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arrival at New Orleans he was unable to find a ship sailing to
New York
Baily had intended to return to New York by sea, but on his
arrival at New Orleans he was unable to find a ship sailing to
New York. He therefore decided to proceed northward by way of the
long and dangerous Natchez Trace and the Tennessee Path. Though
few Europeans had made this laborious journey before 1800, the
Natchez Trace had been for many years the land route of thousands
of returning rivermen who had descended the Mississippi in
flatboat and barge. In practically all cases these men carried
with them the proceeds of their investment, and, as on every
thoroughfare in the world traveled by those returning from
market, so here, too, highwaymen and desperadoes, red and white,
built their lairs and lay in wait. Some of the most revolting
crimes of the American frontier were committed on these northward
pathways and their branches.

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is thus lamented there lay potent economic forces and a strong
commercial rivalry between different parts of the country
Behind this change from the older and more picturesque days which
is thus lamented there lay potent economic forces and a strong
commercial rivalry between different parts of the country. The
Atlantic States were all rivals of each other, reaching out by
one bold stroke after another across forest, mountain, and river
to the gigantic and fruitful West. Step after step the inevitable
conquest went on. Foremost in time marched the sturdy
pack-horsemen, blazing the way for the heavier forces quietly
biding their time in the rear–the Conestogas, the steamboat, the
canal boat, and, last and greatest of them all, the locomotive.

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of such epoch-making importance, for, although it may have in
some brief measure delayed Fulton”s adoption of paddle wheels, it
gave him an entry to the waters of New York
It is now evident why the alliance of Fulton with Livingston was
of such epoch-making importance, for, although it may have in
some brief measure delayed Fulton”s adoption of paddle wheels, it
gave him an entry to the waters of New York. Livingston and
Fulton thus supplemented each other; Livingston possessed a
monopoly and Fulton a correct estimate of the value of paddle
wheels and, secondly, of Boulton and Watt engines. It was a rare
combination destined to crown with success a long period of
effort and discouragement in the history of navigation.

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invention as Fulton
Livingston already had no little experience in the same field of
invention as Fulton. In 1798 he had obtained, for a period of
twenty years, the right to operate steamboats on all the waters
of the State of New York, a monopoly which had just lapsed owing
to the death of Fitch. In the same year Livingston had built a
steamboat which had made three miles an hour on the Hudson. He
had experimented with most of the models then in existence–
upright paddles at the side, endless-chain paddles, and stern
paddle wheels. Fulton was soon inspired to resume his efforts by
Livingston”s account of his own experiments and of recent
advances in England, where a steamboat had navigated the Thames
in 1801 and a year later the famous sternwheeler Charlotte Dundas
had towed boats of 140 tons” burden on the Forth and Clyde Canal
at the rate of five miles an hour. In this same year Fulton and
Livingston made successful experiments on the Seine.

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first ten miles of the road from its eastern terminus and were
completed in 18191
In April, 1811, the first contracts were let for building the
first ten miles of the road from its eastern terminus and were
completed in 18191. More contracts were let in 1812, 1813, and
1815. Even in those days of war when the drain on the national
treasury was excessive, over a quarter of a million dollars was
appropriated for the construction of the road. Onward it
crawled, through the beautiful Cumberland gateway of the Potomac,
to Big Savage and Little Savage Mountains, to Little Pine Run
(the first ‘Western’ water), to Red Hill (later called ‘Shades of
Death’ because of the gloomy forest growth), to high-flung Negro
Mountain at an elevation of 2325 feet, and thence on to the
Youghiogheny, historic Great Meadows, Braddock”s Grave, Laurel
Hill, Uniontown, and Brownsville, where it crossed the
Monongahela. Thence, on almost a straight line, it sped by way of
Washington to Wheeling. Its average cost was upwards of thirteen
thousand dollars a mile from the Potomac to the Ohio. The road
was used in 1817, and in another year the mail coaches of the
United States were running from Washington to Wheeling, West
Virginia. Within five years one of the five commission houses
doing business at Wheeling is said to have handled over a
thousand wagons carrying freight of nearly two tons each. The
Cumberland Road at once leaped into a position of leadership,
both in volume of commerce and in popularity, and held its own
for two famous decades. The pulse of the nation beat to the
steady throb of trade along its highway. Maryland at once
stretched out her eager arms, along stone roads, through
Frederick and Hagerstown to Cumberland, and thus formed a single
route from the Ohio to Baltimore. Great stagecoach and freight
lines were soon established, each patronizing its own stage house
or wagon stand in the thriving towns along the road. The
primitive box stage gave way to the oval or football type with
curved top and bottom, and this was displaced in turn by the more
practical Concord coach of national fame. The names of the
important stagecoach companies were quite as well known, a
century ago, as those of our great railways today. Chief among
them were the National, Good Intent, June Bug, and Pioneer lines.
The coaches, drawn by four and sometimes six horses, were usually
painted in brilliant colors and were named after eminent
statesmen. The drivers of these gay chariots were characters
quite as famous locally as the personages whose names were borne
by the coaches. Westover and his record of forty-five minutes for
the twenty miles between Uniontown and Brownsville, and ‘Red’
Bunting, with his drive of a hundred and thirty-one miles in
twelve hours with the declaration of war against Mexico, will be
long famous on the curving stretches of the Cumberland Road.

