THE CHAIN OF FEDERAL UNION
It is probable that, as early as 1753, after his return from his mission
to the French forts, George Washington first introduced the subject of
uniting the East and West by means of public highways. If England was to
hold the West she must have a passageway to it.
The project involved very great expense and Governor Dinwiddie paid
little heed to it. Had Virginia acted on the young Washington's
suggestion, how much life and treasure would have been saved! Braddock
could not but have been successful, and that would have made Forbes's
expedition needless, and perhaps Bouquet's also.
As it was, Braddock's twelve-foot road was almost her only communication
with the West. But Washington held to his boyhood dream of a highway
over the mountains. As the years passed, his plans matured gradually
with the unparalleled growth of the West. Being a broad-minded Virginian
of Virginians, he early conceived a picture of commercial grandeur, for
the Old Dominion, the colony holding a golden West in fee. This was to
be attained by building a highway over the mountains and connecting its
eastern and western termini with navigable water-ways, natural or, if
necessary, artificial. The building of the canals upon which the
commerce from and to both east and west was to be brought to the great
portage highway across the Alleghanies was the important _coup_ of his
plan, and to this he gave the best of his time and strength for many
years.
When he first became a member of the House of Burgesses, in 1759, the
subject of a highway connection between the East and the West was not
formally introduced. But to the members Washington recommended the
project as worthy of their consideration; he determined, before it
should be formally brought before the legislature of the colony for
definite action, to supply himself with all facts concerning the
practicability of the undertaking, the expense of the construction and
the advantages to accrue. His plan contemplated the improvement of the
navigation of the Potomac from tide-water to Fort Cumberland at the
mouth of Wills Creek, or, to the highest practical point of the Potomac,
and the building of a highway across the mountains to the nearest
navigable western rivers, Cheat, Youghiogheny, Monongahela, or Ohio.
The selection of the best route was of primary importance, and
Washington during his tours in the West studied carefully this question.
Maps plotted by surveying parties were examined and materially aided in
selecting the most advantageous communication. The colonies on the
Potomac, Virginia and Maryland, would especially profit by the
navigation of this river and the extension of the communication with the
West. Certain of Washington's letters to friends residing in Virginia
and Maryland with extracts of his journal, including descriptions of the
West, were published in the colonial _Gazettes_. The project was
received with curiosity and interest. When Washington made his western
tour in 1774, he was surprised to find the change that had taken place
in the valley of the Ohio. People, he affirmed, were immigrating "in
shoals!".
Believing now the time had come, Washington brought his plan of a grand
system of communication before the House of Burgesses at its session in
1774. It met with much opposition on the grounds of impracticability and
expense. Accordingly, Washington was forced to depart from his original
intention. He introduced and moved the adoption of a bill which
empowered individuals to subscribe toward such an enterprise and
construct a communication at their own expense. Even this met with
opposition, and, to appease the delegates from central Virginia, it was
found necessary to introduce an amendment to include the improvement of
the navigation of the James river.
In its amended form, the bill would probably have passed the House of
Burgesses. A similar bill was brought before the Assembly of Maryland,
though with discouraging prospects. Jealousies regarding western trade
already existed between the merchants of Baltimore and Georgetown, and
efforts made in favor of the bill by one party were opposed by the
other.
With matters in this doubtful condition, the Revolutionary War broke out
and as commander-in-chief of the army, Washington was called to
Cambridge. But he never forgot the dream of his youth and early manhood
and at the close of the war, again took up the enterprise. The dream of
the youth became the firm conviction of the man, and, next to his desire
for the independence of his country, the chief ambition of his life.
For, now, the project was of national importance--to bind the East and
the West with the iron bands of commercial intercourse and sympathy. A
new nation had been born, but it was divided by mountains, which, to
European eyes, seemed imperative boundaries of empire.
On the first day of September, 1784, Washington left his home for
another western tour. His purpose in making a western tour at this time
was, chiefly, to look after his land, but a secondary consideration was
to make a critical study of the summit range which intervened between
the headwaters of the Ohio and Potomac rivers.
Upon his return to Mt. Vernon he prepared an account of his
investigations, setting forth his arguments in behalf of this momentous
project. This report, together with a transcript of his journal, he
forwarded to the governor of Virginia. These words were added to the
report: "If you concur with me in the proposition I have suggested, and
it is adopted by the legislature, it will signalize your administration
as an important era in the history of this country."
