Historic Highways of America Volume X Part 2

"The following are the powers from which it is said to be derived: (1) From the right to establish post offices and post roads; (2) from the right to declare war; (3) to regulate commerce; (4) to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and the general welfare; (5) from the power to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution all the powers vested by the const.i.tution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof; (6) and lastly from the power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory and other property of the United States.

According to my judgment it cannot be derived from either of these powers, nor from all of them united, and in consequence it does not exist."[5]

During the early years of this century, the subject of internal improvements relative to the building of roads and ca.n.a.ls was one of the foremost political questions of the day. No sooner were the debts of the Revolutionary War paid, and a surplus acc.u.mulated, than a systematic improvement of the country was undertaken. The c.u.mberland Road was but one of several roads projected by the general Government. Through the administrations of Adams, Jefferson, and Madison large appropriations had been made for numerous improvements. The bill authorizing the levying of tolls was a step too far, as President Monroe held that it was one thing to make appropriations for public improvements, but an entirely different thing to a.s.sume jurisdiction and sovereignty over the land whereon those improvements were made. This was one of the great public questions in the first half of the present century. President Jackson's course was not very consistent. Before his election he voted for internal improvements, even advocating subscriptions by the Government to the stock of private ca.n.a.l companies, and the formation of roads beginning and ending within the limits of certain states. In his message at the opening of the first congress after his accession, he suggested the division of the surplus revenue among the states, as a subst.i.tute for the promotion of internal improvements by the general Government, attempting a limitation and distinction too difficult and important to be settled and acted upon on the judgment of one man, namely, the distinction between general and local objects.

"The pleas of the advocates of internal improvement," wrote a contemporary authority of high standing on economic questions, "are these: That very extensive public works, designed for the benefit of the whole Union, and carried through vast portions of its area, must be accomplished. That an object so essential ought not to be left at the mercy of such an accident as the cordial agreement of the requisite number of states, to carry such works forward to their completion; that the surplus funds accruing from the whole nation cannot be as well employed as in promoting works in which the whole nation will be benefited; and that as the interests of the majority have hitherto upheld Congress in the use of this power, it may be a.s.sumed to be the will of the majority that Congress should continue to exercise it.

"The answer is that it is inexpedient to put a vast and increasing patronage into the hands of the general Government; that only a very superficial knowledge can be looked for in members of Congress as to the necessity or value of works proposed to be inst.i.tuted in any parts of the states, from the impossibility or undesirableness of equalizing the amount of appropriation made to each; that useless works would be proposed from the spirit of compet.i.tion or individual interest; and that corruption, coextensive with the increase of power, would deprave the functions of the general Government.... To an impartial observer it appears that Congress has no const.i.tutional right to devote the public funds to internal improvements, at its own unrestricted will and pleasure; that the permitted usurpation of the power for so long a time indicates that some degree of such power in the hands of the general Government is desirable and necessary; that such power should be granted through an amendment of the const.i.tution, by the methods therein provided; that, in the meantime, it is perilous that the instrument should be strained for the support of any function, however desirable its exercise may be.

"In case of the proposed addition being made to the const.i.tution, arrangements will, of course, be entered into for determining the principles by which general are to be distinguished from local objects or whether such distinction can, on any principle, be fixed; for testing the utility of proposed objects; for checking extravagant expenditure, jobbing, and corrupt patronage; in short, the powers of Congress will be specified, here as in other matters, by express permission and prohibition."[6]

In 1824, however, President Monroe found an excuse to sign a bill which was very similar to that vetoed in 1822, and the great road, whose fate had hung for two years in the balance, received needed appropriations.

The travel over the road in the first decade after its completion was heavy, and before a decade had pa.s.sed the roadbed was in wretched condition. It was the plan of the friends of the road, when they realized that no revenue could be raised by means of tolls by the Government, to have the road placed in a state of good repair by the Government and then turned over to the several states through which it pa.s.sed.[7]

The liberality of the government, at this juncture, in inst.i.tuting thorough repairs on the road, was an act worthy of the road's service and destiny.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHESTNUT RIDGE, PENNSYLVANIA]

In order to insure efficiency and permanency these repairs[8] were made on the Macadam system; that is to say, the pavement of the old road was entirely broken up, and the stones removed from the road; the bed was then raked smooth, and made nearly flat, having a rise of not more than three inches from the side to the center in a road thirty feet wide; the ditches on each side of the road, and the drains leading from them, were so constructed that the water could not stand at a higher level than eighteen inches below the lowest part of the surface of the road; and, in all cases, when it was practicable, the drains were adjusted in such manner as to lead the water entirely from the side ditches. The culverts were cleared out, and so adjusted as to allow the free pa.s.sage of all water that tended to cross the road.

