THE NATIONAL ROAD
The sea reaches inland almost to the northeast corner of the state of
Maryland. This long, wide arm of the ocean receives many rivers and
is known as Chesapeake bay. Near its north end is Baltimore, one of
the four great cities of our Atlantic coast. It is one hundred and
fifty miles from the open sea. If, instead of sailing up the bay, we
should turn toward the west, we could go up the Potomac river, which
is deep and wide. On our way we should pass Washington’s estates at
Mount Vernon, the old city of Alexandria, and the national capital,
Washington. We could not sail much farther because there are falls
in the Potomac which ships cannot pass. The Potomac runs so close to
Chesapeake bay that it is only forty miles from Washington across to
Baltimore.
Chesapeake bay is much like Delaware bay and the tidal Hudson river,
only it is larger than either. Baltimore is at a greater distance from
the open sea than Philadelphia is, and Philadelphia is farther inland
than New York, but each of these cities tried to get as much of the
western trade as it could.
The natural way for the men of Baltimore and Alexandria to go across
to the west was up the Potomac river and through its passes in the
mountains. But before they tried this they had settled much of the low,
flat land along the Potomac and about the Chesapeake in Virginia and
Maryland. This was often called “tide-water country,” because the beds
of the rivers are below sea level, and the streams are deep enough for
boats of some size.
[Illustration: FIG. 33. TOLLHOUSE WEST OF BROWNSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA]
When the land was first settled and the colonists found that they
could go almost everywhere by boat, they paid small heed to making
roads. They could visit their neighbors on other plantations and they
could load their tobacco and take it to market by the rivers. Many
plantations were beside rivers of such great depth that sailing vessels
bound for London could come up to the farmer’s wharf and get his crop
of tobacco.
In early days the members of the legislature were not always given
so much per mile to pay the stage fares between their homes and the
capital, but they were allowed the cost of hiring boats instead. Many
ferries were needed, and laws about them were made before rules were
laid down for bridges and roads. Several lawmakers at one time would
have been fined for their absence from the legislature of the colony
had they not been excused because there was no ferry to carry them over
the river which they would have had to cross.
Around Annapolis “rolling roads” were made. These were wide paths made
as smooth as possible, in order that large hogsheads of tobacco might
be rolled, each by two men, to the market in that old town.
After a time the lowlands of the coast region began to fill up and the
people were pushing westward, just as they did in Pennsylvania and New
York. No man had so great a part in this westward movement as the young
surveyor, George Washington. In 1748 he was sixteen years old, a tall,
strong lad, full of courage and energy. Lord William Fairfax, a rich
English gentleman who had settled in Virginia, had bought great tracts
of forest land up the Potomac behind the Blue Ridge mountains, and he
was eager to have them surveyed. Knowing that Washington had studied
surveying, Fairfax asked him to undertake the task. The boy consented;
he went beyond the Blue Ridge into the country along the Shenandoah,
camped in the woods, swam the rivers, toughened his muscles, learned
the ways of the red men, and three years later came back, a grown man,
ready for great things.
While Washington was getting his practice as a surveyor the Ohio
Company was formed to take up lands along the Ohio river, and to keep
the French from settling there. Lawrence, Washington’s elder brother,
was one of the chief men of this company. In 1753 Washington himself
went west to the Ohio river. Day by day the French were taking a firmer
hold of that country, and Dinwiddie, the old Scottish governor of
Virginia, looked about for some one to carry a warning letter to the
commander of one of their new forts. The messenger was also to keep his
eyes open and report what the French were doing on the upper waters of
the Ohio. He chose Washington, saying, “Faith, you’re a brave lad, and,
if you play your cards well, you shall have no cause to repent your
bargain.” Washington did not wait, but left on the day he received his
commission, late in October, 1753.
Christopher Gist, a famous frontiersman, was secured as guide, and we
can have no doubt that he and Washington formed a team, ready to meet
Frenchmen, red men, and the dangers of river and forest. They made up
their little party where the city of Cumberland, Maryland, now stands.
It is far up the Potomac, in the heart of the mountains,--a long way
beyond the Blue Ridge and the lands where Washington had been surveying.
