At a great banquet at Washington, late in 1823, +the project was launched. Adams, Clay, and Calhoun took the opportunity +to ally themselves with it by robustly declaring themselves in favor of +widespread internal improvements. Even the godmother smiled upon it for, +following Monroe's recommendation, Congress without hesitation voted +thirty thousand dollars for the preliminary survey from Washington +to Pittsburgh. Quickly the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company and the +connecting Maryland Canal Company were formed, and steps were taken to +have Ohio promote an Ohio and Lake Erie Company. + +As high as were the hopes awakened by this movement, just so deep was +the dejection and chagrin into which its advocates were thrown upon +receiving the report of the engineers who made the preliminary survey. +The estimated cost ran towards a quarter of a billion, four times the +capital stock of the company; and there were not lacking those who +pointed out that the Erie Canal had cost more than double the original +appropriation made for it. + +The situation was aggravated for Baltimore by the fact that Maryland and +Virginia were willing to take half a loaf if they could not get a whole +one: in other words, they were willing to build the canal up the Potomac +to Cumberland and stop there. Baltimore, even if linked to this partial +scheme, would lose her water connection with the West, the one prized +asset which the project had held out, and her Potomac Valley rivals +would, on this contracted plan, be in a particularly advantageous +position to surpass her. But the last blow was yet to come. Engineers +reported that a lateral canal connecting the Potomac and Chesapeake +Bay was not feasible. It was consequently of little moment whether the +Chesapeake and Ohio Canal could be built across the Alleghanies or not, +for, even if it could have been carried through the Great Plains or +to the Pacific, Baltimore was, for topographical reasons, out of the +running. + +The men of Baltimore now gave one of the most striking illustrations of +spirit and pluck ever exhibited by the people of any city. They refused +to accept defeat. If engineering science held a means of overcoming the +natural disadvantages of their position, they were determined to adopt +that means, come what would of hardship, difficulty, and expenditure. If +roads and canals would not serve the city on the Chesapeake, what of the +railroad on which so many experiments were being made in England? + +The idea of controlling the trade of the West by railroads was not new. +As early as February, 1825, certain astute Pennsylvanians had advocated +building a railroad to Pittsburgh instead of a canal, and in a memorial +to the Legislature they had set forth the theory that a railroad could +be built in one-third of the time and could be operated with one-third +of the number of employees required by a canal, that it would never +be frozen, and that its cost of construction would be less. But these +arguments did not influence the majority, who felt that to follow the +line of least resistance and to do as others had done would involve the +least hazard. But Baltimore, with her back against the wall, did not +have the alternative of a canal. It was a leap into the unknown for her +or commercial stagnation. + +It is regrettable that, as Baltimore began to break this fresh track, +she should have had political as well as physical and mechanical +obstacles to overcome. The conquest of the natural difficulties alone +required superhuman effort and endurance. But Baltimore had also to +fight a miserable internecine warfare in her own State, for Maryland +immediately subscribed half a million to the canal as well as to the +newly formed Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. In rival pageants, both +companies broke ground on July 4, 1828, and the race to the Ohio was +on. The canal company clung doggedly to the idle belief that their +enterprise was still of continental proportions, since it would connect +at Cumberland with the Cumberland Road. This exaggerated estimate of +the importance of the undertaking shines out in the pompous words of +President Mercer, at the time when construction was begun: + +"There are moments in the progress of time, which are counters of whole +ages. There are events, the monuments of which, surviving every other +memorial of human existence, eternize the nation to whose history they +belong, after all other vestiges of its glory have disappeared from the +globe. At such a moment have we now arrived." + +This oracular language lacks the simple but winning straightforwardness +of the words which Director Morris uttered on the same day near +Baltimore and which prove how distinctly Western the new railway project +was held to be: + +"We are about opening a channel through which the commerce of the mighty +country beyond the Allegheny must seek the ocean--we are about affording +facilities of intercourse between the East and West, which will bind +the one more closely to the other, beyond the power of an increased +population or sectional differences to disunite." + +The difficulties which faced the Baltimore enthusiasts in their task of +keeping their city "on the map" would have daunted men of less heroic +mold. Every conceivable trial and test which nature and machinery +could seemingly devise was a part of their day's work for twelve years +struggles with grades, locomotives, rails, cars. As Rumsey, Fitch, and +Fulton in their experiments with boats had floundered despondently with +endless chains, oars, paddles, duck's feet, so now Thomas and Brown +in their efforts to make the railroad effective wandered in a maze +of difficulties testing out such absurd and impossible ideas as cars +propelled by sails and cars operated by horse treadmills. By May, 1830, +however, cars on rails, running by "brigades" and drawn by horses, +were in operation in America. It was only in this year that in England +locomotives were used with any marked success on the Liverpool and +Manchester Railroad; yet in August of this year Peter Cooper's engine, +Tom Thumb, built in Baltimore in 1829, traversed the twelve miles +between that city and Ellicott's Mills in seventy-two minutes. Steel +springs came in 1832, together with car wheels of cylindrical and +conical section which made it easier to turn curves. + +The railroad was just beginning to master its mechanical problems when +a new obstacle confronted it in the Potomac Valley. It could not cross +Maryland to the Cumberland mountain gateway unless it could follow the +Potomac. But its rival, the canal, had inherited from the old Potomac +Company the only earthly asset it possessed of any value--the right of +way up the Maryland shore. Five years of quarreling now ensued, and the +contest, though it may not have seriously delayed either enterprise, +aroused much bitterness and involved the usual train of lawsuits and +injunctions. + +In 1833 the canal company yielded the railroad a right of way through +the Point of Rocks--the Potomac chasm through the Blue Ridge wall, just +below Harper's Ferry on condition that the railroad should not build +beyond Harper's Ferry until the canal was completed to Cumberland. But +probably nothing but the financial helplessness of the canal company +could have brought a solution satisfactory to all concerned. A +settlement of the long quarrel by compromise was the price paid for +state aid, and, in 1835 Maryland subsidized to a large degree both +canal and railroad by her famous eight million dollar bill. The railroad +received three millions from the State, and the city of Baltimore was +permitted to subscribe an equal amount of stock. With this support and a +free right of way, the railroad pushed on up the Potomac. Though delayed +by the financial disasters of 1837, in 1842 it was at Hancock; in 1851, +at Piedmont; in 1852, at Fairmont; and the next year it reached the Ohio +River at Wheeling. + +Spurred by the enterprise shown by these Southerners, Pennsylvania +and New York now took immediate steps to parallel their own canals by +railways. The line of the Union Canal in Pennsylvania was paralleled by +a railroad in 1834, the same year in which the Allegheny Portage +Railway was constructed. New York lines reached Buffalo in 1842. The +Pennsylvania Railroad, which was incorporated in 1846, was completed to +Pittsburgh in 1854. + +It is thus obvious that, with the completion of these lines and the +building of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway through the "Sapphire +Country" of the Southern Alleghanies, the new railway era pursued its +paths of conquest through the very same mountain passageways