A new, yet old, consideration made the building of a highway to the West
of utmost moment at this time. Now, as England found, in 1763, the trade
of the Central West was slipping away down the Mississippi into the
hands of Spaniards, and Washington was anticipating already a matter
which was to prove a perplexing problem to the nation before it was
solved. It is best treated in one of his letters to David Humphreys,
written July 25th, 1785: "I may be singular in my ideas, but they are
these: that, to open a door to, and make easy the way for, those
settlers to the westward (who ought to advance regularly and compactly)
before we make any stir about the navigation of the Mississippi, and
before our settlements are far advanced towards that river, would be our
true line of policy. It can, I think, be demonstrated that the produce
of the western territory (if the navigations which are in hand succeed,
of which I have no doubt), as low down the Ohio as the Great Kanawha,
and I believe to the Falls, and between the ports above the lakes, may
be brought either to the highest shipping port on the Potomac or James
rivers at a less expense, with more ease, including the return, and in a
much shorter time, than it can be carried to New Orleans, if the
Spaniards, instead of restrictions, were to throw open their ports and
invite our trade. But if the commerce of that country should embrace
this channel, and connections be formed, experience has taught us, and
there is a very recent proof with Great Britain, how next to
impracticable it is to divert it; and, if that should be the case, the
Atlantic States, especially as those to the westward, will in a great
degree be filled with foreigners, will be no more to the present Union,
except to excite perhaps very justly our fears, than the country of
California is, which is still more to the westward, and belonging to
another power."
To Henry Lee he wrote: "Open _all_ the communications which nature has
afforded, between the Atlantic States and the western territory, and
encourage the use of them to the utmost. In my judgment, it is a matter
of very serious concern to the well-being of the former, to make it the
interest of the latter to trade with them; without which the ties of
consanguinity, which are weakening every day, will soon be no bond, and
we shall be no more a few years hence, to the inhabitants of that
country, than the British and Spaniards are at this day; not so much,
indeed, because commercial connections, it is well known, lead to
others, and united are difficult to be broken." This view of the
dependence of the seaboard states on those of the Central West, held by
Washington, is as interesting as it was novel.
The bill authorizing the formation of a company to open the navigation
of the Potomac and James rivers passed the legislatures of Virginia and
Maryland. It is difficult for us to realize how canals were viewed a
century ago; how commercial prosperity seemed to depend upon their
building. Already Washington, in fancy, had covered the West with a
network of canals. As early as 1784, he wrote to Governor Harrison
urging a survey of the Ohio; he added: "Let the courses and distances be
taken to the mouth of the Muskingum and up that river to the carrying
place of the Cuyahoga; down the Cuyahoga to Lake Erie, and thence to
Detroit. Let them do the same with Big Beaver Creek and with the Scioto.
In a word, let the waters east and west of the Ohio which invite our
notice by their proximity, and by the ease with which land
transportation may be had between them and the lakes on the one side,
and the rivers Potomac and James on the other, be explored, accurately
delineated, and a correct and connected map of the whole be presented to
the public.... The object in my estimation is of vast commercial and
political importance."
Washington's laborious method of securing necessary information
concerning the West, and his earnestness in not omitting any phase of
the project are exemplified in a letter to Richard Butler, newly
appointed superintendent of Indian affairs, written in 1786: "As I am
anxious to learn the nature of the navigation of Beaver Creek, the
distance, and what kind of a portage there is between it and Cayahoga,
or any other nearer navigable water of Lake Erie, and the nature of the
navigation of the latter; and also the navigation of the Muskingum, the
distance and sort of portage across to the navigable waters of Cayahoga
or Sandusky, and the kind of navigation therein; you would do me an
acceptable favor to convey them to me, with the computed distances from
the River Ohio by each of these routes to the lake itself."
In a letter to Henry Lee Washington, again, he writes: "Till you get low
down the Ohio, I conceive, that, considering the length of the voyage to
New Orleans, the difficulty of the current, and the time necessary to
perform it in, it would be the interest of the inhabitants to bring
their produce to our ports; and sure I am there is no other tie by
which they will long form a link in the chain of federal union."
