America's First Interstate

Roger Pickenpaugh

Description

The story of America's first government-sponsored highway The National Road was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, this 620-mile road connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was the main avenue to the West. Roger Pickenpaugh's comprehensive account is based on detailed archival research into documents that few scholars have examined, including sources from the National Archives, and details the promotion, construction, and use of this crucially important thoroughfare.America's First Interstate looks at the road from the perspective of westward expansion, stagecoach travel, freight hauling, livestock herding, and politics of construction as the project goes through changing presidential administrations. Pickenpaugh also describes how states assumed control of the road once the US government chose to abandon it, including the charging of tolls. His data-mining approach-revealing technical details, contracting procedures, lawsuits, charges and countercharges, local accounts of travel, and services along the road-provides a wealth of information for scholars to more critically consider the cultural and historical context of the Road's construction and use.While most of America's First Interstate covers the early days during the era of stagecoach and wagon traffic, the story continues to the decline of the road as railroads became prominent, its rebirth as US Route 40 during the automobile age, and its status in the present day.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• United States of America
• History of the Americas
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 26 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781631014055
• Langue: English

Extrait

America’s First Interstate
America’s First Interstate
The National Road, 1806–1853

Roger Pickenpaugh
To Ken and Lena Williams
© 2020 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Number 2019054934
ISBN 978-1-60635-397-4
Manufactured in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of short quotations in critical reviews or articles.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pickenpaugh, Roger, author.
Title: America’s first interstate : the National Road, 1806-1853 / Roger Pickenpaugh.
Description: Kent, Ohio : Kent State University Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019054934 | ISBN 9781606353974 (cloth) | ISBN 9781631014055 (epub) | ISBN 9781631014062 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Cumberland Road--History--19th century. | Roads--United States--History--19th century. | United States Highway 40--History.
Classification: LCC HE356.C8 P48 2020 | DDC 388.10973--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054934
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
  1 “The touch of a feather”: The Highway Came with the Sun
  2 “The most effectual cement of union”: Planning the Road
  3 “Entirely in the woods”: Construction to the Ohio
  4 “A scene of zeal and industry”: Construction through Ohio
  5 “Embarrassments and difficulties from the beginning”: Construction through Indiana and Illinois
  6 “An instructive admonition”: The States Take Control
  7 “An indefinite impression of great abuse”: State Control of the Road
  8 “You are sure to be passed by Pete Burdine”: The Traveler’s Road
  9 “Truly worthy of a great nation”: Responses to the Traveler’s Road
10 “It kicked up a dust”: The Post Road
11 “A peculiar class of men”: The Working Road
12 “A continual stream”: The Moving Road
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
O NCE AGAIN , I MUST BEGIN with the time-worn, but true, observation that nobody produces a book alone. And once again, to my wife, Marion, goes my undying gratitude for proofreading, indexing, and putting up with me through yet another project. Thanks also to my mother, Fern Pickenpaugh, for proofreading and support.
Much of this book was written while caring for my stepdaughter, Anya Crum, who left us far too soon. I miss you, Punky! I also had the support of stepdaughter Jocelyn Brooks, her husband, Patrick, and grandchildren Parker and Harrison Brooks. It means more to me than they will ever know.
As always, librarians shared their expertise and made the research experience rewarding and enjoyable. Those who helped with this project included: Tutti Jackson, Melissa Dorsten, and Lily Birkhimer, Ohio Historical Society; Nicole Merriman, State Library of Ohio; Amy Welsh and Kelly Helm, U. Grant Miller Library, Washington and Jefferson College; MaryJo Price, Frostburg State University; Suzanne Hahn and Nadia Kousari, Indiana Historical Society; Laura Eliason and Lauren Patton, Indiana State Library; Natalie Fritz, Clark County, Ohio Historical Society; Allison Rein, Maryland State Archives; and numerous individuals at the National Archives and Records Administration.
I visited public libraries in almost every county through which the National Road passed. Almost without exception, I was treated kindly and professionally. Special thanks go to Beth Treaster of the Centerville-Center Township Public Library in Indiana. Beth not only guided me through the library’s valuable collections regarding the road, but she also proofread most of the manuscript.
Professors Evan Kutzler of Georgia Southwestern State University and Angela Zombek of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington both read the entire manuscript. Although it is technically outside their area of expertise, one would not have guessed so from their incisive comments. Closer to home, Ken Williams read through it twice, catching, as usual, numerous errors. Thanks also to Agusta Daugherty and Ashley McCorkle, who provided invaluable assistance in producing the photographs, and Alex Secrest, who helped with indexing.
