_Importance of the Cumberland Road.--Expected to be a Bond of
Union between East and West.--Roads of Former Days only Indian
Trails.--The Cumberland Road made between 1806 and 1840.--Promoted
by Gallatin and Clay.--Undertaken by Congress, 1802.--The
Road a Necessity for the Stream of Immigration after the
Revolution.--Open for Traffic to the Ohio, 1818.--Other Internal
Improvements now undertaken.--The first Macadamized Roads earlier
than this Cumberland Road.--The Great Cost of Macadamizing this
Road.--Disputes as to the Government's Constitutional Right to
build it.--Ohio demands that the Road be continued, according
to the Act admitting her to Statehood.--The Road's Progress
to Vandalia.--Unanimity of Western Members in Favor of the
Road.--Toll-gates are erected.--Lively Scenes on the Road in Old
Times.--Sums appropriated for it by Congress.--Why Henry Clay
championed the Undertaking._
HENRY CLAY: PROMOTER OF THE FIRST AMERICAN HIGHWAY
[Illustration]
IT may be said without fear of contradiction that the subject of the
Panama and Nicaragua canals has not received more popular attention
in this day and generation than our first and greatest national
highway--legally known as the Cumberland Road, from its starting
point--received in the first generation of the nineteenth century.
For it was clear to the blindest that the great empire west of the
Alleghanies, of which Washington dreamed and planned, where Zeisberger
labored and built the first home, and to which brave Henderson and
Putnam led their colonies of patriots, must soon be bound to the Union
by something stronger than Indian trails. France and England had
owned this West and lost it; could the little Republic born in the
fierce fires of 1775 hold what they--proud kingdoms--had lost? Could
it mock the European doctrine that, in time, mountains inevitably
become boundaries of empires? Those little States of which Berkeley
sang, placed by the hand of God as rebukes to lustful and universal
dominion--were they needed in the destinies of America? Such questions
were asked freely in those hard days which succeeded the Revolution.
Then the whole world looked upon the East and the West as realms as
distinct as Italy and France, and for the same geographical reason.
England and Spain had their vast "spheres of influence" marked out as
plainly in America then as Germany and France and Russia have theirs
marked in the China of to-day. Kentucky became a hotbed of foreign
emissaries, and the whirl of politics in that pivotal region a decade
after the Revolution will daunt even the student of modern Kentucky
politics. So patriotic and so faithful is that eastern West to-day that
it is difficult to believe by what a fragile thread it hung to the
trembling Republic on the Atlantic slope--"one nation to-day, thirteen
to-morrow"--in those black days when Wilkinson and Burr and even George
Rogers Clark "played fast and loose with conspiracy."
The Indian trails were the threads which first bound the East and the
West. Soon a large number of these threads were twisted, so to speak,
into a few cords--hard, rough pioneer roadways which wound in and out
among the great trees and morasses in the forest shades. Then came a
few great, well-built (for their day) roadways which meant as much
commercially and politically, in their age, as the steel hawsers which
in our time have bound and welded a great people so closely together.
The greatest of these old-time highways was that wide avenue opened
from Cumberland, Maryland, through Pennsylvania, the "Panhandle,"
and on across Ohio, between 1806 and 1840. It is popularly known as
the Old National Road; its legal name was the Cumberland Road. It
was the logical result of Washington's cherished plan of binding the
trans-Alleghany region firmly to the East. It was largely promoted
by Albert Gallatin, who in 1806 made a report, as Secretary of the
Treasury, strongly urging such works of internal improvement. But its
best friend and stanchest champion was Henry Clay; and beside it stands
to-day a monument to his memory near the little hamlet which bears his
name--Claysville, Pennsylvania.
[Illustration: HENRY CLAY
_Statesman and Abolitionist_]
This great road was born in the Act of Congress of 1802, which enabled
the State of Ohio to enter the Union. Section VII of that act decreed
that the money received from the sale of one-twentieth of the public
lands in Ohio should be applied to building roads from the navigable
waters of Atlantic streams to and within the new State "under
the authority of Congress." The matter was put in charge of the War
Department, and soon commissioners appointed by the President of the
United States were surveying a route for a national road from East to
West. The first government appropriation was dated 1806, and was thirty
thousand dollars.
Words cannot describe the intense wave of enthusiasm which swept over
the West when it was known that this mighty new power in Western life
was actually to come into existence. Our government never carried out a
more timely or popular measure, for it was as timely as it was popular.