Washington's eagerness to gain every possible item of information
concerning methods of internal improvement is displayed in a letter to
Thomas Jefferson: "I was very much gratified ... by the receipt of your
letter ... for the satisfactory account of the canal of Languedoc. It
gives me great pleasure to be made acquainted with the particulars of
that stupendous work, though I do not expect to derive any but
speculative advantages from it." To the Marquis of Chastellux he wrote:
"I have lately made a tour through the Lakes George and Champlain as far
as Crown Point, then returning to Schenectady, I proceeded up the Mohawk
River to Fort Schuyler, crossed over the Wood Creek, which empties into
the Oneida Lake, and affords the water communication with Ontario. I
then traversed the country to the head of the eastern branch of the
Susquehannah, and viewed the lake Otsego, and the portage between that
lake and the Mohawk River at Canajoharie. Prompted by these actual
observations, I could not help taking a more contemplative and extensive
view of the vast inland navigation of the United States.... Would to God
we may have wisdom enough to improve them! I shall not rest contented
until I have explored the western country, and traversed those lines (or
a great part of them) which have given bounds to a new empire."
To William Irvine, Washington wrote in 1788: "The letter with which you
favored me ... inclosing a sketch of the waters near the line which
separates your State from that of New York, came duly to hand.... The
extensive inland navigation with which this country abounds and the easy
communications which many of the rivers afford with the amazing
territory to the west of us, will certainly be productive of infinite
advantage to the Atlantic States.... For my part, I wish sincerely that
every door to that country may be set wide open, that the commercial
intercourse may be rendered as free and as easy as possible. This, in my
judgment, is the best, if not the only cement that can bind those
people to us for any length of time; and we shall, I think, be deficient
in forethought and wisdom if we neglect the means to effect it.... If
the Chautauqua Lake, at the head of Conewango River, approximates Lake
Erie as nearly as is laid down in the draft you sent me, it presents a
very short portage indeed between the two, and an access to all those
above the latter."
"I need not remark to you, sir," Washington writes to Harrison, in
perhaps the most powerful appeal he ever made, "that the flanks and rear
of the United States 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 the Union together by indissoluble bonds, especially that part
of it which lies immediately west of us, with the Middle States. For
what ties, let me ask, should we have upon those people? How entirely
unconnected with them shall we be, and what troubles may we not
apprehend, if the Spaniards on their right, and Great Britain on their
left, instead of throwing stumbling blocks in their way, as they now do,
should hold out lures for their trade and alliance? What, when they get
strength, which will be sooner than most people conceive (from the
immigration of foreigners, who will have no particular predilection
towards us, as well as from the removal of our own citizens), will be
the consequence of their having formed close connections with both or
either of those powers in a commercial way, it needs not, in my opinion,
the gift of prophesy to foretell. The Western States (I speak now from
my own observation) stand as it were upon a pivot. The touch of a
feather would turn them any way. They have looked down the Mississippi
until the Spaniards, very impolitically, I think, for themselves, throw
difficulties in their way; and they looked that way for no other reason
than because they could glide gently down the stream, without
considering, perhaps, the difficulties of the voyage back again, and the
time necessary to perform it in; and because they have no other means of
coming to us but by long land transportations, and unimproved roads.
These causes have hitherto checked the industry of the present settlers;
for except the demand for provisions, occasioned by the increase of
population, and a little flour, which the necessities of the Spaniards
compel them to buy, they have no incitements to labor. But smooth the
road and make easy the way for them, and then see what an influx of
articles will be poured upon us; how amazingly our exports will be
increased by them, and how amply we shall be compensated for any trouble
and expense we may encounter to effect it.... It wants only a beginning.
The western inhabitants would do their part toward the execution. Weak
as they are, they would meet us at least half way, rather than be driven
into the arms of foreigners, or be dependent upon them."
The navigation of the Potomac was not easily secured and the Potomac
Company relinquished its charter in 1823 when the Chesapeake and Ohio
Canal Company was formed. Yet in only one generation after Washington's
death the important features of his great plan of internal
communications were realized. The Chesapeake and Ohio, Erie and Ohio
canals made the exact connections desired by Washington half a century
before, and with the very results he prophesied. To crown all, within
two years of Washington's death, the great highway across the mountains
for which he had pleaded for many years was assured, and for the next
half-century the first National Road in the United States fulfilled to
the letter Washington's fondest dream of welding more firmly "the chain
of federal union."