Having thus formed the bed of the road, cleaned out the ditches and culverts, and adjusted the side drains, the stone was reduced to a size not exceeding four ounces in weight, was spread on with shovels, and raked smooth. The old material was used when it was of sufficient hardness, and no clay or sand was allowed to be mixed with the stone.

In replacing the covering of stone, it was found best to lay it on in layers of about three inches thick, admitting the travel for a short interval on each layer, and interposing such obstructions from time to time as would insure an equal travel over every portion of the road; care being taken to keep persons in constant attendance to rake the surface when it became uneven by the action of wheels of carriages. In those parts of the road, if any, where materials of good quality could not be obtained for the road in sufficient quant.i.ty to afford a course of six inches, new stone was procured to make up the deficiency to that thickness; but it was considered unnecessary, in any part, to put on a covering of more than nine inches. None but limestone, flint, or granite were used for the covering, if practicable; and no covering was placed upon the bed of the road till it had become well compacted and thoroughly dried. At proper intervals, on the slopes of hills, drains or paved catch-waters were made across the road, whenever the cost of constructing culverts rendered their use inexpedient. These catch-waters were made with a gradual curvature, so as to give no jolts to the wheels of carriages pa.s.sing over them; but whenever the expense justified the introduction of culverts, they were used in preference, and in all cases where the water crossed the road, either in catch-waters or through culverts, sufficient pavements and overfalls were constructed to provide against the possibility of the road or banks being washed away by it.

The masonry of the bridges, culverts, and side-walls was ordered to be repaired, whenever required, in a substantial manner, and care was taken that the mortar used was of good quality, without admixture of raw clay.

All the masonry was well pointed with hydraulic mortar, and in no case was the pointing allowed to be put on after the middle of October. All masonry finished after this time was well covered, and pointed early in the spring. Care was taken, also, to provide means for carrying off the water from the bases of walls, to prevent the action of frost on their foundations; and it was considered highly important that all foundations in masonry should be well pointed with hydraulic mortar to a depth of eighteen inches below the surface of the ground.

By the year 1818, travel over the first great road across the Allegheny Mountains into the Ohio Basin had begun.

CHAPTER II

BUILDING THE ROAD IN THE WEST

The tales of those who knew the road in the West and those who knew it in the East are much alike. It is probable that there was one important distinction--the pa.s.senger traffic of the road between the Potomac and Ohio, which gave life on that portion of the road a peculiar flavor, was doubtless not equaled on the western division.

For many years the center of western population was in the Ohio Valley, and good steamers were plying the Ohio when the c.u.mberland Road was first opened. Indeed the road was originally intended for the accommodation of the lower Ohio Valley.[9] Still, as the century grew old and the interior population became considerable, the Ohio division of the road became a crowded thoroughfare. An old stage-driver in eastern Ohio remembers when business was such that he and his companion Knights of Rein and Whip never went to bed for twenty nights, and more than a hundred teams might have been met in a score of miles.

When the road was built to Wheeling, its greatest mission was accomplished--the portage path across the mountains was completed to a point where river navigation was almost always available. And yet less than half of the road was finished. It now touched the eastern extremity of the great state whose public lands were being sold in order to pay for its building. Westward lay the growing states of Indiana and Illinois, a per cent of the sale of whose land had already been pledged to the road. Then came another moment when the great work paused and the original ambition of its friends was at hazard.