At this place a large stream called Wills creek cuts through one of
the mountain ridges by a deep gorge and enters the Potomac. On a hill,
where these streams come together, was Fort Cumberland, the great
outpost of Virginia and Maryland. A fine church now stands on the
ground of the old fort, in the heart of the busy city of Cumberland.
This was the starting point for Washington’s expedition and for many
later ones into the western wilderness.
Washington made his dangerous journey with success. He brought back a
letter from the French commander, but of much greater value was the
story of all that he had seen. The colonists now knew just what they
would have to do to keep possession of the Ohio lands.
It was not long before Washington went again as commanding officer
of a small army, and in 1755 he served under General Braddock in the
famous battle which resulted in the defeat of the English and the
death of their general. Washington, as we know, brought off the troops
with honor to himself. In each of these expeditions something was done
toward cutting away the trees and grading a road from Fort Cumberland
to the head of the Ohio river at Pittsburg.
[Illustration: FIG. 34. MILESTONE ON THE LINE OF BRADDOCK’S ROAD, NEAR
FROSTBURG, MARYLAND]
On the line of Braddock’s road, a dozen miles west of Cumberland, is
a milestone, set up about a hundred and fifty years ago. A photograph
of it is shown above. It is a rough brown stone, standing in a pasture
half a mile outside the city of Frostburg, in western Maryland. The
stone was once taken away and broken, but it has since been set up
again and cemented into a base of concrete. The view shows how it has
been split up and down. On one side are directions, and on the other
are the words, “Our Country’s Rights We Will Defend.”
Braddock’s journey from Alexandria to Fort Duquesne was an
uncomfortable one, to say nothing of its disastrous end. He bought a
carriage to ride in, but the road was not suited to a coach, as were
the roads he knew in old England. Beyond Cumberland, especially, in
spite of all the work his men could do upon it, it was so bad that he
was forced to take Washington’s advice and change the baggage from
wagons to pack horses.
Gradually, as time went on, these rough paths were beaten down into
smoother thoroughfares. The same causes that led to the development of
the North were working also at the South. Along the Potomac, as in New
York and in Pennsylvania, the stream of colonial life flowed westward.
First the pioneers settled the lowlands around Chesapeake bay and along
the deep rivers; then as their strength and courage reached beyond
the mountains they found the forests and fertile soil behind the Blue
Ridge. Farther within the rugged highlands they built Fort Cumberland
and sent out discoverers and armies to the Ohio river. When the woods
were cleared and towns and states grew up on the Ohio, there was
frequent occasion to cross the mountains for trade, for travel, and to
reach the seat of government, which in 1801 was moved to Washington on
the Potomac.
[Illustration: FIG. 35. OLD ROAD HOUSE, BROWNSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA]
These glimpses of colonial journeys will help us to understand why
the National Road came to be built. About one hundred years ago the
government began to take a great interest in opening roads, especially
across the Appalachian mountains, to Ohio, Kentucky, and other parts
of the Mississippi valley. Washington, who died in 1799, had said
much about this work, for he not only wanted western trade to come to
Virginia instead of going to New Orleans, but he also felt that so long
as the mountains kept the East and the West apart we should never have
one common country, held together by friendly feelings.
The people of Baltimore, like those of New York and Philadelphia, were
eager to have the best road to the West, that their business might be
benefited. Not far from Baltimore is an old place called Joppa, and
several roads are still known as “Joppa roads.” The town is older than
Baltimore and was once the chief trading town in the northern part of
Maryland; but Baltimore was well situated on an arm of the great bay,
and by this time had gone far ahead of its old rival.
A number of good roads had been built in Maryland, among them a famous
one leading out westward to Frederick. This was in the direction
of Hagerstown, and still farther west was Cumberland. The United
States government decided to build a great road to Ohio, beginning
at Cumberland. To get the benefit of this, the men of Baltimore went
to work to push the Frederick pike westward to the beginning of the
National Road.
