Historic Highways of America Volume XI Part 4

Man and horse 18-1/2 "

Single 9-1/4 "

Wagon and team $1.15 Horned cattle 9-1/4 " [41]

No sooner was Zane's Trace opened than the Government established a mail route between Wheeling and Maysville and Lexington. For the real terminus of the trace was not by any means at little Maysville; an ancient buffalo route and well-worn white man's road led into the interior of Kentucky from Maysville, known in history as the Maysville Road and Maysville Pike. On the Ohio side this mail route from Wheeling and Lexington was known by many t.i.tles in many years; it was the Limestone Road, the Maysville Pike, the Limestone and Chillicothe Road, and the Zanesville Pike; the Maysville and Zanesville Turnpike was constructed between Zanesville and the Ohio River. At Zanesville the road today is familiarly known as the Maysville Pike while in Kentucky it is commonly called the Zanesville Pike.

"When the Indian trail gets widened, graded and bridged to a good road,"

wrote Emerson, "there is a benefactor, there is a missionary, a pacificator, a wealth-bringer, a maker of markets, a vent for industry."[42] The little road here under consideration is unique among American highways in its origin and in its history. It was demanded, not by war, but by civilization, not for exploration and settlement but by settlements that were already made and in need of communion and commerce. It was created by an act of Congress as truly as the c.u.mberland Road, which soon should, in part, supersede it. And finally it was on the subject of the Maysville Turnpike that the question of internal improvement by the national government was at last decided when, in 1830, President Jackson signed that veto which made the name of Maysville a household word throughout the United States.

In 1825, after a delay which created great suspense in the West, the c.u.mberland Road at last leaped the Ohio River at Wheeling. Zane's Trace, now a wide, much-traveled avenue, offered a route westward to Zanesville which could be but little improved upon. The blazed tree gave way to the mile-stone and the pannier and saddle-bag to the rumbling stagecoach and the chaise. It is all a pretty, quiet picture and its story is totally unlike that of Boone's rough path over the c.u.mberlands. For settlements sprang up rapidly in this land of plenty; we have seen that there were beginnings at Chillicothe and Zanesville when Sample pa.s.sed this way in 1797. By 1800, Zane's lots at the crossing of the Hockhocking (first known as New Lancaster, and later as Lancaster--from the town of that name in Pennsylvania) were selling; his terms and inducements to settlers, especially mechanics, are particularly interesting.[43]

As intimated, the Kentucky division of the Maysville Pike--leading from the Ohio River through Was.h.i.+ngton, Paris, and Lexington--became famous in that it was made a test case to determine whether or not the Government had the right to a.s.sist in the building of purely state (local) roads by taking shares in local turnpike companies.

This much-mooted question was settled once for all by President Andrew Jackson's veto of "A Bill Authorizing a subscription of stock in the Maysville, Was.h.i.+ngton, Paris, and Lexington Turnpike Road Company,"

which was pa.s.sed by the House February 24, 1830. It read:[44] "_Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress a.s.sembled_, That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to subscribe, in the name and for the use of the United States, for fifteen hundred shares of the capital stock of the Maysville, Was.h.i.+ngton, Paris, and Lexington Turnpike Road Company, and to pay for the same at such times, and in such proportions, as shall be required of, and paid by, the stockholders generally, by the rules and regulations of the aforesaid company, to be paid out of any money in the Treasury, not otherwise appropriated: _Provided_, That not more than one-third part of the sum, so subscribed for the use of the United States, shall be demanded in the present year, nor shall any greater sum be paid on the shares so subscribed for, than shall be proportioned to a.s.sessments made on individual or corporate stockholders.

"SEC. 2. _And be it further enacted_, That the said Secretary of the Treasury shall vote for the President and Directors of the aforesaid company, according to such number of shares as the United States may, at any time, hold in the stock thereof, and shall receive upon the said stock the proportion of the tolls which shall, from time to time, be due to the United States for the shares aforesaid, and shall have and enjoy, in behalf of the United States, every other right of stockholder in said Company."