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and the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which ended
the earlier Indian wars of the Old Northwest and opened for
settlement the country beyond the Ohio, a great migration
followed into Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, and the commercial
activity of Pittsburgh rapidly increased
After Wayne”s victory at the battle of the Fallen Timber in 1794
and the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which ended
the earlier Indian wars of the Old Northwest and opened for
settlement the country beyond the Ohio, a great migration
followed into Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, and the commercial
activity of Pittsburgh rapidly increased. By 1800 a score of
profitable industries had arisen, and by 1803 the first bar-iron
foundry was, to quote the advertisement of its owner,
’sufficiently upheld by the hand of the Almighty’ to supply in
part the demand for iron and castings. Glass factories were
established, and ropewalks, sail lofts, boatyards, anchor
smithies, and brickyards, were soon ready to supply the rapidly
increasing demands of the infant cities and the countryside on
the lower Ohio. When the new century arrived the Pittsburgh
district had a population of upwards of two thousand.

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lasting conquest of the West by binding it to the seaboard with
chains of commerce
Washington”s second proposal was the achievement of a new and
lasting conquest of the West by binding it to the seaboard with
chains of commerce. He thus states his point: ‘No well informed
mind need be told that the flanks and rear of the United
territory 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 it together, by one indissoluble
bond–particularly
the middle States with the Country immediately back of them–for
what ties let me ask, should we have upon those people; and how
entirely unconnected should we be with them if the Spaniards on
their right or Great Britain on their left, instead of throwing
stumbling blocks in their way as they do now, should invite their
trade and seek alliances with them?’

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of subsequent events, an almost uncanny prescience
Some of the pictures in Washington”s vision reveal, in the light
of subsequent events, an almost uncanny prescience. He very
plainly prophesied the international rivalry for the trade of the
Great Lakes zone, embodied today in the Welland and the Erie
canals. He declared the possibility of navigating with oceangoing
vessels the tortuous two-thousand-mile channel of the Ohio and
the Mississippi River; and within sixteen years ships left the
Ohio, crossed the Atlantic, and sailed into the Mediterranean.
His description of a possible insurrection of a western community
might well have been written later; it might almost indeed have
made a page of his diary after he became President of the United
States and during the Whiskey Insurrection in western
Pennsylvania. He approved and encouraged Rumsey”s mechanical
invention for propelling boats against the stream, showing that
he had a glimpse of what was to follow after Fitch, Rumsey, and
Fulton should have overcome the mighty currents of the Hudson and
the Ohio with the steamboat”s paddle wheel. His proposal that
Congress should undertake a survey of western rivers for the
purpose of giving people at large a knowledge of their possible
importance as avenues of commerce was a forecast of the Lewis and
Clark expedition as well as of the policy of the Government today
for the improvement of the great inland rivers and harbors.

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building, for it had surveyed as early as 1762 the first lock
canal in America, from near Reading on the Schuylkill to
Middletown on the Susquehanna
Pennsylvania had been foremost among the colonies in canal
building, for it had surveyed as early as 1762 the first lock
canal in America, from near Reading on the Schuylkill to
Middletown on the Susquehanna. Work, however, had to be suspended
when Pontiac”s Rebellion threw the inland country into a panic.
But the enterprise of Maryland and Virginia in 1785 in developing
the Potomac aroused the Pennsylvanians to renewed activity. The
Society for Promoting the Improvement of Roads and Inland
Navigation set forth a programme that was as broad as the
Keystone State itself. Their ultimate object was to capture the
trade of the Great Lakes. ‘If we turn our view,’ read the
memorial which the Society presented to the Legislature, ‘to the
immense territories connected with the Ohio and Mississippi
waters, and bordering on the Great Lakes, it will appear…
that our communication with those vast countries (considering
Fort Pitt as the port of entrance upon them) is as easy and may
be rendered as cheap, as to any other port on the Atlantic tide
waters.’

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had acquired an asset of the greatest value–a right of way up
the strategic Potomac Valley; and it had furnished an object
lesson to men in other States who were struggling with a similar
problem
The Potomac Company nevertheless had accomplished something: it
had acquired an asset of the greatest value–a right of way up
the strategic Potomac Valley; and it had furnished an object
lesson to men in other States who were struggling with a similar
problem. When, as will soon be apparent, New York men undertook
the improvement of the Mohawk waterway there was no pattern of
canal construction for them to follow in America except the
inadequate wooden locks erected along the Potomac. It is
interesting to know that Elkanah Watson, prominent in inland
navigation to the North, went down from New York in order to
study these wooden locks and that New Yorkers adopted them as
models, though they changed the material to brick and finally to
stone.

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