So it came about in 1811 that the first contracts were let for building
parts of the National Road. We remember that the Erie canal was not
started until six years later. The act of Congress which ordered
the making of the road provided that a strip four rods wide should
be cleared of trees, that it should be built up in the middle with
broken stone, gravel, or other material good for roads, and that all
steep slopes should be avoided. The road was opened to the public in
1818, one year after the Erie canal was begun. The original plan was
to make it seven hundred miles long, reaching from Cumberland to the
Mississippi river, but it was never carried out.
The Maryland roads, as we have seen, ran west from Baltimore and
Washington to Frederick, east of the Blue Ridge; to Hagerstown, in
the Great Valley; and to Cumberland, in the mountains. Cumberland is
a stirring town of about twenty thousand people, and with its great
business in coal, iron, and railroads it seems like a larger city.
Thence the National Road runs through the gap in Wills mountain
(Fig. 36) to Frostburg, a dozen miles west and fifteen hundred feet
higher. The road soon bears northward into Pennsylvania and crosses
the Monongahela river at Brownsville, about forty miles south of
Pittsburg. Coal is mined here, and boats were running in those early
days, as coal barges and steamboats run to-day, down to the great iron
city.
From Brownsville the pike leads over the hills and comes down to the
Ohio river at Wheeling, West Virginia. It then passes on through
Ohio, touching Columbus, the capital, on the way to Indiana and the
Mississippi.
We sometimes admire the cars marked with the sign of the United
States post office, which we see drawn by a swift locomotive at a
speed of sixty miles an hour; but when the government put its mail
coaches on the National Road from Washington to Wheeling, no doubt
they seemed quite as wonderful to the people of that time. And it
was only twenty-five years since the people of Utica had thought
it so remarkable that six letters had come to them in one mail!
Soon passenger coaches were rushing along at ten miles an hour, and
sometimes even faster. There were canvas-covered freight wagons, each
of which carried ten tons, had rear wheels ten feet high, and was drawn
by twelve horses. In those days life was full of stirring interest on
the National Road.
[Illustration: FIG. 36. CUMBERLAND AND THE GAP IN WILLS MOUNTAIN]
There were rates of toll for all sorts of animals and wagons. The toll
was higher for hogs than for sheep, and more was charged for cattle
than for hogs. If the wagons had very wide tires, no toll was demanded.
Drivers sometimes lied about the number of people in their stages,
so as to pay less toll. The stages were not owned by the drivers
but by companies, which bid for travelers and freight, as railways
do now. There were penalties for injuring milestones or defacing
bridges, showing that some people then were like some people now.
The companies had interesting names. There were the “Good Intent,”
“Ohio National Stage Lines,” the “Pilot,” “Pioneer,” “June Bug,” and
“Defiance.” Not one of them cared for mud or dust, for horses or men,
if only it could be the first to reach its destination. There must have
been dust enough, for twenty coaches with their many horses sometimes
followed one another in a close line.
[Illustration: FIG. 37. BRIDGE AND MONUMENT, NATIONAL ROAD, NEAR
WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA]
Henry Clay was one of the chief advocates of this road, and a monument
built in his honor may be seen near the bridge, shown in Fig. 37. It
is a few miles east of Wheeling. At Brownsville a small stream called
Dunlap’s creek flows into the Monongahela from the east. Over it is an
iron bridge on the line of the National Road. According to a story told
in Brownsville, Henry Clay was once overturned as he was riding through
the creek before the bridge was built. As he gathered himself up he
was heard to say, “Clay and mud shall not be mixed here again.” The
story goes that he went on immediately to Washington and got an order
for the building of the bridge.
Whether this be true or not, it is certain that he and many other
statesmen traveled over the National Road. They could not have private
cars, nor did they go in drawing-room coaches, as we can if we choose.
Anybody might chance to sit beside these men of national fame, as
day after day they rode through the valleys and over the mountains,
stopping at the wayside hotels for food and rest.
Some of the old hotels, tollhouses, and bridges, as they look to-day,
are shown in the illustrations in this chapter. The road itself was
long ago given up to the different states and counties through which it
runs, but it still tells to the traveler who goes over it many a story
of the life of a hundred years ago.