that +had been previously used by packhorseman and Conestoga and, in three +instances out of four, by the canal boat. If one motors today in the +Juniata Valley in Pennsylvania, he can survey near Newport a scene +full of meaning to one who has a taste for history. Traveling along the +heights on the highway that was once the red man's trail, he can enjoy +a wide prospect from this vantage point. Deep in the valley glitters +the little Juniata, route of the ancient canoe and the blundering barge. +Beside it lies a long lagoon, an abandoned portion of the Pennsylvania +Canal. Beside this again, as though some monster had passed leaving +a track clear of trees, stretches the right of way of the first +"Pennsylvania," and a little nearer swings the magnificent +double-tracked bed of the railroad of today. Between these lines of +travel may be read the history of the past two centuries of American +commerce, for the vital factors in the development of the nation have +been the evolution of transportation and its manifold and far-reaching +influence upon the expansion of population and commerce and upon the +rise of new industries. + +Thus all the rivals in the great contest for the trade of the West +speedily reached their goal, New York with the Erie and the New York +Central, and Pennsylvania and Maryland with the Pennsylvania and the +Baltimore and Ohio. But what of this West for whose commerce the great +struggle was being waged? When the railheads of these eager Atlantic +promoters were laid down at Buffalo on Lake Erie and at Pittsburgh on +the Ohio they looked out on a new world. The centaurs of the Western +rivers were no less things of the far past than the tinkling bells borne +by the ancient ponies of the pack-horse trade. The sons of this new +West had their eyes riveted on the commerce of the Great Lakes and the +Mississippi Valley. With road, canal, steamboat, and railway, they were +renewing the struggle of their fathers but for prizes greater than their +fathers ever knew. + +New York again proved the favored State. Her Mohawk pathway gave her +easiest access to the West and here, at her back door on the Niagara +frontier, lay her path by way of the Great Lakes to the North and the +Northwest. + + + +CHAPTER X. As one stands in imagination at the early railheads of +the West--on the Ohio River at the end of the Cumberland Road, or at +Buffalo, the terminus of the Erie Canal--the vision which Washington +caught breaks upon him and the dream of a nation made strong by +trans-Alleghany routes of commerce. Link by link the great interior is +being connected with the sea. Behind him all lines of transportation +lead eastward to the cities of the coast. Before him lies the giant +valley where the Father of Waters throws out his two splendid arms, the +Ohio and the Missouri, one reaching to the Alleghanies and the other to +the Rockies. Northward, at the end of the Erie Canal, lies the empire of +the Great Lakes, inland seas that wash the shores of a Northland having +a coastline longer than that of the Atlantic from Maine to Mexico. + +Ships and conditions of navigation were much the same on the lakes as on +the ocean. It was therefore possible to imagine the rise of a +coasting trade between Illinois and Ohio as profitable as that between +Massachusetts and New York. Yet the older colonies on the Atlantic had +an outlet for trade, whereas the Great Lakes had none for craft of any +size, since their northern shores lay beyond the international boundary. +If there had been danger from Spain in the Southwest, what of the danger +of Canada's control of the St. Lawrence River and of the trade of the +Northwest through the Welland Canal which was to join Lake Ontario to +Lake Erie? But in those days the possibility of Canadian rivalry was not +treated with great seriousness, and many men failed to see that the West +was soon to contain a very large population. The editor of a newspaper +at Munroe, New York, commenting in 1827 on a proposed canal to connect +Lake Erie with the Mississippi by way of the Ohio, believed that +the rate of Western development was such that this waterway could be +expected only "some hundred of years hence." Even so gifted a man as +Henry Clay spoke of the proposed canal between Lake Michigan and +Lake Superior in 1825 as one relating to a region beyond the pale of +civilization "if not in the moon." Yet in twenty-five years Michigan, +which had numbered one thousand inhabitants in 1812, had gained two +hundredfold, and Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois had their hundreds of +thousands who were clamoring for ways and means of sending their surplus +products to market. + +Early in the century representatives of the Fulton-Livingston monopoly +were at the shores of Lake Ontario to prove that their steamboats could +master the waves of the inland sea and serve commerce there as well +as in tidewater rivers. True, the luckless Ontario, built in 1817 at +Sackett's Harbor, proved unseaworthy when the waves lifted the shaft +of her paddle wheels off their bearings and caused them to demolish the +wooden covering built for their protection; but the Walk-in-the-Water, +completed at Black Rock (Buffalo) in August, 1818, plied successfully +as far as Mackinac Island until her destruction three years later. Her +engines were then inherited by the Superior of stronger build, and with +the launching of such boats as the Niagara, the Henry Clay, and the +Pioneer, the fleet builders of Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit proved +themselves not unworthy fellow-countrymen of the old seafarers of Salem +and Philadelphia. + +But how were cargoes to reach these vessels from the vast regions +beyond the Great Lakes? Those thousands of settlers who poured into the +Northwest had cargoes ready to fill every manner of craft in so short +a space of time that it seems as if they must have resorted to arts +of necromancy. It was not magic, however, but perseverance that had +triumphed. The story of the creating of the main lakeward-reaching +canals is long and involved. A period of agitation and campaigning +preceded every such undertaking; and when construction was once begun, +financial woes usually brought disappointing delays. When a canal was +completed after many vicissitudes and doubts, traffic overwhelmed every +method provided to handle it: locks proved altogether too small; boats +were inadequate; wharfs became congested; blockades which occurred at +locks entailed long delay. In the end only lines and double lines +of steel rails could solve the problem of rapid and adequate +transportation, but the story of the railroad builders is told +elsewhere. * + + + * See "The Railroad Builders," by John Moody (in "The Chronicles +of America"). + + +Ohio and Illinois caught the canal fever even before the Erie Canal +was completed, and the Ohio Canal and the Illinois-Michigan Canal +saw preliminary surveying done in 1822 and 1824 respectively. Ohio +particularly had cause to seek a northern outlet to Eastern markets by +way of Lake Erie. The valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami rivers +were producing wheat in large quantities as early as 1802, when Ohio was +admitted to the Union. Flour which brought $3.50 a barrel in Cincinnati +was worth $8 in New York. There were difficulties in the way of +transportation. Sometimes ice prevented produce and merchandise from +descending the Ohio to Cincinnati. At other times merchants of that city +had as many as a hundred thousand barrels awaiting a rise in the +river which would make it possible for boats to go over the falls at +Louisville. As these conditions involved a delay which often seemed +intolerable, the project to build canals to Lake Erie met with generous +acclaim. A northward route, though it might be blocked by ice for a +few months each winter, had an additional value in the eyes of numerous +merchants whose wheat, sent in bulk to New Orleans, had soured either +in the long delay at Louisville or in the semi-tropical heat of the +Southern port. + +The Ohio Legislature in 1822 authorized the survey of all possible +routes for canals which would give Ohio an outlet for its produce on +Lake Erie. The three wheat zones which have been mentioned were favored +in the proposed construction of two canals which, together, should +satisfy the need of increased transportation: the Ohio Canal to connect +Portsmouth on the Ohio River with Cleveland on Lake Erie and to traverse +the richest parts of the Scioto and Muskingum valleys, and to the west +the Miami Canal to pierce the fruitful Miami and Maumee valleys and join +Cincinnati with Toledo. De Witt Clinton, the presiding genius of the +Erie Canal, was invited to Ohio to play godfather to these northward +arteries which should ultimately swell the profits of the commission +merchants of New York City, and amid the cheers of thousands he lifted +the first spadefuls of earth in each undertaking. + +The Ohio Canal, which was opened in 1833, had a marked effect upon the +commerce of Lake Erie. Before that date the largest amount of wheat +obtained from Cleveland by a Buffalo firm had been a thousand bushels; +but in the first year of its operation the Ohio Canal brought to the +village of Cleveland over a quarter of a million bushels of wheat, fifty +thousand barrels of flour, and over a million pounds of butter and lard. +In return, the markets of the world sent into Ohio by canal in this same +year thirty thousand barrels of salt and above five million pounds of +general merchandise. + +Ever since the time when the Erie Canal was begun, Canadian statesmen +had been alive to the strong bid New York was making for the trade of +the Great Lakes. Their answer to the Erie Canal was the Welland Canal, +built between 1824 and 1832 and connecting Lake Erie with Lake Ontario +by a series of twenty-seven locks with a drop of three hundred feet in +twenty-six miles. This undertaking prepared the way for the subsequent +opening of the St. Lawrence canal system (183 miles) and of the Rideau +system by way of the Ottawa River (246 miles). There was thus provided +an ocean outlet to the north, although it was not until 1856 that an +American vessel reached London by way of the St. Lawrence. + +With the Hudson and the St. Lawrence in the East thus competing for +the trade of the Great Lakes, it is not surprising that the call of the +Mississippi for improved highways was presently heard. From the period +of the War of 1812 onward the position of the Mississippi River in +relation to Lake Michigan was often referred to as holding possibilities +of great importance in the development of Western commerce. Already the +old portage-path links between the Fox and Wisconsin and the Chicago +and Illinois rivers had been worn deep by the fur traders of many +generations, and with the dawning of the new era enthusiasts of Illinois +were pointing out the strategic position of the latter route for a great +trade between Lake Michigan and the Gulf of Mexico. Thus the wave of +enthusiasm for canal construction that had swept New York and Ohio now +reached Indiana and Illinois. Indian ownership of land in the latter +State for a moment seemed to block the promotion of the proposed +Illinois and Michigan Canal, but a handsome grant of a quarter of +a million acres by the Federal Government in 1827 came as a signal +recognition of the growing importance of the Northwest; and an +appropriation for the lighting and improving of the harbor of the little +village of Chicago was hailed by ardent promoters as sure proof that the +wedding of Lake Michigan and the Mississippi was but a matter of months. + +All the difficulties encountered by the advocates of earlier works of +this character, in the valleys of the Potomac, the Susquehanna, and the +Mohawk, were the portion of these dogged promoters of Illinois. Here, +as elsewhere, there were rival routes and methods of construction, +opposition of jealous sections not immediately benefited, estimates +which had to be reconsidered and augmented, and so on. The land grants +pledged to pay the bonds were at first of small value, and their advance +in price depended on the success of the canal itself, which could not +be built unless the State underwrote the whole enterprise--if the lands +were not worth the bonds. Thus the argument ran in a circle, and no one +could foresee the splendid traffic and receipts from tolls that would +result from the completed canal. + +The commissioners in charge of the project performed one interesting +service in these early days by putting Chicago on the map; but the two +terminals, Ottawa on the Illinois and Chicago on Lake Michigan--both +plotted in 1830--were very largely figures of speech at that time. The +day of miracles was at hand, however, for the little town of one hundred +people at the foot of Lake Michigan. The purchase of the lands of the +Potawatomies, the Black Hawk War in 1832, which brought steamboats to +Chicago for the first time, and the decision of Illinois in 1836 to +pledge her good name in favor of the Illinois and Michigan Canal made +Chicago a city of four thousand people by the panic year of 1837. So +absorbed were these Chicago folk in the building of their canal and +in wresting from their lake firm foothold for a city (reclaiming four +hundred feet of lake bed in two years) that the panic affected their +town less than it did many a rival. Although the canal enterprise came +to an ominous pause in 1842, after the expenditure of five millions, +the pledge of the State stood the enterprise in good stead. Local +financiers, together with New York and Boston promoters, advanced about +a quarter of a million, while French and English bankers, notably Baring +Brothers, contributed about three-quarters of a million. With this +assistance the work was carried to a successful ending. On April +10,1848, the first boat passed over the ninety-mile route from Chicago +to Ottawa, and the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Basin were united by +this Erie Canal of the West. Though its days of greatest value were +soon over, no one can exaggerate the importance of this waterway in the +growth and prosperity of Chicago between 1848 and 1860. By 1857 Chicago +was sending north and south annually by boat over twenty million bushels +of wheat and corn. + +The awakening of the lands behind Lake Erie, Lake Huron, and Lake +Michigan brought forth innumerable demands for roads, canals, and +railways to the ports of Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Milwaukee, +and Chicago. There were actually hundreds of these enterprises +undertaken. The development of the land behind Lake Superior was +particularly spectacular and important, not only because of its general +effect on the industrial world but also because out of it came the St. +Mary's River Ship Canal. Nowhere in the zone of the Great Lakes has +any region produced such unexpected changes in American industrial and +commercial life as did the region of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota +contributory to Lake Superior. If, as the story goes, Benjamin Franklin +said, when he drew at Paris the international boundary line through +Lake Superior, that this was his greatest service to America, he did not +exaggerate. The line running north of Isle Royale and thence to the +Lake of the Woods gave the United States the lion's share of that great +inland seaboard and the inestimably rich deposits of copper and iron +that have revolutionized American industry. + +From earliest days rumors of deposits of bright copper in the land +behind Lake Superior had been reported by Indians to fur traders who +in turn had passed the story on to fur company agents and thus to the +outside world. As a result of her "Toledo War"--as her boundary dispute +was called--Michigan had reluctantly accepted the northern peninsula +lying between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan in lieu of the strip of +Ohio territory which she believed to be hers. If Michigan felt that she +had lost by this compromise, her state geologist, Douglass Houghton, +soon found a splendid jewel in the toad's head of defeat, for the report +of his survey of 1840 confirmed the story of the existence of large +copper deposits, and the first rush to El Dorado followed. Amid the +usual chaos, conflict, and failure incident to such stampedes, order and +system at last triumphed and the richest copper mines of the New World +were uncovered. Then came the unexpected finding of the mammoth iron-ore +beds by William A. Burt, inventor of the solar compass. The circumstance +of this discovery is of such national importance that a contemporary +description by a member of Burt's party which was surveying a line near +Marquette, Michigan, is worth quoting: + +"I shall never forget the excitement of the old gentleman when viewing +the changes of the variation. He kept changing his position to take +observations, all the time saying "How would they survey this country +without my compass" and "What could be done here without my compass." +At length the compassman called for us all to "come and see a variation +which will beat them all." As we looked at the instrument, to our +astonishment, the north end of the needle was traversing a few degrees +to the south west. Mr. Burt called out "Boys, look around and see what +you can