In 1820 Congress appropriated one hundred and forty-one thousand dollars for completing the road from Was.h.i.+ngton, Pennsylvania to Wheeling. In the same year ten thousand dollars was appropriated for laying out the road between Wheeling, Virginia and a point on the left bank of the Mississippi River, between St. Louis and the mouth of the Illinois River. For four years the fate of the road west of the Ohio hung in the balance, during which time the road was menaced by the specter of unconst.i.tutionality, already mentioned. But on the third day of March, 1825, a bill was pa.s.sed by Congress appropriating one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for building the road to Zanesville, Ohio, and the extension of the surveys to the permanent seat of government in Missouri, to pa.s.s by the seats of government of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.[10] Two years later, one hundred and seventy thousand dollars was appropriated to complete the road to Zanesville, Ohio, and in 1829 an additional appropriation for continuing it westward was made.[11]

It has been noted that the c.u.mberland Road from c.u.mberland to Wheeling was built on a general alignment of a former thoroughfare of the red men and the pioneers. So with much of the course west of the Ohio. Between Wheeling and Zanesville the c.u.mberland Road followed the course of the first road made through Ohio, that celebrated route marked out, by way of Lancaster and Chillicothe, to Kentucky, by Colonel Ebenezer Zane, and which bore the name of Zane's Trace. This first road built in Ohio was authorized by an act of Congress pa.s.sed May 17, 1796.[12] This route through Ohio was a well worn road a quarter of a century before the c.u.mberland Road was extended across the Ohio River.

The act of 1825, authorizing the extension of the great road into the state of Ohio, was greeted with intense enthusiasm by the people of the West. The fear that the road would not be continued beyond the Ohio River was generally entertained, and for good reasons. The debate of const.i.tutionality, which had been going on for several years, increased the fear. And yet it would have been breaking faith with the West by the national Government to have failed to continue the road.

The act appropriated one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for an extension of the road from Wheeling to Zanesville, Ohio, and work was immediately undertaken. The Ohio was by far the greatest body of water which the road crossed, and for many years the pa.s.sage from Wheeling to the opposite side of the Ohio, Bridgeport, was made by ferry. Later a great bridge, the admiration of the countryside, was erected. The road entered Ohio in Belmont County, and eventually crossed the state in a due line west, not deviating its course even to touch cities of such importance as Newark or Dayton, although, in the case of the former at least, such a course would have been less expensive than the one pursued. Pa.s.sing due west the road was built through Belmont, Guernsey, Muskingum, Licking, Franklin, Madison, Clark, Montgomery, and Preble Counties, a distance of over three hundred miles. A larger portion of the c.u.mberland Road which was actually completed lay in Ohio than in all other states through which it pa.s.sed combined.

The work on the road between Wheeling and Zanesville was begun in 1825-26. Ground was broken with great ceremony opposite the Court House at St. Clairsville, Belmont County, July 4, 1825. An address was made by Mr. William B. Hubbard. The cost of the road in eastern Ohio was much less than the cost in Pennsylvania, averaging only about three thousand four hundred dollars per mile. This included three-inch layers of broken stone, masonry bridges, and culverts. Large appropriations were made for the road in succeeding years and the work went on from Zanesville due west to Columbus. The course of the road between Zanesville and Columbus was perhaps the first instance where the road ignored, entirely, the general alignment of a previous road between the same two points. The old road between Zanesville and Columbus went by way of Newark and Granville, a roundabout course, but probably the most practicable, as anyone may attest who has traveled over the c.u.mberland Road in the western part of Muskingum County. A long and determined effort was made by citizens of Newark and Granville to have the new road follow the course of the old, but without effect. Ohio had not, like Pennsylvania, demanded that the road should pa.s.s through certain towns. The only direction named by law was that the road should go west on the straightest possible line through the capital of each state.

The course between Zanesville and Columbus was located by the United States commissioner, Jonathan Knight, Esq., who, accompanied by his a.s.sociates (one of whom was the youthful Joseph E. Johnson), arrived in Columbus, October 5, 1825. Bids for contracts for building the road from Zanesville to Columbus were advertised to be received at the superintendent's office at Zanesville, from the twenty-third to the thirtieth of June, 1829. The road was fully completed by 1833. The road entered Columbus on Friend (now Main) Street. There was great rivalry between the North End and South End over the road's entrance into the city. The matter was compromised by having it enter on Friend Street and take its exit on West Broad, traversing High to make the connection.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF c.u.mBERLAND ROAD IN THE WEST]