True to his declared conviction, that "the western inhabitants would do
their part," the creation of the first state beyond the Ohio, was
responsible for the building of this great road; and, also, true to
Washington's conviction, the commissioners appointed by President
Jefferson to determine the best course for the road, decided in favor of
Washington's old roadway from Fort Cumberland through Great Meadows to
the Monongahela and the Ohio, the course Washington always held to be
the one practical route to the West and which he had had surveyed at his
own expense.
For three score years Washington's and Braddock's roads answered all the
imperative needs of modern travel, though the journey over it, at most
seasons, was a rough experience. During the winter the road was
practically impassable. Colonel Brodhead, commanding at Fort Pitt during
the Revolutionary War, wrote Richard Peters: "The great Depth of Snow
upon the Alleghany and Laurel Hills have prevented our getting every
kind of Stores, nor do I expect to get any now until the latter End of
April."
But with the growing importance of Pittsburg, the subject of roads
received more and more attention. As early as 1769, a warrant was issued
for the survey of the Manor of Pittsburg, which embraced 5,766 acres. In
this warrant an allowance of six per cent was made for roads.[19] Six
years later, or the first year of the Revolutionary War, court met at
Pittsburg, and viewers were appointed to report on a large number of
roads, in the construction of which all males between the ages of
sixteen and forty-five, living within three miles of the road, were
required to work under the supervision of the commissioners. One of
these roads became, nearly half a century later, incorporated in the
Cumberland Road.
The licensing of taverns by Youghiogheny county in 1778, and of ferries
about the same time, indicate the opening and use of roads. Within ten
years, the post from New York to Pittsburg was established over the
treacherous mountain road. In 1794, the Pittsburg post-office was
established, with mails from Philadelphia once in two weeks.[20]
Through all these years a stream of pioneers had been flowing westward,
the current dividing at Fort Cumberland. Hundreds had wended their
tedious way over Braddock's Road to the Youghiogheny and passed down by
water to Kentucky, but thousands had journeyed south over Boone's
Wilderness Road, which had been blazed through Cumberland Gap in 1775.
All that was needed to turn the whole current toward the Ohio was a good
thoroughfare.
The thousands of people who had gone, by one way or another, into the
trans-Ohio country, soon demanded statehood. The creation of the state
of Ohio is directly responsible for the building of the Cumberland Road.
In an act passed by Congress April 30, 1802, to enable the people of
Ohio to form a state government and for admission into the Union,
section 7 contained this provision:
"That one-twentieth of the net proceeds of the lands lying within said
State sold by Congress shall be applied to the laying out and making
public roads leading from the navigable waters emptying into the
Atlantic, to the Ohio, to the said state, and through the same, such
roads to be laid out under the authority of Congress, with the consent
of the several states through which the roads shall pass."[21]
Another law, passed March 3rd of the following year, appropriated three
per cent of the five to laying out roads within the state of Ohio, and
the remaining two per cent for laying out and making roads from the
navigable waters, emptying into the Atlantic, to the river Ohio to the
said state.[22]
A committee, appointed to review the question, reported to the Senate
December 19, 1805. At that time, the sale of land from July, 1802, to
September 30, 1805, had amounted to $632,604.27, of which two per cent,
$12,652, was available for a road to Ohio. This sum was rapidly
increasing. Of the routes across the mountains, the committee studied
none of those north of Philadelphia, or south of Richmond. Between these
points five courses were considered:
1. Philadelphia--Ohio river
(between Steubenville and mouth of Grave creek) 314 miles.
2. Baltimore--Ohio river
(between Steubenville and mouth of Grave creek) 275 miles.
3. Washington--Ohio river
(between Steubenville and mouth of Grave creek) 275 miles.