find." We all left the line, some going to the east, some going +to the west, and all of us returned with specimens of iron ore." + +But it was not enough that this Aladdin's Land in the Northwest should +revolutionize the copper and steel industry of the world, for as soon +as the soil took to its bosom an enterprising race of agriculturists +it bade fair to play as equally important a part in the grain industry. +Copper and iron no less came out of the blue of this cold northern +region than did the mighty crops of Minnesota wheat, corn, and oats. +In the decade preceding the Civil War the export of wheat from Lake +Superior rose from fourteen hundred bushels to three and a quarter +millions of bushels, while in 1859 nearly seven million bushels of corn +and oats were sent out to the world. + +The commerce of Lake Superior could not await the building of a canal +around the foaming rapids of the St. Mary's River, its one outlet to the +lower lakes. In the decade following the discovery of copper and iron +more than a dozen ships, one even of as much as five hundred tons, were +hauled bodily across the portage between Lake Huron and Lake Superior. +The last link of navigation in the Great Lake system, however, was made +possible in 1852 by a grant by Congress of 750,000 acres of Michigan +land. Although only a mile in length, the work proved to be of unusual +difficulty since the pathway for the canal had to be blasted throughout +practically its whole length out of solid rock. It was completed in +1855, and the princely empire "in the moon" was in a position to make +its terms with the coal fields of Pennsylvania and to usher in the iron +age of transportation and construction. + +It is only in the light of this awakening of the lands around the Great +Lakes that one can see plainly the task which fell to the lot of the +successors of the frail Walk-in-the-Water and sturdier Superior of the +early twenties. For the first fifteen years the steamboat found +its mission in carrying the thousands of emigrants pouring into the +Northwest, a heterogeneous multitude which made the Lake Erie boats +seem, to one traveler at least, filled with "men, women and children, +beds, cradles, kettles, and frying pans." These craft were built after +the pattern of the Walk-in-the-Water--side-wheelers with a steering +wheel at the stern. No cabins or staterooms on deck were provided; and +amid such freight as the thriving young towns provided were to be found +the twenty or thirty cords of wood which the engines required as fuel. + +The second period of steamboating began with the opening of the Ohio +Canal and the Welland Canal about 1834 and extended another fifteen +years to the middle of the century, when it underwent a transformation +owing to the great development of Chicago, the completion of the +Illinois and Michigan and St. Mary's canals, and the new railways. +This second period was marked by the building of such steamers as the +Michigan, the Great Western, and the Illinois. These were the first +boats with an upper cabin and were looked upon with marked suspicion by +those best acquainted with the severe storms upon the Great Lakes. The +Michigan, of 475 tons, built by Oliver Newberry at Detroit in 1833, is +said to have been the first ship of this type. These boats proved their +seaworthiness and caused a revolution in the construction of lake craft. +Later in this period freight transportation saw an equally radical +advance with the building of the first propellers. The sloop-rigged +Vandalia, built by Sylvester Doolittle at Oswego on Lake Ontario in +1842, was the first of the propeller type and was soon followed by the +Hercules, the Samson, and the Detroit. + +One very great handicap in lake commerce up to this time had been the +lack of harbors. Detroit alone of the lake ports was distinctly favored +in this respect. The harbors of Buffalo, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and +Chicago were improved slowly, but it was not until the great Chicago +convention of 1846 that the nation's attention was focused on the needs +of Western rivers and harbors, and there dawned a new era of lighthouses +and buoys, breakwaters and piers, and dredged channels. Another handicap +to the volume of business which the lake boats handled in the period +just previous to the Civil War was the inadequacy of the feeders, the +roads, riverways, and canals. The Erie Canal was declared too small +almost before the cries of its virulent opponents had died away, and the +enlargement of its locks was soon undertaken. The same thing proved true +of the Ohio and Illinois canals. The failure of the Welland Canal was +similarly a very serious handicap. Although its locks were enlarged in +1841, it was found by 1850 that despite the improvements it could not +admit more than about one-third of the grain-carrying boats, while only +one in four of the new propellers could enter its locks. + +As late as the middle forties men did not in the least grasp the +commercial situation which now confronted the Northwest nor could they +foresee that the land behind the Great Lakes was about to deluge the +country with an output of produce and manufactures of which the roads, +canals, ships, wharfs, or warehouses in existence could handle not a +tenth part. They did not yet understand that--this trade was to become +national. It was well on in the forties before the Galena lead mines, +for instance, were given up as the terminal of the Illinois Central +Railroad and the main line was directed to Chicago. The middle of the +century was reached before the Lake Shore was considered at Cleveland or +Chicago as important commercially as the neighboring portage paths +which by the Ordinance of 1787 had been created "common highways forever +free." The idea of joining Buffalo, Cleveland, and Chicago with the +interior--an idea as old as the Indian trails thither--still dominated +men's minds even in the early part of the railroad epoch. Chicago +desired to be connected with Cairo, the ice-free port on the +Mississippi; and Cleveland was eager to be joined to Columbus and +Cincinnati. The enthusiastic railway promoters of Ohio, Indiana, and +Illinois drew splendid plans for uniting all parts of those States +by railway lines; but the strategic position of the cities on the +continental alignment from New York to the Pacific by way of South Pass +never came within their horizon. The ten million dollar Illinois scheme +did not even contemplate a railway running eastward from Chicago. But +the future of the commerce of the Great Lakes depended absolutely upon +this development. There was no hope of any canals being able to handle +the traffic of the mighty empire which was now awake and fully conscious +of its power. The solution lay in joining the cities to each other and +to the Atlantic world markets by iron rails running east and west. + +This railroad expansion is what makes the last decade before the Civil +War such a remarkable series of years in the West. In the half decade, +1850-55, the Baltimore and Ohio and Pennsylvania railways reached the +Ohio River; the links of the present Lake Shore system between Buffalo +and Chicago by way of Cleveland and Toledo were constructed; and the +Pennsylvania line was put through from Pittsburgh to Chicago. The +place of the lake country on the continental alignment and the imperial +situation of Chicago, and later of Omaha, came to be realized. The new +view transformed men's conceptions of every port on the Great Lakes in +the chain from Buffalo to Chicago. At a dozen southern ports on Ontario, +Erie, Huron, and Michigan, commerce now touched the swiftest and +most economical means of transcontinental traffic. This development +culminated in the miracle we call Chicago. In 1847 not a line of +rail entered the town; its population then numbered about twenty-five +thousand and its property valuation approximated seven millions. Ten +years later four thousand miles of railway connected with all four +points of the compass a city of nearly one hundred thousand people, and +property valuation had increased five hundred per cent. The growth of +Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit during this period was also phenomenal. + +When the crisis of 1861 came, the service performed by the +Walk-in-the-Water and her successors was seen in its true light. The +Great Lakes as avenues of migration had played a providential part in +filling a northern empire with a proud and loyal race; from farm and +factory regiment on regiment marched forth to fight for unity; from +fields without number produce to sustain a nation on trial poured forth +in abundance; enormous quantities of iron were at