When the Revolutionary War was over, a great stream of immigration
poured into the West, but the Indian War of 1790-95 severely checked
it. With the treaty of Greenville the great social movement again
began, and the War of 1812, in turn, again interfered to postpone the
genuine settlement of the old Northwest. This national road was begun
at Cumberland, Maryland, in 1811, and, even in the dark days of the
war, was slowly pushed along over the Alleghanies by way of Uniontown
and Washington, Pennsylvania, toward Wheeling on the Ohio River. When
the war was over it was nearing its destination, and in 1818 was open
for traffic to the Ohio.
If studied closely, the last three years of the second decade of the
nineteenth century are fascinating years to a student of our national
expansion. The beginning of successful steam navigation on the Ohio
and its tributaries, and the completion of the Cumberland National
Road to the Ohio, were largely responsible for this. Such impressive
material advances, coming at the time when both Great Britain and the
Indians had been effectually disposed of (so far as national growth
was concerned), gave enthusiasm to the eager spirit of the time.
Great deeds were proposed; great economic questions began to be faced
and fought out as never before. The many-sided question of internal
improvements, the beginning of the Erie Canal, the opening of the
Lehigh coal fields, the problem of applying the power of steam to
vehicles as well as vessels, the difficult problem solved later by
the Missouri Compromise, and the one involved in Birkbeck's English
Prairie settlement in Illinois, the problem of steam navigation on the
Great Lakes,--all these and many more like them were the topics of
the hour when this Cumberland Road, the first of all our great feats
of improvement, reached and then threw itself across the Ohio River.
Measured by the hopes it inspired and not by miles, judged by the power
it was expected to exert in national life and not by the ruins that now
mark its ancient track, this road from the Potomac to the Mississippi
must be considered a most significant monument to those wild but
splendid years when as a people we were first facing some of the most
fundamental questions of existence. There comes in every boy's life
a period when he shoots suddenly out and up to the stature of a man.
Young America sprang up like that in those momentous years.
Nearly a score of years before the Cumberland Road was built, the first
macadamized road in the United States, the Lancaster Turnpike, was
constructed by a private company between Philadelphia and Lancaster,
Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania had macadamized portions of her highway
across the mountains by way of Chambersburg and Bedford to Pittsburg.
But on no highway was the principle of macadamization carried so
far as on the Cumberland Road. The cost was found to be prodigious.
Between Cumberland, Maryland, and Uniontown, Pennsylvania, it was
$9745 per mile instead of $6000, which the commissioners estimated,
without bridging. Between Uniontown and Wheeling the cost ran up to
the startling average of about $13,000 per mile--within $800 of the
estimated cost per mile of the Erie Canal. Too liberal contracts
accounted, in part, at least, for this extravagance. The stones used
were reduced to four ounces each and spread in three layers, traffic
being permitted for a time over each layer in succession. No covering
was laid until these layers had become comparatively solid. Catch-water
drains, with a gradual curvature, were located at proper distances.
Several of the officers in charge of the work stand high in the
estimation of their countrymen. There was McKee, who fell at Buena
Vista, and Williams, who gave his life to his country at Monterey;
there were Gratiot, Delafield, Bliss, Bartlett, Hartzell, Colquit,
Cass, Vance, Pickell; and there was Mansfield, who, as major-general,
fell at Antietam. Among the names in one of the surveying corps is
recorded that of Joseph E. Johnston.
This national road rested legally upon an interpretation of the
Constitution held by those who favored internal improvement as a
means of investing the Government's surplus. A great plan had been
outlined in 1806 by Albert Gallatin, then Secretary of the Treasury.
The Constitution gives the Government the right to regulate post-roads
and the mails. This implied the right, the promoters of internal
improvement argued, to build roads, with the sanction of the States
through which such roads passed. There were those who opposed the
theory, and even from the very beginning there was strong opposition
by strict constructionists to the road appropriations. The very first
vote on the first appropriation was 66 to 50, showing that at the start
there was almost an even division on the legality of the question.
The opposition increased as greater and still greater sums were asked
of the Treasury each year. Three hundred thousand dollars was asked
in 1816, and more in 1818. In the next year the tremendous amount of
$535,000 was asked for and voted. It is little wonder that Congress
was staggered by the amount of money absorbed by this one road. What
if other national roads proposed--through the South and northward from
Washington to Buffalo--should demand equally large sums? It was easily
to be seen that the entire revenue of the Government could readily be
spent in filling up the bog-holes of American roads with limestone.
[Illustration: ALBERT GALLATIN
_Promoter of the Cumberland Road_]
Yet the policy of internal improvements was a popular one, advocated
by politicians and applauded by the people; and every year, despite
the same Constitutional arguments advanced, and though at times the
opposing forces had their way, the Cumberland Road bills came back for
reconsideration, and were at last passed.