4. Richmond 317 miles.
5. Baltimore--Brownsville 218 miles.
There were really but two courses to consider: Boone's Road and
Braddock's Road. The former led through a thinly populated part of the
country and did not answer the prescribed condition, that of striking
the Ohio at a point contiguous to the state of Ohio. Consequently, in
the report submitted by the committee we read as follows:
"Therefore the committee have thought it expedient to recommend the
laying out and making a road from Cumberland, on the northerly bank of
the Potomac, and within the state of Maryland, to the Ohio river, at the
most convenient place on the easterly bank of said river, opposite to
Steubenville, and the mouth of Grave Creek, which empties into said
river, Ohio, a little below Wheeling in Virginia. This route will meet
and accommodate roads from Baltimore and the District of Columbia; it
will cross the Monongahela at or near Brownsville, sometimes called
Redstone, where the advantages of boating can be taken, and from the
point where it will probably intersect the river Ohio, there are now
roads, or they can easily be made over feasible and proper ground, to
and through the principal population of the state of Ohio."[23]
Immediately the following act of Congress was passed:
_To Regulate the Laying out and Making a Road from Cumberland in
the State of Maryland, to the State of Ohio._
In the execution of this act President Jefferson appointed Thomas Moore
of Maryland, Joseph Kerr of Ohio, and Eli Williams of Maryland
commissioners to lay out the Cumberland Road. Their first report was
presented December 30, 1806. It is a document of great importance,
throwing, as it does, many interesting side lights on the great task
which confronted the builders of our first national highway.
Permission to build the road was gained of each of the states through
which it passed, Pennsylvania making the condition that the route of the
road should pass through the towns of Washington and Uniontown. On the
fifteenth of January, 1808, the commissioners rendered a second report
in which it appears that timber and brush had already been cleared from
the proposed route and that contracts were already let for the first ten
miles west of Cumberland. This indicates that the Cumberland Road was
not built on the bed of the old military routes. Though the two crossed
each other frequently, the commissioners reported that the two roadbeds
were not identical in the aggregate for more than one mile in the entire
distance.
Braddock's Road and the Cumberland Road were originally one as they left
Cumberland. The course met again at Little Meadows near Tomlinson's
Tavern and again at eastern foot of Negro Mountain. The courses were
identical at the Old Flenniken tavern, two miles west of Smithfield (Big
Crossing), and on summit of Laurel Hill, at which point Braddock's Road
swung off northwesterly toward Pittsburg, following the old buffalo
trail toward the junction of the Ohio and Allegheny, and the Cumberland
Road continued westward along the course of the old portage path toward
Wheeling on the Ohio.
Contracts for the first ten miles west of Cumberland were signed April
16 and May 11, 1811. They were completed in the following year.
Contracts were let in 1812, 1813, 1815. In 1817, contracts brought the
road to Uniontown. In the same year a contract was let from a point near
Washington to the Virginia line. In the following year United States
mail coaches were running from Washington, D. C., to Wheeling, and 1818
is considered the year of the opening of the road to the Ohio river.
The cost of the eastern division of the road was enormous. The
commissioners in their report to Congress estimated the cost at $6,000
per mile, not including bridges. The cost of the road from Cumberland to
Uniontown was $9,745 per mile. The cost of the entire division east of
the Ohio river was about $13,000 per mile. Too liberal contracts was
given as the reason for this greater proportional expense.
As early as the year 1822, it is recorded that a single one of the five
commission houses at Wheeling unloaded 1,081 wagons, averaging 3,500
pounds each, and paid for freightage of goods the sum of $90,000.
The subsequent history of this highway and all the vicissitudes through
which it has passed, has, in a measure, perhaps, dimmed the luster of
its early pride. The subject of transportation has undergone such
marvelous changes in these eighty years since the Cumberland Road was
opened, that we are apt to forget the strength of the patriotism which
made that road a reality. But compare it with the roadways built before
it to accomplish similar ends, and the greatness of the undertaking can
be appreciated.
Over the beginnings of great historical movements there often hangs a
cloud of obscurity. Over the heroic and persistent efforts of George
Washington, to make a feeble republic strong through unity, there is no
obscurity. America won the West from England as England had won it from
France--by conquest. Brave men were found who did what neither England
nor France did do, settle the wilderness and begin the transformation of
it. Large colonies of hardy men and women had gone into the Ohio valley,
carrying in their hands the blessed Ordinance and guided by the very
star of empire. Virginia had given the best of her sons and daughters to
the meadow land of _Ken-ta-kee_, who were destined to clinch the
republic's title to the Mississippi river. The Old Bay State had given
her best blood to found the Old Northwest, at historic Marietta. New
Jersey and Connecticut had sent their sons through vast wildernesses to
found Cincinnati and Cleveland, names which today suggest the best there
is in our American state. Without exaggeration, the building of the
binding highway, which, through so many years, Washington championed,
was the crowning act of all that had gone before. It embodied the prime
idea in the Ordinance of 1787, and proved, finally, that a republic of
loyal people could scorn the old European theory that mountains are
imperative boundaries of empire.