hand for the casting +of cannon and cannon balls; and, finally, pathways of water and steel +were in readiness in the nick of time to carry these resources where +they would count tremendously in the four long years of conflict. + + + +CHAPTER XI. The Steamboat And The West + +Two great fields of service lay open before those who were to achieve +by steam the mastery of the inland waterways. On the one hand the cotton +kingdom of the South, now demanding great stores of manufactured goods, +produce, and machinery, was waiting to be linked to the valleys and +industrial cities of the Middle West; and, on the other hand, along +those great eastward and westward rivers, the Ohio and Missouri, lay the +commerce of the prairies and the Great Plains. But before the steamboat +could serve the inland commerce of the West, it had to be constructed on +new lines. The craft brought from the seaboard were of too deep draft to +navigate shallow streams which ran through this more level country. + +The task of constructing a great inland river marine to play the dual +role of serving the cotton empire and of extending American migration +and commerce into the trans-Mississippi region was solved by Henry +Shreve when he built the Washington at Wheeling in 1816. Shreve was the +American John Hawkins. Hawkins, that sturdy old admiral of Elizabethan +days, took the English ship of his time, trimmed down the high stern +and poop decks, and cut away the deep-lying prow and stern, after the +fashion of our modern cup defenders, and in a day gave England the +key to sea mastery in the shape of a new ship that would take sail and +answer her rudder beyond anything the maritime world until then had +known. Shreve, like Hawkins, flagrantly ignoring the conventional wisdom +of his day and craft, built the Washington to sail on the water instead +of in it, doing away altogether with a hold and supplying an upper deck +in its place. + +To few inventors, indeed, does America owe a greater debt of thanks than +to this Ohio River shipbuilder. A dozen men were on the way to produce a +Clermont had Fulton failed; but Shreve had no rival in his plan to +build a flat-bottomed steamboat. The remarkable success of his design +is attested by the fact that in two decades the boats built on his model +outweighed in tonnage all the ships of the Atlantic seaboard and Great +Lakes combined. Immediately the Ohio became in effect the western +extension of the great national highway and opened an easy pathway +for immigration to the eastern as well as the western lands of the +Mississippi Basin. The story goes that an old phlegmatic negro watched +the approach of one of the first steamboats to the wharf of a Southern +city. Like many others, he had doubted the practicability of this +new-fangled Yankee notion. The boat, however, came and went with ease +and dispatch. The old negro was converted. "By golly," he shouted, +waving his cap, "the Mississippi's got her Massa now." + +The Mississippi had indeed found her master, but only by slow degrees +and after intervals of protracted rebellion did she succumb to that +master. Luckily, however, there was at hand an army of unusual men--the +"alligator-horses" of the flatboat era--upon whom the steamboat +could call with supreme confidence that they would not fail. Theodore +Roosevelt has said of the Western pioneers that they "had to be good and +strong--especially, strong." If these men upon whom the success of the +steamboat depended were not always good, they were beyond any doubt +behemoths in strength. + +The task before them, however, was a task worthy of Hercules. The great +river boldly fought its conquerors, asking and giving no quarter, biding +its time when opposed by the brave but crushing the fearful on sight. In +one respect alone could it be depended upon--it was never the same. It +is said to bring down annually four hundred million tons of mud, but +its eccentricity in deciding where to wash away and where to deposit its +load is still the despair of river pilots. The great river could destroy +islands and build new ones overnight with the nonchalance of a child +playing with clay. It could shorten itself thirty miles at a single +lunge. It could move inland towns to its banks and leave river towns far +inland. It transferred the town of Delta, for instance, from three miles +below Vicksburg to two miles above it. Men have gone to sleep in one +State and have wakened unharmed in another, because the river decided +in the night to alter the boundary line. In this way the village of +Hard Times, the original site of which was in Louisiana, found itself +eventually in Mississippi. Were La Salle to descend the river today by +the route he traversed two and a half centuries ago, he would follow dry +ground most of the way, for the river now lies practically everywhere +either to the right or left of its old course. + +If the Mississippi could perform such miracles upon its whole course +without a show of effort, what could it not do with the little winding +canal through its center called by pilots the "channel"? The flatboatmen +had laboriously acquired the art of piloting the commerce of the West +through this mazy, shifting channel, but as steamboats developed in +size and power the man at the wheel had to become almost a superman. He +needed to be. He must know the stage of water anywhere by a glance at +the river banks. He must guess correctly the amount of "fill" at the +head of dangerous chutes, detect bars "working down," distinguish +between bars and "sand reefs" or "wind reefs" or "bluff reefs" by night +as well as by day, avoid the" breaks" in the "graveyard" behind Goose +Island, navigate the Hat Island chutes, or find the "middle crossing" at +Hole-in-the-Wall. He must navigate his craft in fogs, in storms, in the +face of treacherous winds, on black nights, with thousands of dollars' +worth of cargo and hundreds of lives at stake. + +As the golfer knows each knoll and tuft of grass on his home links, so +the pilot learned his river by heart. Said one of these pilots to an +apprentice: + +"You see this has got to be learned.... A clear starlight night +throws such heavy shadows that if you didn't know the shape of a shore +perfectly you would claw away from every bunch of timber because you +would take the black shadow of it for a solid cape; and you see you +would be getting scared to death every fifteen minutes by the watch. You +would be fifty yards from shore all the time when you ought to be within +fifty feet of it. You can't see a snag in one of those shadows, but you +know exactly where it is, and the shape of the river tells you when you +are coming to it. Then there's your pitch-dark night; the river is +a very different shape on a pitch-dark night from what it is on a +starlight night. All shores seem to be straight lines, then, and mighty +dim ones, too; and you'd run them for straight lines only you know +better. You boldly drive your boat right into what seems to be a solid, +straight wall (you knowing very well that in reality there is a curve +there) and that wall falls back and makes way for you. Then there's your +gray mist. You take a night when there's one of these grisly, drizzly, +gray mists, and then there isn't any particular shape to a shore. A +gray mist would tangle the head of the oldest man that ever lived. Well, +then, different kinds of MOONLIGHT change the shape of the river in +different ways.... You only learn the shape of the river; and you learn +it with such absolute certainty that you can always steer by the shape +that's IN YOUR HEAD and never mind the one that's before your eyes." * + + + * Mark Twain, "Life on the Mississippi," pp. 103-04. + + +No wonder that the two hundred miles of the Mississippi from the mouth +of the Ohio to St. Louis in time contained the wrecks of two hundred +steamboats. + +The river trade reached its zenith between 1840 and 1860, in the two +decades previous to the Civil War, that period before the railroads +began to parallel the great rivers. It was a time which saw the rise +of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and Arkansas, and which +witnessed the spread of the cotton kingdom into the Southwest. The +story of King Cotton's conquest of the Mississippi South is best told in +statistics. In 1811, the year of the first voyage which the New Orleans +made down the Ohio River, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi exported +five million pounds of cotton. In 1834 these same States exported almost +two hundred million pounds of cotton. To take care of this crop and +to supply the cotton country, which was becoming wealthy, with the +necessaries and luxuries of life, more and