But it finally appeared that the matter of getting the road repaired
when once it was built was a more serious question than the mere
building problem. Members of Congress who had been persuaded to give
their vote for the initial expense bolted outright on voting money
each year to extend the road farther westward and also repair the
portions already built. The matter was precipitated in 1822, when a
bill was presented to the House and Senate providing that toll-gates
be erected and that the Government should charge travellers for the
use of the road. The bill passed both branches of Congress, but it was
vetoed immediately by President Monroe on the ground that the national
Government could not collect toll unless, as sovereign, it owned the
ground that the road occupied. This was an interesting question, and
one of great importance, bringing as it did upon Congress an earnest
discussion bordering on the intricate problem of States Rights. Mr.
Clay urged that if the Government had a right to build the road it had
the right to preserve it from falling into decay. Of course there was
now, as always, a strong opposition to the road on the general ground
of Constitutionality; but those who were aware that their objections
to the road would be overruled by the majority, in any event, took the
consistent ground that if they could not prevent the enactments of laws
they could, by passing laws creating toll-gates, relieve the Government
at least from the expense of repairing the road.
As President Monroe, however, did not agree with or believe in the
original right to build the road, he was compelled to deny the
Government's right to charge toll on roads in the various States. He
outlined his conclusions and returned the bill vetoed.
A cry which shook the country went up from the West. In the act which
admitted Ohio to the Union, five per cent of money received from the
sale of lands was, as before noted, to be applied by the Government to
the building of roads to and in the West. Of this five per cent, three
was to be devoted to building roads within the State of Ohio, and two
per cent toward the expense of building a road from Atlantic tide-water
to Ohio, according to a supplementary law passed March 3, 1803. By
allowing the Cumberland Road to stop at Ohio's eastern boundary, the
Government was "breaking faith" with the West. This must not be, and
therefore in 1824 President Monroe found an excuse to sign another
Cumberland Road bill. The technicality honestly raised by Monroe was
against the spirit of the times and the genius of the age. Legal
technicalities were put aside, and the great road swept on westward;
it was ordered to be projected through the capitals of Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois to Jefferson, Missouri. It reached Columbus in 1833, and
Indianapolis about 1840. It was graded to Vandalia, then the capital
of Illinois, and marked out to Jefferson, Missouri, but was never
completed under national auspices.
It is to be observed that the Cumberland Road went forward largely
because of the compact between the State of Ohio and the national
Government. Knowing, as we now do, that the road was one of the most
important material items in our national growth, it must seem fortunate
from any point of view that the Ohio compact was made when and as it
was. By its terms the Government was to build a road with the money
accruing from a certain source. The originators of the compact seemed
to have no real knowledge of the questions at issue, either concerning
the amount of money needed for the purpose of building the road from
tide-water to the Ohio River, or of the amount that was likely to
accrue from the source indicated. What if the fund produced from the
sales of land was not sufficient to build the road? For some time the
appropriations were made on the theory that the money would eventually
come back into the treasury from the land sales; but it soon became
plain that there was not a hope left that even fifty per cent of the
amount expended would return from the expected source.
When this fact became patent, the friends of the road were put to
their utmost to maintain its cause; some interesting points were
raised that could not but weigh heavily with men of generous good
sense, such as this: surveys had been made outlining the course of
the road far in advance of the portion that was being actually built,
and some of the States were planning all their roads with reference
to this great Appian Way that was to be the main highway across the
continent. Large preparations had been made here and there along
the proposed route by those owning property, in the way of building
taverns and road houses, not to speak of villages that sprang up in a
night at points where it seemed certain the road would meet important
branch roads. Throughout the years when the Cumberland Road bills
were under discussion it is of particular interest to note how men
were influenced by the greater, more fundamental human arguments,
rather than by mere technical or legal points. Of course the Western
members were without a dissenting voice in favor of the road. And when
Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri were successively admitted to the
Union, a similar provision concerning the sale of public lands and
road-building was inserted as in the case of Ohio; and though it is
not clear that any one believed the source of income was equal to the
object to be benefited, yet the magnanimous legislation went on without
a pause through the twenties and into the thirties. In the Senate, for
instance, the opposition to the road bills could usually depend on two
solid votes from North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and New
York; and one vote, ordinarily, from Maine, Connecticut, New Jersey,
Delaware, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Alabama. On minor points other
votes could be temporarily secured, but on the main question there was
always a safe majority in favor of the enterprise. However, it is plain
the opposition to the road was sectional only in the sense that it
came from the States not to be directly benefited. Though two or more
New England votes could be depended upon in the Senate to be thrown
against a Cumberland Road bill, yet such a man as Edward Everett said
in an address at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1829: "The State of which
I am a citizen [Massachusetts] has already paid between one and two
thousand dollars toward the construction and repair of that road; and
I doubt not she is prepared to contribute her proportion toward its
extension to the place of its destination." But, it must be remembered,
Everett was one who caught as few others did the spirit of our genius
for expansion, the man who in 1835 uttered the marvellous words:
"Intercourse between the mighty interior West and the seacoast is the
great principle of our commercial prosperity."