Concerning the route out of Columbus, the _Ohio State Journal_ said:

"The adopted route leaves Columbus at Broad Street, crosses the Scioto River at the end of that street and on the new wooden bridge erected in 1826 by an individual having a charter from the state. The bridge is not so permanent nor so s.p.a.cious as could be desired, yet it may answer the intended purposes for several years to come. Thence the location pa.s.ses through the village of Franklinton, and across the low grounds to the bluff which is surrounded at a depression formed by a ravine, and at a point nearly in the prolongation in the direction of Broad Street; thence by a small angle, a straight line to the bluffs of Darby Creek; to pa.s.s the creek and its bluffs some angles were necessary; thence nearly a straight line through Deer Creek Barrens, and across that stream to the dividing grounds, between the Scioto and the Miami waters; thence nearly down to the valley of Beaver Creek."

The preliminary survey westward was completed in 1826 and extended to Indianapolis, Indiana. Bids were advertised for the contract west of Columbus in July 1830. During the next seven years the work was pushed on through Madison, Clark, Montgomery, and Preble Counties and across the Indiana line. Proposals for bids for building the road west of Springfield, Ohio, were advertised for, during August 1837; a condition being that the first eight miles be finished by January 1838. These proposals are interesting today. The following is a typical advertis.e.m.e.nt:

"NATIONAL ROAD IN OHIO.--Notice to contractors.--Proposals will be received by the undersigned, until the 19th of August inst., for clearing and grubbing eight miles of the line of National Road west of this place, from the 55th to the 62nd mile inclusive west of Columbus--the work to be completed on or before the 1st day of January, 1838.

"The trees and growth to be entirely cleared away to the distance of 40 feet on each side of the central axis of the road, and all trees impending over that s.p.a.ce to be cut down; all stumps and roots to be carefully grubbed out to the distance of 20 feet on each side of the axis, and where occasional high embankments, or s.p.a.cious side drains may be required, the grubbing is to extend to the distance of 30 feet on each side of the same axis. All the timber, brush, stumps and roots to be entirely removed from the above s.p.a.ce of 80 feet in width and the earth excavated in grubbing, to be thrown back into the hollows formed by removing the stumps and roots.

"The proposals will state the price per linear rod or mile, and the offers of competent, or responsible individuals only will be accepted.

"Notice is hereby given to the proprietors of the land, on that part of the line of the National Road lying between Springfield and the Miami river, to remove all fences and other barriers now across the line a reasonable time being allowed them to secure that portion of their present crops which may lie upon the location of the road.

G. DUTTON, _Lieutenant U. S. Engineers Supt._

National Road Office, Springfield, Ohio.

August 2nd 1837."[13]

Indianapolis was the center of c.u.mberland Road operations in Indiana, and from that city the road was built both eastward and westward. The road entered Indiana through Wayne County but was not completed until taken under a charter from the state by the Wayne County Turnpike Company, and finished in 1850. When Indiana and Illinois received the road from the national Government it was not completed, though graded and bridged as far west as Vandalia, then the capital of Illinois.

The c.u.mberland Road was not to Indiana and Illinois what it was to Ohio, for somewhat similar reasons that it was less to Ohio than to Pennsylvania, for the further west it was built the older the century grew, and the newer the means of transportation which were coming rapidly to the front. This was true, even, from the very beginning. The road was hardly a decade old in Pennsylvania, when two ca.n.a.ls and a railroad over the portage, offered a rival means of transportation across the state from Harrisburg to Pittsburg.[14] When the road reached Wheeling, Ohio River travel was very much improved, and a large proportion of traffic went down the river by packet. When the road entered Indiana, new plans for internal improvements were under way beside which a turnpike was almost a relic. In 1835-36, Indiana pa.s.sed an internal improvement bill, authorizing three great ca.n.a.ls and a railway.[15] The proposed railway, from the village of Madison on the Ohio River northward to Indianapolis, is a pregnant suggestion of the amount of traffic to Indiana from the east which pa.s.sed down the Ohio from Wheeling, instead of going overland through Ohio.[16] This was, undoubtedly, mostly pa.s.senger traffic, which was very heavy at this time.[17]

But the dawning of a new era in transportation had already been heralded in the national hall of legislation. In 1832 the House Committee on Roads and Ca.n.a.ls had discussed in their report the question of the relative cost of various means of intercommunication, including railways. Each report of the committee for the next five years mentioned the same subject, until, in 1836, the matter of subst.i.tuting a railway for the c.u.mberland Road between Columbus and the Mississippi was very seriously considered.