In his first annual message to Congress, dated December 8, 1829, President Jackson stated plainly his att.i.tude to the great question of internal improvements. "As ... the period approaches when the application of the revenue to the payment of [national] debt will cease, the disposition of the surplus will present a subject for the serious deliberation of Congress.... Considered in connection with the difficulties which have heretofore attended appropriations for purposes of internal improvement, and with those which this experience tells us will certainly arise whenever power over such subjects may be exercised by the General Government, it is hoped that it may lead to the adoption of some plan which will reconcile the diversified interests of the States and strengthen the bonds which unite them.... To avoid these evils it appears to me that the most safe, just, and federal disposition which could be made of the surplus revenue would be its apportionment among the several States according to their ratio of representation, and should this measure not be found warranted by the Const.i.tution that it would be expedient to propose to the States an amendment authorizing it."[45]

In his veto of the Maysville Road bill President Jackson quoted the above paragraphs from his annual message, and, after citing both Madison's and Monroe's positions as to internal improvements of pure local character, continues:

"The bill before me does not call for a more definate opinion upon the particular circ.u.mstances which will warrent appropriations of money by Congress to aid works of internal improvement, for although the extention of the power to apply money beyond that of carrying into effect the object for which it is appropriated has, as we have seen, been long claimed and exercised by the Federal Government, yet such grants have always been professedly under the control of the general principle that the works which might be thus aided should be 'of a general, not local, national, not State,' character. A disregard of this distinction would of necessity lead to the subversion of the federal system. That even this is an unsafe one, arbitrary in its nature, and liable, consequently, to great abuses, is too obvious to require the confirmation of experience. It is, however, sufficiently definate and imperative to my mind to forbid my approbation of any bill having the character of the one under consideration. I have given to its provisions ... reflection ... but I am not able to view it in any other light than as a measure of purely local character; or, if it can be considered national, that no further distinction between the appropriate duties of the General and State Governments need be attempted, for there can be no local interest that may not with equal propriety be denominated national. It has no connection with any established system of improvements; is exclusively within the limits of a State, starting at a point on the Ohio River and running out 60 miles to an interior town, and even as far as the State is interested conferring partial instead of general advantages.

"Considering the magnitude and importance of the power, and the embarra.s.sments to which, from the very nature of the thing, its exercise must necessarily be subjected, the real friends of internal improvement ought not to be willing to confide it to accident and chance. What is properly _national_ in its character or otherwise is an inquiry which is often extremely difficult of solution....

"If it be the wish of the people that the construction of roads and ca.n.a.ls should be conducted by the Federal Government, it is not only highly expedient, but indispensably necessary, that a previous amendment of the Const.i.tution, delegating the necessary power and defining and restricting its exercise with reference to the sovereignty of the States, should be made. The right to exercise as much jurisdiction as is necessary to preserve the works and to raise funds by the collection of tolls to keep them in repair can not be dispensed with. The c.u.mberland Road should be an instructive admonition of the consequences of acting without this right. Year after year contests are witnessed, growing out of efforts to obtain the necessary appropriations for completing and repairing this useful work. Whilst one Congress may claim and exercise the power, a succeeding one may deny it; and this fluctuation of opinion must be unavoidably fatal to any scheme which from its extent would promote the interests and elevate the character of the country....

"That a const.i.tutional adjustment of this power upon equitable principles is in the highest degree desirable can scarcely be doubted, nor can it fail to be promoted by every sincere friend to the success of our political inst.i.tutions."[46]

The effect of Jackson's veto was far-reaching. It not only put an end to all thought of national aid to such local improvements as the Maysville Turnpike, but deprived such genuinely national promotions as the Baltimore and Ohio Railway of all hope of national aid. "President Jackson had strongly expressed his opposition to aiding state enterprises and schemes of internal improvement by appropriations from the central government," records a historian of that great enterprise; "from whatever source the opposition may have come, the [Baltimore and Ohio Railway] company recognized that it must not hope for aid from the national government."[47] The significance of Jackson's veto could not be more strongly presented.

CHAPTER IV

PIONEER TRAVEL IN KENTUCKY

The following interesting and vivid picture of early travel in Kentucky is taken from Judge James Hall's _Legends of the West_ (Philadelphia, 1832); though largely a work of fiction, such descriptions as these are as lifelike as the original picture.

The place at which the party landed was a small village on the bank of the [Ohio] river, distant about fifty miles from a settlement in the interior to which they were destined.

"Here we are on dry land once more," said the Englishman as he jumped ash.o.r.e; "come, Mr. Logan, let us go to the stage-house and take our seats." Logan smiled, and followed his companion.

"My good friend," said Edgarton, to a tall, sallow man in a hunting-s.h.i.+rt, who sat on a log by the river with a rifle in his lap, "can you direct us to the stage-house?"

"Well, I can't say that I can."

"Perhaps you do not understand what we want," said Edgarton; "we wish to take seats in a mail-coach for ----."

"Well, stranger, it's my sentimental belief that there isn't a coach, male or female, in the county."

"This fellow is ignorant of our meaning," said Edgarton to Logan.