If there is one practical lesson in all the peculiar history of the
one national road that America built (for the others proposed were
never constructed), it is with reference to the repairing of the road.
At first it seemed that the great question was merely to obtain funds
for the first cost of making the road. But it soon appeared that the
far greater question was to operate and repair the road; it was well
enough that the Government build the road, seemingly, but it was
early realized that a local power must control the road and see to
its repairs, or an enormous waste of public money would result. The
experience of those years brought home the lesson that the problem
of maintenance and operation is far more serious than the problem of
original cost.
The objection raised to the Government's erecting toll-gates and
collecting tolls, as implying sovereignty over the land occupied
by the road, was at last silenced by allowing each State through
which the road passed to accept it from the Government as fast as
it was completed, and to take charge of its operation and control.
Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio accepted completed
portions between 1831 and 1834. Toll-gates were immediately erected
by State authorities, and tolls collected. From her twelve toll-gates
Pennsylvania received over $37,000 in the twenty months following May
1, 1843. In the most prosperous year in Ohio, 1839, the treasurer of
that State received $62,496.10 from the National Road tolls. What per
cent received by toll-gate keepers was actually turned in cannot be
discussed, as those were the "good old days." Each toll-gate keeper, it
must be observed, retained two hundred dollars per annum as salary, and
five per cent of all receipts above one thousand dollars at this time.
This fast and loose system was the means of discovering some great
rascals. Between 1831 and 1877 Ohio received $1,139,795.30 from the
Cumberland Road in tolls.
These sober statistics give only a hint of those gay, picturesque
days when this highway was a teeming thoroughfare, lined with towns
of national importance that are now forgotten, and with thousands of
taverns and road-houses, even the foundation-stones of which have
vanished from the old-time sites. Great stagecoach lines operated here,
known as widely in their day as the railways are now, their proprietors
boasting over rival lines in points of speed, safety, and appointments.
The largest company on the Cumberland Road was the National Road
Stage Company, with headquarters at Uniontown, Pennsylvania. The Ohio
National Stage Company was the most important west of the Ohio River.
There were the "Good Intent" line, and the "Landlords," "Pioneer,"
"June Bug," and "Pilot" lines. Fine coaches bore names as aristocratic
as our Pullman cars do to-day. There were "trusts" and "combinations,"
quarrels and lawsuits, worthy of the pen of any sensational
magazine-writer or novelist.
The advertisement of an "opposition" stagecoach line of 1837 is of
interest on several accounts:
OPPOSITION!
DEFIANCE FAST LINE COACHES
DAILY
FROM WHEELING, VA., to Cincinnati, O., via Zanesville, Columbus,
Springfield, and intermediate points.
Through in less time than any other line.
"_By opposition the people are well served._"
The Defiance Fast Line connects at Wheeling, Va., with Reside &
Co.'s Two Superior daily lines to Baltimore, McNair and Co.'s
Mail Coach line, via Bedford, Chambersburg, and the Columbia
and Harrisburg Rail Roads to Philadelphia being the only direct
line from Wheeling--: also with the only coach line from Wheeling
to Pittsburg, via Washington, Pa., and with numerous cross lines
in Ohio.
The proprietors having been released on the 1st inst. from burthen of
carrying the great mail (which will retard any line), are now enabled
to run through in a shorter time than any other line on the road. They
will use every exertion to accommodate the travelling public. With
stock infinitely superior to any on the road, they flatter themselves
they will be able to give general satisfaction; and believe the public
are aware, from past experience, that a liberal patronage to the above
line will prevent impositions in high rates of fare by any stage
monopoly.
The proprietors of the Defiance Fast Line are making the necessary
arrangements to stock the Sandusky and Cleveland Routes also from
Springfield to Dayton--which will be done during the month of July.
All baggage and parcels only received at the risk of the owners thereof.
JNO. W. WEAVER & CO.,
GEO. W. MANYPENNY,
JNO. YONTZ,
_From Wheeling to Columbus, Ohio_.
JAMES H. BACON,
WILLIAM RIANHARD,
F. M. WRIGHT,
WILLIAM H. FIFE,
_From Columbus to Cincinnati_.
