CHAPTER XI_The Paths of Inland Commerce; A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway

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

rôle 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. ¹

¹ 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, ¹ a good

authority.

¹ 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

out-guess 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. ¹ 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.

¹ 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. --

1869 Dexter 4 d. 9 h. --

1870 Natchez 3 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 Fé. 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 Fé. 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 Fé 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 Fé 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 300-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. ¹

¹ 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 Fé 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. ¹

¹ 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 speak, 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 Fé 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).

INDEX

Adams, J. Q., and internal improvements, 145.

Albany, Old Bay Path to, 16; road to Baltimore, 58; Clermont's voyage

to, 113.

Alexandria (Va.), rival of New York City, 137.

Alleghanies, pathways across, 17-19, 116 et seq.

Allegheny Portage Railway, 151.

American, New York, quoted, 182.

Appalachian Mountains, pathways across, 15-21.

Arkansas, influence of river trade on, 180.

"Army" plan of occupying West, 4.

Ashley, fur trader, 186.

Audubon, J. J., description of barge journey, 72-73.

Baily, Francis, journey in United States (1796-97), 81-98; quoted,

90-91.

Balcony Falls, trail between James and Great Kanawha Rivers at, 19.

Baltimore, road to Albany, 58; part in transportation development,

136-137, 143-151.

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 153; Washington's vision realized by, 10;

follows old trail, 18, 29; state appropriation, 148; contest with canal

company, 150-151; reaches Ohio, 151, 171.

Baltimore-Frederick Turnpike, 59.

Baltimore-Reisterstown Turnpike, 58-59, 143.

Baring Brothers contribute to canal work, 163.

Bay Path, see Old Bay Path.

Becknell, Captain William, organizes first wagon train for Sante Fé,

187.

Bedford, Fort, established, 50.

Bixby, Captain, at Hat Island, 181.

Black Hawk War (1832), 162.

Bonneville, Captain B. L. E., on Overland Trail, 189.

"Bonnyclabber Country," 86, 87.

Boone, Daniel, 19.

Bouquet, Colonel Henry, criticizes Washington, 50.

Boston and Albany Railroad, 13, 16.

Boulton and Watt of Birmingham, Fulton uses engine of, 110, 113.

Braddock's Road, 51.

Brissot, French traveler in America, 81, 83.

Broad River, trail on, 19.

Brown, Charles, builds hull of Clermont, 113.

Brown, George, and Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 149.

Brownsville (Penn.) growth of, 26.

Bryan, Guy, of Philadelphia, 66.

Buffalo, demand for means of transportation, 164, 170; harbor

improvement, 169; growth, 172.

Buffalo-Utica Canal, 124; see also Erie Canal.

Bunting, "Red," stagecoach driver, 123.

Burt, W. A., discovers iron ore in Michigan, 165-166.

Calhoun, J. C., and internal improvements, 145.

California, western trail to, 188; acquisition of, 191.

Campbell, fur trader, 186.

Canals, early projects, 37-38; inadequacy of, 157; in the West, 157 et

seq.; see also Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, Erie Canal, Welland Canal.

Catskill Turnpike, 16.

Céloron de Blainville sends English traders from Ohio country, 25-26.

Charleston (S. C.), trails to Tennessee from, 19.

Charleston (Wellsburg) made port of entry, 77.

Charlotte Dundas (steamboat), 109, 110.

Chastellux, Chevalier de, Washington's letter to, 6.

Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, Washington's vision realized in, 10; plan

for, 132, 143, 144; Company formed, 145; engineering difficulties, 146;

state subscription, 148; contest with Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,

150-151.

Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, 19; Washington's vision realized in, 10;

follows old route, 152.

Chicago, harbor improvement, 161, 169; canal terminal, 162; growth,

162-163, 172; demand for means of transportation, 164, 170; convention

discusses rivers and harbors (1846), 169; Illinois Central Railroad to,

170.

Chickasaw Trail, 97.

Chillicothe (O.), grant to Zane at, 47.

China, influence on West of opening ports, 191.

Chiswell, Fort, "Warrior's Path" from, 19.

Choctaw Trail, 97.

Chouteau, Robert, 184.

Cincinnati, founded, 68; ship-building, 76, 180; made port of entry, 77;