more steamboats were needed. +The great shipyards situated, because of the proximity of suitable +timber, at St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Louisville became busy hives, not +since paralleled except by such centers of shipbuilding as Hog Island in +1917-18, during the time of the Great War. The steamboat tonnage of the +Mississippi Valley (exclusive of New Orleans) in the hustling forties +exceeded that of the Atlantic ports (exclusive of New York City) by +15,000 tons. The steamboat tonnage of New Orleans alone in 1843 was more +than double that of New York City. + +Those who, if the old story is true, ran in fear to the hills when the +little New Orleans went puffing down the Ohio, in 1811, would have been +doubly amazed at the splendid development in the art of boat building, +could they have seen the stately Sultana or Southern Belle of the +fifties sweep swiftly by. After a period of gaudy ornamentation +(1830-40) steamboat architecture settled down, as has that of Pullman +cars today, to sane and practical lines, and the boats gained in length +and strength, though they contained less weight of timber. The value +of one of the greater boats of this era would be about fifty thousand +dollars. When Captain Bixby made his celebrated night crossing at Hat +Island a quarter of a million dollars in ship and cargo would have been +the price of an error in judgment, according to Mark Twain, * a good +authority. + + + *Op. cit., p. 101 + + +The Yorktown, built in 1844 for the Ohio-Mississippi trade, was typical +of that epoch of inland commerce. Her length was 182 feet, breadth of +beam 31 feet, and the diameter of wheels 28 feet. Though her hold was 8 +feet in depth, yet she drew but 4 feet of water light and barely over +8 feet when loaded with 500 tons of freight. She had 4 boilers, 30 +feet long and 42 inches in diameter, double engines, and two 24-inch +cylinders. The stateroom cabin had come in with Captain Isaiah Sellers's +Prairie in 1836, the first boat with such luxuries ever seen in St. +Louis, according to Sellers. The Yorktown had 40 private cabins. It +is interesting to compare the Yorktown with The Queen of the West, the +giant British steamer built for the Falmouth-Calcutta trade in 1839. The +Queen of the West had a length of 310 feet, a beam of 31 feet, a draft +of 15 feet, and 16 private cabins. The building of this great vessel led +a writer in the New York American to say: "It would really seem that we +as a nation had no interest in this new application of steam power, or +no energy to appropriate it to our own use." The statement--written in +a day when the Mississippi steamboat tonnage exceeded that of the entire +British Empire--is one of the best examples of provincial ignorance +concerning the West. + +On these steamboats there was a multiplicity of arrangements and +equipments for preventing and for fighting fire. One of the innovations +on the new boats in this particular was the substitution of wire for the +combustible rope formerly used to control the tiller, so that even in +time of fire the pilot could "hold her nozzle agin' the bank." Much +of the great loss of life in steamboat fires had been due to the +tiller-ropes being burned and the boats becoming unmanageable. + +The arrival of the railroad at the head of the Ohio River in the early +fifties brought the East into an immediate touch with the Mississippi +Valley unknown before. But however bold railway engineers were in +the face of the ragged ranges of the Alleghanies, they could not then +outguess the tricks of the Ohio, the Mississippi, or the Missouri, +and railway promoters could not afford to take chances on having their +stations and tracks unexpectedly isolated, if not actually carried away, +by swirling, yellow floods. The Mississippi, too, had been known +at times to achieve a width of seventy miles, and tributaries have +overflowed their banks to a proportionate extent. It was several decades +ere the Ohio was paralleled by a railway, and the Mississippi for long +distances even today has not yet heard the shrill cry of the locomotive. +So the steamboat entered its heyday and encountered little competition. +Until the Civil War the rivers of the West remained the great arteries +of trade, carrying grain and merchandise of every description southward +and bringing back cotton, rice, and sugar. + +The rivalries of the great lines of packets established in these days +of the steamboat, however, equaled anything ever known in railway +competition, and, in the matter of fast time, became more spectacular +than anything of its kind in any line of transportation in our country. +With flags flying, boilers heated white with abundance of pine and +resin, and bold and skillful pilots at the steering wheels, no sport +of kings ever aroused the enthusiasm of hundreds of thousands to such a +pitch as did many of the old-time races northward from New Orleans. + +The J. M. White and her performances stand out conspicuously in the +annals of the river. Her builder, familiarly known to a generation of +rivermen as Billy King, deserves to rank with Henry Shreve. Commissioned +in 1844 to build the J. M. White for J. M. Converse of St. Louis, with +funds supplied by Robert Chouteau of that city, King proceeded to put +into effect the knowledge which he had derived from a close study of the +swells made by steamboats when under way. When the boat was being built +in the famous shipyards at Elizabeth, on the Monongahela, the wheel +beams were set twenty feet farther back than was customary. Converse was +struck with this unheard-of radicalism in design, and balked; King was a +man given to few words; he was resolved to throw convention to the winds +and trust his judgment; he refused to build the boat on other lines. +Converse felt compelled to let Chouteau pass on the question; in time +the laconic answer came: "Let King put the beams where he pleases." + +Thus the craft which Converse thought a monstrosity became known far and +wide for both its design and its speed. In 1844 the J. M. White made the +record of three days, twenty-three hours, and nine minutes between New +Orleans and St. Louis. * Of course the secret of Billy King's success +soon became known. He had placed his paddle wheels where they would bite +into the swell produced by every boat just under its engines. He had +transformed what had been a handicap into a positive asset. It is said +that he attempted to shield his prize against competition by destroying +the model of the J. M. White, as well as to have refused large offers to +build a boat that would beat her. But it is said also that an exhibition +model of the boat was a cherished possession of E. M. Stanton, Secretary +of War, and that it hung in his office during Lincoln's administration. + + + * This performance is illustrated by the following comparative +table showing the best records of later years between New Orleans and +St. Louis, a distance estimated in 1844 as 1300 miles but in 1870 as +1218 miles, owing to the action of the river in shortening its course. + + YEAR BOAT TIME + 1844 J. M. White 3 d. 23 h. 9 m. + 1849 Missouri 4 d. 19 h. -- + 1889 Dexter 4 d. 9 h. -- + 1870 Natchez 8 d. 21 h. 58 m. + 1870 R. E. Lee 3 d. 18 h. 14 m. + + +The steamboat now extended its service to the West and North. The +ancient fur trade with the Indians of the upper Mississippi, the +Missouri, and the Arkansas, had its headquarters at St. Louis, whence +the notable band of men engaged in that trade were reaching out to the +Rockies. The roll includes Ashley, Campbell, Sublette, Manuel Lisa, +Perkins, Hempstead, William Clark, Labadie, the Chouteaus, and +Menard--men of different races and colors and alike only in their +energy, bravery, and initiative. Through them the village of St. Louis +had grown to a population of four thousand in 1819, when Major Long's +expedition passed up the Missouri in the first steamboat to ascend that +river. This boat, the Western Engineer, was built at Pittsburgh and was +modeled cunningly for its work. It was one of the first stern wheelers +built in the West; and the saving in width meant much on streams having +such narrow channels as the Missouri and the Platte, especially when +barges were to be towed. Then, too, its machinery, which was covered +over or boarded up, was shrouded in mystery. A fantastic figure +representing a serpent's open mouth contained the exhaust pipe. If the +New Orleans alarmed the population of the Ohio Valley, the sensation +caused among the red children of the Missouri at the sight of this +gigantic snake belching fire and smoke must have thoroughly satisfied +the whim of its designer. + +The admission of Missouri to