The Cumberland Road became instantly a great mail-route to Cincinnati
and St. Louis; from these points mails were forwarded by packets
to Louisville, Huntsville, Alabama, Nashville, Tennessee, and all
Mississippi points. Mails from Washington reached the West in 1837 as
follows:
Washington to Wheeling 30 hours
Washington to Columbus 45-1/2 hours
Washington to Indianapolis 65-1/2 hours
Washington to Vandalia 85-1/2 hours
Washington to St. Louis 94 hours
Nashville was reached from Louisville by packet in twenty-one hours,
Mobile in eighty hours, and New Orleans in one hundred and sixty-five
hours.
Some of the larger appropriations for the Cumberland Road were:
1813 $140,000
1816 300,000
1819 535,000
1830 215,000
1833 459,000
1834 750,000
1835 646,186
1836 600,000
1838 459,000
The total of thirty-four appropriations from March 29, 1806, to June
17, 1844, was $6,824,919.33.
The old road was well built; nothing proves this so well as the
following advertisement for bids for repairing it in Ohio in 1838:
"Sealed proposals will be received at Toll-gate No. 4, until the
6th day of March next, for repairing that part of the road lying
between the beginning of the 23rd and end of the 42nd mile, and if
suitable bids are obtained, and not otherwise, contracts will be
made at Bradshaw's hotel in Fairview, on the 8th. Those who desire
contracts are expected to attend in person, in order to sign their
bonds.
"On this part of the Road three hundred rods or upwards (82-1/2
cubic feet each) will be required on each mile, of the best
quality of limestone, broken evenly into blocks not exceeding four
ounces in weight each; and specimens of the material proposed must
be furnished, in quantity not less than six cubic inches, broken
and neatly put up in a box, and accompanying each bid; which will
be returned and taken as the standard, both as it regards the
quality of the material and the preparation of it at the time of
measurement and inspection.
"The following conditions will be mutually understood as entering
into, and forming a part of the contract, namely: The 23, 24, and
25 miles to be ready for measurement and inspection on the 25th
of July; the 26, 27, and 28 miles on the 1st of August; the 29,
30, and 31 miles on the 15th of August; the 32, 33, and 34 miles
on the 1st of September; the 35, 36, 37 miles on the 15th of
September; the 38, 39, and 40 miles on the 1st of October; and the
41 and 42 miles, if let, will be examined at the same time.
"Any failure to be ready for inspection at the time above
specified, will incur a penalty of five per cent for every two
days' delay, until the whole penalty shall amount to 25 per cent
on the contract paid. All the piles must be neatly put up for
measurement and no pile will be measured on this part of the work
containing less than five rods. Whenever a pile is placed upon
deceptive ground, whether discovered at the time of measurement or
afterward, half its contents shall in every case be forfeited for
the use of the road.
"Proposals will also be received at the American Hotel in
Columbus, on the 15th of March, for hauling broken materials from
the penitentiary east of Columbus. Bids are solicited on the 1,
2, and 3 miles counting from a point near the Toll-gate towards
the city. Bids will also be received at the same time and place,
for collecting and breaking all the old stone that lies along
the roadside, between Columbus and Kirkersville, neatly put in
piles of not less than two rods, and placed on the outside of the
ditches."
[Illustration: GENERAL ARTHUR ST. CLAIR
_Appointed Governor of Ohio by Congress_]
The dawning of the era of slackwater navigation and of the locomotive
brought the public to the realization, however, that a macadamized road
was not in 1838 all the wonder that it was thought to be in 1806. But
in its day the Cumberland Road was a tremendous power in opening a new
country, in giving hope to a brave but secluded people who had won and
held the West for the Union. This was why Henry Clay championed the
movement, and why he should be remembered therefor. As a Kentuckian he
knew the Western problem, and with the swiftness of genius he caught
the true intent and deeper meaning of a great national work such as the
building of such a material bond of union. Nothing has done so much for
civilization, after the alphabet and the printing press, Macaulay has
said, as the inventions which have abridged distance. In those years,
quick with hopes and vast with possibility at the opening of the
nineteenth century, the Cumberland Road, stretching its yellow coils
out across the Alleghanies and into the prairies, advanced civilization
as no other material object did or could have done. "If there is any
kind of advancement going on," wrote Bushnell, "if new ideas are abroad
and new hopes rising, then you will see it by the roads that are
building." This old road, worn out and almost forgotten, its milestones
tottering, its thousand taverns silent where once all was life and
merriment, is a great monument of days when advancement was a new word,
when great hopes were rising and great ideas were abroad. As such it
shall be remembered and honored as one of the greatest and most timely
acts of promotion our young Government executed.