MAILS AND MAIL LINES
The most important official function of the Cumberland Road was to
furnish means of transporting the United States mails. The strongest
constitutional argument of its advocates was the need of facilities for
transporting troops and mails. The clause in the constitution
authorizing the establishment of post roads was interpreted by them to
include any measure providing quick and safe transmission of the mails.
As has been seen, it was finally considered by many to include building
and operating railways with funds appropriated for the Cumberland Road.
The great mails of seventy-five years ago were operated on very much the
same principle on which mails are operated today. The Post Office
Department at Washington contracted with the great stage lines for the
transmission of the mails by yearly contracts, a given number of stages
with a given number of horses to be run at given intervals, to stop at
certain points, at a fixed yearly compensation, usually determined by
the custom of advertising for bids and accepting the lowest offered.
When the system of mailcoach lines reached its highest perfection, the
mails were handled as they are today. The great mails that passed over
the Cumberland Road were the Great Eastern and the Great Western mails
out of St. Louis and Washington. A thousand lesser mail lines connected
with the Cumberland Road at every step, principally those from
Cincinnati in Ohio, and from Pittsburg in Pennsylvania. There were
through and way mails, also mails which carried letters only, newspapers
going by separate stage. There was also an "Express Mail" corresponding
to the present "fast mail."
It is probably not realized what rapid time was made by the old-time
stage and express mails over the Cumberland Road to the Central West.
Even compared with the fast trains of today, the express mails of sixty
years ago, when conditions were favorable, made marvelous time. In 1837
the Post Office Department required, in the contract for carrying the
Great Western Express Mail from Washington over the Cumberland Road to
Columbus and St. Louis, that the following time be made:
Wheeling, Virginia 30 hours.
Columbus, Ohio 45-1/2 "
Indianapolis, Indiana 65-1/2 "
Vandalia, Illinois 85-1/2 "
St. Louis, Missouri 94 "
At the same time the ordinary mail-coaches, which also served as
passenger coaches, made very much slower time:
Wheeling, Virginia 2 days 11 hours.
Columbus, Ohio 3 " 16 "
Indianapolis, Indiana 6 " 20 "
Vandalia, Illinois 9 " 10 "
St. Louis, Missouri 10 " 4 "
Cities off the road were reached in the following time from Washington:
Cincinnati, Ohio 60 hours.
Frankfort, Kentucky 72 "
Louisville, Kentucky 78 "
Nashville, Tennessee 100 "
Huntsville, Alabama 115-1/2 "
The ordinary mail to these points made the following time:
Cincinnati, Ohio 4 days 18 hours.
Frankfort, Kentucky 6 " 18 "
Louisville, Kentucky 6 " 23 "
Nashville, Tennessee 8 " 16 "
Huntsville, Alabama 10 " 21 "
The Post Office Department had given its mail contracts to the steamship
lines in the east, when possible, from Boston to Portland and New York
to Albany. One mail route to the southern states, however, passed over
the Cumberland Road and down to Cincinnati, where it went on to
Louisville and the Mississippi ports by packet. The following time was
made by this Great Southern Mail from Louisville:
Nashville, Tennessee 21 hours.
Mobile, Alabama 80 "
New Orleans, Louisiana 105 "
The service rendered to the south and southwest by the Cumberland Road,
was not rendered to the northwest, as might have been expected. Chicago
and Detroit were difficult to bring into easy communication with the
east. Until the railway was completed from Albany to Buffalo, the mails
went very slowly to the northwest from New York. The stage line from
Buffalo to Cleveland and on west over the terrible Black Swamp road to
Detroit was one of the worst in the United States. When lake navigation
became closed, communication with northwestern Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin
and northern Indiana and Illinois was almost cut off. Had the stage
route followed that of the buffalo and Indian on the high ground
occupied by the Mahoning Indian trail from Pittsburg to Detroit, a far
more excellent service might have been at the disposal of the Post
Office Department. As it was, stagehorses floundered in the Black Swamp
with "mud up to the horses' bridles," where a half dozen mails were
often congested, and "six horses were barely sufficient to draw a
two-wheeled vehicle fifteen miles in three days."[65]
The old time-tables of the Cumberland Road make an interesting study.
One of the first of these published after the great stage lines were in
operation over the entire road and the southern branch to Cincinnati,
appeared early in the year 1833. By this schedule the Great Eastern Mail
left Washington daily at 7 P. M. and Baltimore at 9 P. M. and arrived in
Wheeling, on the Ohio River, in fifty-five hours. Leaving Wheeling at
4:30 A. M., it arrived in Columbus at five the morning following, and in
Cincinnati at the same hour the next morning, making forty-eight hours
from one point on the river to the other, much better time than any
packet could make. The Great Western Mail left Cincinnati daily at 2 P.
M. and reached Columbus at 1 P. M. on the day following. It left
Columbus at 1:30 P. M. and reached Wheeling at 2:30 P. M. the day
following, thence Washington in fifty-five hours.[66]
At times the mails on the Cumberland Road were greatly delayed, taxing
the patience of the public beyond endurance. The road itself was so well
built that rain had little effect upon it as a rule. In fact, delay of
the mails was more often due to inefficiency of the Post Office
Department, inefficiency of the stage line service, or failure of
contractors, than poor roads. Until a bridge was built across the Ohio
River at Wheeling, in 1836, mails often became congested, especially
when ice was running out. There were frequent derangements of cross and
way mails which affected seriously the efficiency of the service. The
vast number of connecting mails on the Cumberland Road made regularity
in transmission of cross mails confusing, especially if the through
mails were at all irregular.
To us living in the present age of telegraphic communication and the
ubiquitous daily paper, it may not occur that the mail stages of the
old days were the newsboys of the age, and that thousands looked to
their coming for the first word of news from distant portions of the
land. In times of war or political excitement the express mailstage and
its precious load of papers from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York,
was hailed as the latest editions of our newspapers are today. Thus it
must have been that a greater proportion of the population along the
Cumberland Road awaited with eager interest the coming of the stage in
the old days, than today await the arrival of the long mail trains from
the east.
Late in the 30's and in the 40's, when the mailstage system reached its
highest perfection, the mail and passenger service had been entirely
separated, special stages being constructed for hauling the former. As
early as 1837 the Post Office Department decreed that the mails, which
heretofore had always been held as of secondary consideration compared
with passengers, should be carried in specially arranged vehicles, into
which the postmaster should put them under lock and key not to be
opened until the next post office was reached. These stages were of two
kinds, designed to be operated upon routes where the mail ordinarily
comprised, respectively, a half and nearly a whole load. In the former,
room was left for six passengers, in the latter, for three. Including
newspapers with the regular mail, the later stages which ran westward
over the Cumberland Road rarely carried passengers. Indeed there was
little room for the guards who traveled with the driver to protect the
government property. Many old drivers of the "Boston Night Mail," or the
"New York Night Mail," or "Baltimore Mail," may yet be found along the
old road, who describe the immense loads which they carried westward
behind flying steeds. Such a factor in the mailstage business did the
newspapers become, that many contractors refused to carry them by
express mail, consigning them to the ordinary mails, thereby bringing
down upon themselves the frequent savage maledictions of a host of local
editors.[67]
Newspapers were, nevertheless, carried by express mailstages as far west
as Ohio in 1837, as is proved by a newspaper account of a robbery
committed on the Cumberland Road, the robbers holding up an express
mailstage and finding nothing in it but newspapers.[68]
The mails on the Cumberland Road were always in danger of being assailed
by robbers, especially on the mountainous portions of the road at night.
Though by dint of lash and ready revolver the doughty drivers usually
came off safely with their charge.