statehood and the independence of Mexico +mark the beginning of real commercial relations between St. Louis and +Santa Fe. In 1822 Captain William Becknell organized the first wagon +train which left the Missouri (at Franklin, near Independence) for +the long dangerous journey to the Arkansas and on to Santa Fe. In the +following year two expeditions set forth, carrying out cottons and other +drygoods to exchange for horses, mules, furs, and silver. + +Despite the handicaps of Indian opposition and Mexican tariffs, the +Santa Fe trade became an important factor in the growth of St. Louis and +the Missouri River steamboat lines. In 1825 the pathway was "surveyed" +from Franklin to San Fernando, then in Mexico. This Santa Fe trade grew +from fifteen thousand pounds of freight in 1822 to nearly half a million +pounds twenty years later. + +By 1826 steamboat traffic up the Missouri began to assume regularity. +The navigation was dangerous and difficult because the Missouri never +kept even an approximately constant head of water. In times of drought +it became very shallow, and in times of flood it tore its wayward course +open in any direction it chose. "Of all variable things in creation," +wrote a Western editor, "the most uncertain are the action of a jury, +the state of a woman's mind, and the condition of the Missouri River." A +further handicap, and one which was unknown on the Ohio and rare on the +Mississippi, was the lack of forests to supply the necessary fuel. The +Missouri, it is true, had its cottonwoods, but in a green state they +were poor fuel, and along vast stretches they were not obtainable in any +quantity. + +The steamboat linked St. Louis with that vital stretch of the river +lying between the mouth of the Kansas and the mouth of the Nebraska. +From this region the great Western trail ran on to California and +Oregon. In the early thirties Bonneville, Walker, Kelley, and Wyeth +successively essayed this Overland Trail by way of the Platte through +the South Pass of the Rockies to the Humboldt, Snake, and Columbia +rivers. From Independence on the Missouri this famous pathway led to +Fort Laramie, a distance of 672 miles; another 800-mile climb brought +the traveler through South Pass; and so, by way of Fort Bridger, Salt +Lake, and Sutter's Fort, to San Francisco. The route, well known by +hundreds of Oregon pioneers in the early forties, became a thoroughfare +in the eager days of the Forty-Niners. * + + + * For map see "The Passing of the Frontier," by Emerson Hough (in +"The Chronicles of America"). + + +The earliest overland stage line to Great Salt Lake was established by +Hockaday and Liggett. After the founding of the famous Overland Stage +Company by Russell, Majors, and Waddell in 1858, stages were soon +ascending the Platte from the steamboat terminals on the Missouri and +making the twelve hundred miles from St. Joseph to Salt Lake City in ten +days. Stations were established from ten to fifteen miles apart, and the +line was soon extended on to Sacramento. The nineteen hundred miles +from St. Joseph to Sacramento were made in fifteen days although the +government contract with the company for handling United States mail +allowed nineteen days. A host of employees was engaged in this exciting +but not very remunerative enterprise--station-agents and helpers, +drivers, conductors who had charge of passengers, in addition to mail +and express and road agents who acted as division superintendents. In +1862 the Overland Route was taken over by the renowned Ben Holliday, who +operated it until the railway was constructed seven years later. Freight +was hauled by the same company in wagons known as the "J. Murphy +wagons," which were made in St. Louis. These wagons went out from +Leavenworth loaded with six thousand pounds of freight each. A train +usually consisted of twenty-five wagons and was known, in the vernacular +of the plains, as a "bull-outfit"; the drivers were "bull-whackers"; and +the wagon master was the "bull-wagon boss." + +The old story, however, was repeated again here on the boundless plains +of the West. The Western trails streaming out from the terminus of +steamboat traffic between Kansas City and Omaha had scarcely time to +become well known before the railway conquerors of the Atlantic and +Great Lakes regions were planning the conquest of the greater plains +and the Rockies beyond. The opening of the Chinese ports in 1844 turned +men's minds as never before to the Pacific coast. The acquisition of +Oregon within a few years and of California at the close of the Mexican +War opened the way for a newspaper and congressional discussion as to +whether the first railway to parallel the Santa Fe or the Overland Trail +should run from Memphis, St. Louis, or Chicago. The building of the +Union Pacific from Omaha westward assured the future of that city, and +it was soon joined to Chicago and the East by several lines which were +building toward Clinton, Rock Island, and Burlington. + +But the construction of a few main lines of railway across the continent +could only partially satisfy the commercial needs of the West. True, the +overland trade was at once transferred to the railroad, but the enormous +equipment of stage and express companies previously employed in westward +overland trade was now devoted to joining the railway lines with the +vast regions to the north and the south. The rivers of the West could +not alone take care of this commerce and for many years these great +transportation companies went with their stages and their wagons into +the growing Dakota and Montana trade and opened up direct lines of +communication to the nearest railway. On the south the cattle industry +of Texas came northward into touch with the railways of Kansas. +Eventually lateral and trunk lines covered the West with their network +of lines and thus obliterated all rivalry and competition by providing +unmatched facilities for quick transportation. + +In the last days previous to the opening of the first transcontinental +railway line a unique method of rapid transportation for mail and light +parcels was established when the famous "Pony Express" line was put into +operation between St. Joseph and San Francisco in 1860. By relays of +horsemen, who carried pouches not exceeding twenty pounds in weight, +the time was cut to nine days. The innovation was the new wonder of +the world for the time being and led to an outburst on the part of +the enthusiastic editor of the St. Joseph Free Democrat that deserves +reading because it breathes so fully the Western spirit of exultant +conquest: + +"Take down your map and trace the footprints of our quadrupedantic +animal: From St. Joseph, on the Missouri, to San Francisco, on the +Golden Horn two thousand miles--more than half the distance across our +boundless continent; through Kansas, through Nebraska, by Fort Kearney, +along the Platte, by Fort Laramie, past the Buttes, over the Mountains, +through the narrow passes and along the steep defiles, Utah, Fort +Bridger, Salt Lake City, he witches Brigham with his swift pony-ship +through the valleys, along the grassy slopes, into the snow, into the +sand, faster than Thor's Thialfi, away they go, rider and horse--did +you see them? They are in California, leaping over its golden sands, +treading its busy streets. The courser has unrolled to us the great +American panorama, allowed us to glance at the home of one million +people, and has put a girdle around the earth in forty minutes. Verily +the riding is like the riding of Jehu, the son of Nimshi for he rideth +furiously. Take out your watch. We are eight days from New York, +eighteen from London. The race is to the swift." * + + + * Quoted in Inman's "The Great Salt Lake Trail," p. 171. + + +The lifetime of many and many a man has covered a period longer than +that interval of eighty-six years between 1783, when George Washington +had his vision of "the vast inland navigation of these United States," +and the year 1869, when the two divisions of the Union Pacific were +joined by a golden spike at Promontory Point in Utah. In point of time, +those eighty-six years are as nothing; in point of accomplishment, +they stand unparalleled. When Washington's horse splashed across the +Youghiogheny in October, 1784, the boundary lines of the United States +were guarded with all the jealousy and provincial selfishness of +European kingdoms. But overnight, so to sneak these limitations became +no more than mere geometrical expressions. "Pennamite," "Erie," and +"Toledo" wars between the States, suggesting a world of bitterness and +recrimination, are remembered today, if at all, only by the cartoonist +and the playwright. The ancient false