"What's that you say, stranger? I _spose maybe_ you think I never _seed_ a coach? Well, it's a free country, and every man has a right to think what he pleases; but I reckon I've saw as many of _them are fixens_ as any other man. I was raised in Tennessee. I saw General Jackson once riding in the elegantest carriage that ever mortal man _sot_ his eyes on--with gla.s.s winders to it like a house, and _sort o'_ silk _curtings_. The harness was mounted with silver; it was _drawd_ by four blooded nags, and _druv_ by a mighty likely _n.i.g.g.e.r_ boy."

The travellers pa.s.sed on, and soon learned that there was indeed no stage in the country. Teams and carriages of any kind were difficult to be procured; and it was with some difficulty that two stout wagons were at last hired to carry Mr. Edgarton's movables, and a _dearborn_ obtained to convey his family, it being agreed that one of the gentlemen should drive the latter vehicle while the other walked, alternately.

Arrangements were accordingly made to set out the next morning.

The settlement in which Mr. Edgarton had judiciously determined to pitch his tent, and enjoy the healthful innocence and rural felicity of the farmer's life, was new; and the country to be traversed to reach it entirely unsettled. There were two or three houses scattered through the wilderness on the road, one of which the party might have reached by setting out early in the morning, and they had determined to do so. But there was so much fixing and preparing to be done, so much stowing of baggage and packing of trunks, such momentous preparations to guard against cold and heat, hunger and thirst, fatigue, accident, robbery, disease, and death, that it was near noon before the cavalcade was prepared to move. Even then they were delayed some minutes longer to give Mr. Edgarton time to oil the screws and renew the charges of his double-barrel gun and pocket-pistols. In vain he was told there were no highwaymen in America. His way lay chiefly through uninhabited forests; and he considered it a fact in natural history, as indisputable as any other elementary principle, that every such forest has its robbers.

After all, he entirely neglected to put flints in his bran new locks instead of the wooden subst.i.tutes which the maker had placed there to protect his work from injury; and thus "doubly armed," he announced his readiness to start with an air of truly comic heroism.

When they began their journey, new terrors arose. The road was sufficiently plain and firm for all rational purposes; that is to say, it _would do_ very well for those who only wanted to get along, and were content to make the best of it. It was a mere path beaten by a succession of travellers. No avenue had been cut for it through the woods; but the first pioneers had wound their way among the trees, avoiding obstacles by going round them, as the snake winds through the gra.s.s, and those who followed had trodden in their footsteps, until they had beaten a smooth road sufficiently wide to admit the pa.s.sage of a single wagon. On either side was the thick forest, sometimes grown up with underbrush to the margin of the _trace_, and sometimes so open as to allow the eye to roam off to a considerable distance. Above was a dense canopy of interwoven branches. The wild and lonesome appearance, the deep shade, the interminable gloom of the woods, were frightful to our travellers. The difference between a wild forest in the simple majesty of nature, and the woodlands of cultivated countries, is very great. In the latter the underbrush has been removed by art or destroyed by domestic animals; the trees as they arrive at their growth are felled for use, and the remainder, less crowded, a.s.sume the spreading and rounded form of cultivated trees. The sunbeams reach the soil through the scattered foliage, the ground is trodden by grazing animals, and a hard sod is formed. However secluded such a spot may be, it bears the marks of civilization; the lowing of cattle is heard, and many species of songsters that hover round the habitations of men, and are never seen in the wilderness, here warble their notes. In the western forests of America all is grand and savage. The truth flashes instantly upon the mind of the observer, with the force of conviction, that Nature has been carrying on her operations here for ages undisturbed. The leaf has fallen from year to year; succeeding generations of trees have mouldered, spreading over the surface layer upon layer of decayed fibre, until the soil has acquired an astonis.h.i.+ng depth and an unrivalled fertility. From this rich bed the trees are seen rearing their shafts to an astonis.h.i.+ng height. The tendency of plants towards the light is well understood; of course, when trees are crowded closely together, instead of spreading, they shoot upwards, each endeavouring, as it were, to overtop his neighbours, and expending the whole force of the vegetative powers in rearing a great trunk to the greatest possible height, and then throwing out a top like an umbrella to the rays of the sun. The functions of vitality are carried on with vigor at the extremities, while the long stem is bare of leaves or branches; and when the undergrowth is removed nothing can exceed the gloomy grandeur of the elevated arches of foliage, supported by pillars of majestic size and venerable appearance. The great thickness and age of many of the trees is another striking peculiarity. They grow from age to age, attaining a gigantic size, and then fall, with a tremendous force, breaking down all that stands in their downward way, and heaping a great pile of timber on the ground, where it remains untouched until it is converted into soil.