In that year a House Bill (No. 64) came back from the Senate amended in two particulars, one authorizing that the appropriations made for Illinois should be confined to grading and bridging only, and should not be construed as implying that Congress had pledged itself to macadamize the road.

The House Committee struck out these amendments and subst.i.tuted a more sweeping one than any yet suggested in the history of the road. This amendment provided that a railroad be constructed west of Columbus with the money appropriated for a highway. The committee reported, that, after long study of the question, many reasons appeared why the change should be made. It was stated to the committee by respectable authority, that much of the stone for the masonry and covering for the road east of Columbus had to be transported for considerable distances over bad roads across the adjacent country at very great expense, and that, in its continuance westward through Ohio, this source of expense would be greatly augmented. Nevertheless the compact at the time of the admission of the western states supposed the western termination of the road should be the Mississippi. The estimated expense of the road's extension to Vandalia, Illinois, sixty-five miles east of the Mississippi, amounted to $4,732,622.83, making the total expense of the entire road amount to about ten millions. The committee said it would have been unfaithful to the trust reposed in it, if it had not bestowed much attention upon this matter, and it did not hesitate to ground on a recent report of the Secretary of War, this very important change of the plan of the road. This report of the War Department showed that the distance between Columbus and Vandalia was three hundred and thirty-four miles and the estimated cost of completing the road that far would be $4,732,622.83, of which $1,120,320.01 had been expended and $3,547,894.83 remained to be expended in order to finish the road to that extent according to plans then in operation; that after its completion it would require an annual expenditure on the three hundred and thirty-four miles of $392,809.71 to keep it in repair, the engineers computing the annual cost of repairs of the portion of the road between Wheeling and Columbus (one hundred and twenty-seven miles) at $99,430.30.

On the other hand the estimated cost of a railway from Columbus to Vandalia on the route of the c.u.mberland Road was $4,280,540.37, and the cost of preservation and repair of such a road, $173,718.25. Thus the computed cost of the railway exceeded that of the turnpike but about twenty per cent, while the annual expense of repairing the former would fall short more than fifty-six per cent. In addition to the advantage of reduced cost was that of less time consumed in transportation; for, a.s.suming as the committee did a rate of speed of fifteen miles per hour (which was five miles per hour less than the then customary speed of railway traveling in England on the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, and about the ordinary rate of speed of the American locomotives), it would require only twenty-three hours for news from Baltimore to reach Columbus, forty-two hours to Indianapolis, fifty-four to Vandalia, and fifty-eight to St. Louis.

One interesting argument for the subst.i.tution of the railway for the c.u.mberland Road was given as follows:

"When the relation of the general Government to the states which it unites is justly regarded; when it is considered it is especially charged with the common defense; that for the attainment of this end the militia must be combined in time of war with the regular army and the state with the United States troops; that mutual prompt and vigorous concert should mark the efforts of both for the accomplishment of a common end and the safety of all; it seems needless to dwell upon the importance of transmitting intelligence between the state and federal government with the least possible delay and concentrating in a period of common danger their joint efforts with the greatest possible dispatch. It is alike needless to detail the comparative advantages of a railroad and an ordinary turnpike under such circ.u.mstances. A few weeks, nay, a very few days, or hours, may determine the issue of a campaign, though happily for the United States their distance from a powerful enemy may limit the contingency of war to destruction short of that by which the events of an hour had involved ruin of an empire."

Despite the weight of argument presented by the House Committee their amendment was in turn stricken out, and the bill of 1836 appropriated six hundred thousand dollars for the c.u.mberland Road, both of the Senate amendments which the House Committee had stricken out being incorporated in the bill.

The last appropriation for the c.u.mberland Road was dated May 25, 1838; it granted one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the road in both Ohio and Indiana, and nine thousand dollars for the road in Illinois.

CHAPTER III