It was a question whether the expansion of the United States was to
conduce to national strength or national weakness. France and Germany
and Italy have expanded to the injury of national vitality, England and
the United States to its strengthening. The building of the Cumberland
Road was a means of securing the West to the United States as it was
never secured to France or England. The era of canals and national roads
and steam navigation brought the farthest West into living touch with
the East, and each contributed to the other's power and both were welded
into one nation. The population of the three states west of the Ohio
through which the Cumberland Road ran increased from 783,635 to
3,620,314 in the generation the road was in active use. The average
increase of percentage of permanent population for the first five
decades in these states was over 182 per decade. In the second decade of
the century Indiana's population increased over 500 per cent. This has
been equaled but three times in all the phenomenal "rushes" of recent
years into the western states. In all this making of "the young empire
of the West" the Cumberland Road had a preponderating influence.
This "Chain of Federal Union," forged, under God, by the hand of that
first American in the hot fires of revolution, strengthened wisely by
the same timely hand in those critical afterhours, has thrown its
imperial links, one by one, across a continent. Historic Washington's
Road, with all the wealth of history and tradition which attaches to it,
was the first and most important link.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Darlington's _Christopher Gist's Journals_, p. 67.
[2] A very curious, and possibly the only, view of these buildings in
existence will be found in an old "Map of Fort Cumberland," _Historic
Highways of America_, vol. iv.
[3] Toner's _Journal of Colonel George Washington, 1754_, p. 16.
[4] Toner's _Journal of Colonel George Washington, 1754_, p. 13.
[5] The private _Journal_ kept by Washington on the expedition of the
Virginia Regiment in 1754 was composed of rough notes only. It was lost
with other papers at the battle of Fort Necessity and was captured by
the French and sent to Paris. Two years later it was published by the
French government, after being thoroughly "edited" by a French censor.
It was titled "MEMOIRE _contenant le Precis des Faits, avec leurs Pieces
Justificatives, pour servir de Reponse aux_ OBSERVATIONS _envoyées, par
les Ministres d'Angleterre, dans les Cours de l'Europe. A Paris; de
l'Imprimerie Royale, 1756._"
In this MEMOIRE, together with portions of Washington's _Journal_ appear
papers, instructions, etc., captured at Braddock's defeat in 1755. Of
the portion of Washington's _Journal_ published, Washington himself
said: "I kept no regular one (Journal) during the Expedition; rough
notes of occurrences I certainly took, and find them as certainly and
strangely metamorphised, some parts left out which I remember were
entered, and many things added that never were thought of, the names of
men and things egregiously miscalled, and the whole of what I saw
Englished is very incorrect and nonsensical." The last entry on the
_Journal_ is on June 27th, six days previous to the battle of Fort
Necessity.
[6] Toner's _Journal of Colonel George Washington, 1754,_ pp. 43, 44.
[7] Toner's _Journal of Colonel George Washington, 1754,_ p. 65.
[8] Toner's _Journal of Colonel George Washington, 1754_, p. 63.
[9] Toner's _Journal of Colonel George Washington, 1754_, pp. 90-97.
[10] Toner's _Journal of Colonel George Washington, 1754_, p. 127.
[11] Toner's _Journal of Colonel George Washington, 1754_, p. 101.
[12] Toner's _Journal of Colonel George Washington, 1754_, pp. 157-158.
[13] _History of Cumberland_, p. 76.
[14] _The Monongahela of Old_, p. 53.
[15] _Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania_, vol. ii., p. 32.
[16] _Writings of Washington_ (1837), vol. i., p. 54.
[17] _Monongahela of Old_, pp. 52-53.
[18] _Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania_, vol. ii., p. 31.
[19] Craig's _History of Pittsburg_, p. 104.
[20] Craig's _History of Pittsburgh_, p. 226. It is interesting to note
that Pittsburg was on the direct mail route to Kentucky--Boone's old
route through Cumberland Gap not being a mail route.
[21] _United States Statutes at Large_, vol. ii., p. 173.
[22] _United States Statutes at Large_, vol. ii., p. 226.
[23] _Senate Reports_, 9th Cong., Sess., Rep., No. 195.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
2. Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been corrected.
3. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the main text body.
4. Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest
paragraph break.
5. Certain words use an oe ligature in the original.
6. Carat character (^) followed by a single letter or a set of letters
in curly brackets is indicative of subscript in the original book.