Thank you again to the folks at the Kent State University Press for their guidance and for putting up with someone who has to be their most computer illiterate writer.
Introduction
O N D ECEMBER 19, 1805, Uriah Tracy, a Connecticut Federalist, rose to address the United States Senate. Tracy had been a member of a committee appointed to make recommendations for putting into effect certain provisions of the 1803 law granting statehood to Ohio. Specifically, the measure had set aside funds for building a road or roads connecting the seventeenth state with its eastern counterparts. Tracy’s committee was given the assignment of, among other things, selecting a route.
“The committee have thought it expedient to recommend the laying out of a road from Cumberland, on the northerly bank of the Potomac and within the state of Maryland, to the river Ohio,” Tracy reported. “To carry into effect the principles arising from the foregoing facts, the committee present here-with a bill for the consideration of the Senate,” he continued. On behalf of his committee, the veteran lawmaker explained, “They suppose, that to take the proper measures for carrying into effect the section of the law respecting a road or roads to the state of Ohio is a duty imposed upon Congress by the law itself, and that a sense of duty will always be sufficient to insure the passage of the bill now offered to the Senate.” 1
Whether or not it felt a sense of duty, the Senate passed the measure the committee had recommended eight days later without debate. The House of Representatives took up the bill in March. There the debate was heated. Most opposition came from the Virginia and Pennsylvania delegations, both of which felt slighted in the choice of route. It was not enough, however, and on March 24, the House passed “an act to regulate the laying out and making a road from Cumberland in the state of Maryland to the state of Ohio” by a vote of 66–55. Five days later, President Thomas Jefferson signed it into law. 2
The measure was unique in the Jefferson era. It was a time when the national government’s domestic duties extended little beyond providing a meager defense, delivering the mail, and tending lighthouses. As an avowed strict constructionist on constitutional matters, Jefferson should have given the measure a resounding veto, as successors Madison, Monroe, and Jackson would to subsequent bills for funding the road. After all, the law would eventually involve the national government in running a road through six states; and the costs involved would not match up well with Jefferson’s ideas regarding limited government spending.
Jefferson was not, however, one-dimensional. Although philosophy and principles were important to him, he was a practical and pragmatic politician. Three years earlier, he had put constitutional qualms aside when given the opportunity to purchase Louisiana and double the size of the United States. That transaction had suddenly and dramatically redefined the American frontier. It fit nicely with another important aspect of the Jeffersonian philosophy: an agrarian nation composed largely of yeoman farmers. To reach distant lands those pioneers would need good transportation. The same would be necessary for them to ship their produce to market. Politically, the majority of families heading westward would be headed by Republican voters. Politics was never far from Jefferson’s mind, and there seems little doubt that the prospect of future Republican states entered into the president’s thinking. The result was a presidential signature and the start of what was among the most significant projects taken on by the national government during the antebellum period.
The project offered arguments for both sides of the debate concerning ambitious government undertakings. On the positive side, the road served thousands of westward-moving emigrants, travelers, farmers, and businessmen. It seems very unlikely that the states could have completed such an undertaking, assuming they could have even agreed upon a route. At the same time, the project moved at a glacial pace—especially in the view of those communities waiting for the road’s arrival. In doing so, it anticipated a twentieth-century stereotype of inefficient “government work.” Even worse were the charges of corruption—many undeniable—that seemed to follow the road as it crept westward. In fairness, these charges grew more common after the road had been turned over to the states. They were, however, voiced from the earliest days of the project.

Still, the National Road made a significant contribution to an expanding country. It filled a void that waterways could not fill. Cumberland was, realistically, the western terminus of the Potomac. The Ohio flowed several miles distant. In between were the Appalachians. That meant America had no choice but to build a road if it hoped to connect its eastern and western waterways—and its eastern and western citizens. It was a major, and a significant, undertaking. Despite that, the National Road has seldom attracted the interest of historians. Histories of the time period cover it briefly, if at all, and histories of the road itself are few in number.
The first history of the road was among the best. The Old Pike: A History of the National Road with Incidents, Accidents, and Anecdotes Thereon was published in 1894 by its author, Thomas B. Searight, and it was clearly a labor of love. Searight had grown up along the road in Pennsylvania, and “he saw it in the zenith of its glory, and with emotions of sadness witnessed its decline.” Searight contacted former drivers of both stagecoaches and freight wagons as well as drovers and inn