Mingled with all our timber are seen aspiring vines, which seem to have commenced their growth with that of the young trees, and risen with them, their tops still flouris.h.i.+ng together far above the earth, while their stems are alike bare. The undergrowth consists of dense thickets, made up of the offspring of the larger trees, mixed with thorns, briers, dwarfish vines, and a great variety of shrubs. The ground is never covered with a firm sward, and seldom bears the gra.s.ses, or smaller plants, being covered from year to year with a dense ma.s.s of dried and decaying leaves, and shrouded in eternal shade.

Such was the scene that met the eyes of our travellers, and had they been treated to a short excursion to the moon they would scarcely have witnessed any thing more novel. The wide-spread and trackless ocean had scarcely conveyed to their imaginations so vivid an impression of the vast and solitary grandeur of Nature, in her pathless wildernesses. They could hardly realize the expectation of travelling safely through such savage shades. The path, which could be seen only a few yards in advance, seemed continually to have terminated, leaving them no choice but to retrace their steps. Sometimes they came to a place where a tree had fallen across the road, and Edgarton would stop under the supposition that any further attempt to proceed was hopeless--until he saw the American drivers forsaking the track, guiding their teams among the trees, crus.h.i.+ng down the young saplings that stood in their way, and thus winding round the obstacle, and back to the road, often through thickets so dense, that to the stranger's eye it seemed as if neither man nor beast could penetrate them. Sometimes on reaching the brink of a ravine or small stream, the bridge of logs, which previous travellers had erected, was found to be broken down, or the ford rendered impa.s.sable; and the wagoners with the same imperturbable good nature, and as if such accidents were matters of course, again left the road, and seeking out a new crossing-place, pa.s.sed over with scarcely the appearance of difficulty.

Once they came to a sheet of water, extending as far as the eye could reach, the tall trees standing in it as thickly as upon the dry ground, with tufts of gra.s.s and weeds instead of the usual undergrowth.

"Is there a ferry here?" inquired Edgarton.

"Oh no, sir, it's nothing but _a slash_."

"What's that?"

"Why, sir, jist a sort o' swamp."

"What in the world shall we do?"

"We'll jist put right ahead, sir; there's no dif-_fick_-ulty; it's nice good driving all about here. It's sort o' muddy, but there's good bottom to it all the way."

On they went. To Edgarton it was like going to sea; for no road could be seen; nothing but the trackless surface of the water; but instead of looking down, where his eye could have penetrated to the bottom, he was glancing forward in the vain hope of seeing dry land. Generally the water was but a few inches deep, but sometimes they soused into a hole; then Edgarton groaned and the ladies screamed; and sometimes it got gradually deeper until the hubs of the wheels were immersed, and the Englishman then called to the wagoners to stop.

"Don't be afeard, sir," one of them replied, "it is not bad; why this ain't nothing; it's right good going; it ain't a-going to swim your horse, no how."

"Anything seems a good road to you where the horse will not have to swim," replied the Englishman surlily.

"Why, bless you," said the backwoodsman, "this ain't no part of a priming to places that I've seed afore, no how. I've seed race paths in a worse fix than this. Don't you reckon, stranger, that if my team can drag this here heavy wagon, loaded down with plunder, you can sartainly get along with that _ar_ little carry-all, and nothing on the face of the _yeath_ to tote, but jist the women and children?"

They had but one such swamp to pa.s.s. It was only about half a mile wide, and after travelling that far through the water, the firm soil of the woods, which before seemed gloomy, became cheerful by contrast; and Edgarton found at last, that however unpleasant such travelling may be to those who are not accustomed to it, it has really no dangers but such as are imaginary.

As the cavalcade proceeded slowly, the ladies found it most pleasant to walk wherever the ground was sufficiently dry. Mrs. Edgarton and the children might be seen sauntering along, and keeping close to the carriage, for fear of being lost or captured by some nondescript monster of the wild, yet often halting to gather nosegays of wild flowers, or to examine some of the many natural curiosities which surrounded them....

The sun was about to set when the wagoners halted at an open spot, covered with a thick carpet of short gra.s.s, on the margin of a small stream of clear water. On inquiring the reason, Mr. Edgarton was a.s.sured that this was the best _campground_ on the route, and as there was no house within many miles, it was advisable to make arrangements for pa.s.sing the night there.

"Impossible!" exclaimed the European gentleman; "what! lie on the ground like beasts! we shall all catch our death of cold!"