pride in mock values, so cherished +in Europe, has quite departed from the provincial areas of the United +States, and Americans can fly in a day, unwittingly, through many +States. Problems that would have cost Europe blood are settled without +turmoil in the solemn cloisters of that American "international +tribunal," the Supreme Court, and they appear only as items of passing +interest in our newspapers. + +In unifying the nation the influence of the Supreme Court has been +priceless, for it has given to Americans, in place of the colonial or +provincial mind, a continental mind. But great is the debt of Americans +to the men who laid the foundations of interstate commerce. No antidote +served so well to counteract the poison of clannish rivalry as did +their enthusiasm and their constructive energy. These men, dreamers and +promoters, were building better than they knew. They thought to overcome +mountains, obliterate swamps, conquer stormy lakes, master great rivers +and endless plains; but, as their labors are judged today, the greater +service which these men rendered appears in its true light. They +stifled provincialism; they battered down Chinese Walls of prejudice and +separatism; they reduced the aimless rivalry of bickering provinces to +a businesslike common denominator; and, perhaps more than any class of +men, they made possible the wide-spreading and yet united Republic that +is honored and loved today. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + +The history of the early phase of American transportation is dealt +with in three general works. John Luther Ringwalt's "Development of +Transportation Systems in the United States" (1888) is a reliable +summary of the general subject at the time. Archer B. Hulbert's +"Historic Highways of America," 16 vols. (1902-1905), is a collection +of monographs of varying quality written with youthful enthusiasm by the +author, who traversed in good part the main pioneer roads and canals of +the eastern portion of the United States; Indian trails, portage paths, +the military roads of the Old French War period, the Ohio River as a +pathway of migration, the Cumberland Road, and three of the canals which +played a part in the western movement, form the subject of the more +valuable volumes. The temptation of a writer on transportation to wander +from his subject is illustrated in this work, as it is illustrated +afresh in Seymour Dunbar's "A History of Travel in America," 4 vols. +(1915). The reader will take great pleasure in this magnificently +illustrated work, which, in completer fashion than it has ever been +attempted, gives a readable running story of the whole subject for the +whole country, despite detours, which some will make around the many +pages devoted to Indian relations. + +For almost every phase of the general topic books, monographs, +pamphlets, and articles are to be found in the corners of any great +library, ranging in character from such productions as William +F. Ganong's "A Monograph of Historic Sites in the Province of New +Brunswick" ("Proceedings and Transactions" of the Royal Society of +Canada, Second Series, vol. V, 1899) which treats of early travel in New +England and Canada, or St. George L. Sioussat's "Highway Legislation +in Maryland and its Influence on the Economic Development of the State" +("Maryland Geological Survey," III, 1899) treating of colonial road +making and legislation thereon, or Elbert J. Benton's "The Wabash +Trade Route in the Development of the Old Northwest" ("Johns Hopkins +University Studies in Historical and Political Science," vol. XXI, 1903) +and Julius Winden's "The Influence of the Erie Canal upon the Population +along its Course" (University of Wisconsin, 1901), which treat of the +economic and political influence of the opening of inland water routes, +to volumes of a more popular character such as Francis W. Halsey's "The +Old New York Frontier" (1901), Frank H. Severance's "Old Trails on the +Niagara Frontier" (1903) for the North, and Charles A. Hanna's "The +Wilderness Trail", 2 vols. (1911), and Thomas Speed's "The Wilderness +Road" ("The Filson Club Publications," vol. II, 1886) for Pennsylvania, +Virginia, and Kentucky. The value of Hanna's work deserves special +mention. + +For the early phases of inland navigation John Pickell's "A New Chapter +in the Early Life of Washington" (1856), is an excellent work of the +old-fashioned type, while in Herbert B. Adams's "Maryland's Influence +upon Land Cessions to the United States" ("Johns Hopkins University +Studies in Historical and Political Science, Third Series," I, 1885) +a master-hand pays Washington his due for originating plans of +trans-Alleghany solidarity; this likewise is the theme of Archer +B. Hulbert's "Washington and the West" (1905) wherein is printed +Washington's "Diary of September, 1784," containing the first and +unexpurgated draft of his classic letter to Harrison of that year. The +publications of the various societies for internal improvement and state +boards of control and a few books, such as Turner Camac's "Facts and +Arguments Respecting the Great Utility of an Extensive Plan of Inland +Navigation in America" (1805), give the student distinct impressions of +the difficulties and the ideals of the first great American promoters +of inland commerce. Elkanah Watson's "History of the... Western Canals +in the State of New York" (1820), despite inaccuracies due to lapses of +memory, should be specially remarked. + +For the rise and progress of turnpike building one must remember W. +Kingsford's "History, Structure, and Statistics of Plank Roads" (1852), +a reliable book by a careful writer. The Cumberland (National) Road has +its political influence carefully adjudged by Jeremiah S. Young in "A +Political and Constitutional Study of the Cumberland Road" (1904), while +the social and personal side is interestingly treated in county history +style in Thomas B. Searight's "The Old Pike" (1894). Motorists will +appreciate Robert Bruce's "The National Road" (1916), handsomely +illustrated and containing forty-odd sectional maps. + +The best life of Fulton is H. W. Dickinson's "Robert Fulton, Engineer +and Artist: His Life and Works" (1913), while in Alice Crary Sutcliffe's +"Robert Fulton and the 'Clermont'" (1909), the more intimate picture +of a family biography is given. For the controversy concerning the +Fulton-Livingston monopoly, note W. A. Duer's "A Course of Lectures on +Constitutional Jurisprudence" and his pamphlets addressed to Cadwallader +D. Colden. The life of that stranger to success, the forlorn John Fitch, +was written sympathetically and after assiduous research by Thompson +Westcott in his "Life of John Fitch the Inventor of the Steamboat" +(1858). For the pamphlet war between Fitch and Rumsey see Allibone's +Dictionary. + +The Great Lakes have not been adequately treated. E. Channing and M. F. +Lansing's "The Story of the Great Lakes" (1909) is reliable but deals +very largely with the routine history covered by the works of Parkman. +J. O. Curwood's "The Great Lakes" (1909) is stereotyped in its scope but +has certain chapters of interest to students of commercial development, +as has also "The Story of the Great Lakes." The vast bulk of material of +value on the subject lies in the publications of the New York, Buffalo, +Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Chicago Historical Societies, whose +lists should be consulted. These publications also give much data on the +Mississippi River and western commercial development. S. L. Clemens's +"Life on the Mississippi" (in his "Writings," vol. IX,1869-1909) is +invaluable for its graphic pictures of steamboating in the heyday +of river traffic. A. B. Hulbert's "Waterways of Western Expansion" +("Historic Highways," vol. IX, 1903) and "The Ohio River" (1906) give +chapters on commerce and transportation. For the beginnings of traffic +into the Far West, H. Inman's "The Old Santa Fe Trail" (1897) and +"The Great Salt Lake Trail" (1914) may be consulted, together with +the publications of the various state historical societies of the +trans-Mississippi States. + +Various bibliographies on this general subject have been issued by the +Library of Congress. Seymour Dunbar gives a good bibliography in his +"A History of Travel in America," 4 vols. (1915). The student will find +quantities of material in books of travel, in which connection he would +do well to consult Solon J. Buck's "Travel and Description, 1765-1865" +("Illinois State Historical Library Collections," vol. IX, 1914). + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Paths of Inland Commerce, by Archer B. 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