USA > Indiana > Historic Indiana : being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time > Part 15
USA > Indiana > Historic Indiana : being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time, centennial ed. > Part 15
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"The Captain's in a hurry, and I know what he means; He wants to beat the other boat down to New Orleans. Then, roll out and heave that cotton, Roll out and heave that cotton, For we ain't got time to stay."
When the first steamboat went down the Ohio River, it made the seven hundred miles from Pitts- burgh to Louisville in seventy hours, down-stream. A citizen of the place, at that time, has left an account of the impression that the wonderful new craft made on the frontier people. He says that the novel ap- pearance of the vessel, and the fearful rapidity with which it made its passage over the broad reaches of the river, excited a mixture of terror and surprise among the people gathered on the banks, whom the rumor of such an invention had never reached. On the unexpected arrival of the vessel before Louisville, near midnight on a still moonlight night, the extra- ordinary sound which filled the air as the pent-up steam was suffered to escape from the valves on round- ing to produced a general alarm, and multitudes rose from their beds to ascertain the cause. It is said the general impression was, that the comet had fallen
"The Indian persisted in believing that the threatening creature was an offense to the gentle river." From an old print.
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into the Ohio. The comet had been the sensation of the year.
As the steamboats became factors in the life along the tributaries of the Mississippi River the frontier settlements rejoiced in their touch with the outside world. A writer in the Western Monthly Review, in 1827, said:
" An Atlantic cit, who talks of us under the name of backwoodsmen, would not believe, that such fairy struc- tures of oriental gorgeousness and splendor as the Wash- ington, the Walk in the Water, the Lady of the Lake, etc., etc., had ever existed in the imagination, much less that they were in actual existence, rushing down the river, as on the wings of the wind, or plowing up between the forests, bearing speculators, merchants, dandies, fine ladies, everything in the form of humanity, with pianos, stocks of novels, and cards, and dice, and flirting, and love- making, and champagne drinking, and on deck perhaps three hundred fellows who have seen alligators, and neither fear whiskey, nor gunpowder. A steamboat coming from New Orleans brings to the remotest villages of our streams, and the very doors of our cabins, a little of Paris, a section of Broadway, or a slice of Philadelphia, to ferment in the minds of our young people the innate propensity for fashions and finery." 1
Steamboats reduced the freight rates along the rivers to one third the former price. The great impetus to agriculture created a surplus which developed the interior of the country, and attracted so many settlers that by 1835 the exports had accomplished the eco- nomic independence of the United States.
As may be imagined, all this traffic did not go on
1 Western Monthly Review, May, 1827, i., 25.
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without frights and delays and accidents. There were whole months when the rivers were so low that snags and sandbars endangered craft of the lightest draft. In fact the old joke about the boats being obliged to run on a heavy dew originated along these Western streams, where there were such extremes of low water and great freshets. One accident on the Ohio River, near where Evansville stands, was of national interest. It was in the year 1825, when the illustrious General La Fayette was touring the country, as the guest of the grateful nation. The General and a distinguished party of civilians and military men were on board the steamboat Mechanic, coming up the river. It was in the month of May and all the passengers had retired for the night; suddenly the boat struck a snag in the very middle of the stream, and immediately began to settle. The night was dark, most of the travellers and crew were asleep, and the call of danger caused great confusion. General La Fayette was hurried on deck, and helped over the side of the steamboat, where a small boat had been launched to take him ashore. In the haste and excitement, he fell overboard, and was nearly drowned before assistance reached him. The General lost all of his effects, and eight thousand dollars in money, as did the captain, who also suffered the loss of his steamer.
Travel on the steamboats was more picturesque than on the modern railway. The voyage was long, and people took time to draw leisurely breaths of enjoyment. There was usually a pleasure party on board. Sometimes they were bound for the Mardi- Gras. They danced, they flirted, and they always gambled. An old traveller recalls that every boat had its corps of courteous, low-voiced, well-dressed
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gentlemen, who lived by "running the river." The traveller who knew them excused himself from playing with them; if he did not know them, he paid the penalty. The "river blackleg " was the typical sinner of that day. He was recognized as an emissary of Hell, and pointed the moral of many a sermon.
No one has pictured the traffic by steamboat so graphically as Mark Twain. He makes one live over again those deliberate times when the commerce was spasmodic, and the sleepy towns drowsed between arrivals of the transport. We see how presently a film of dark smoke appears above a remote point, some lusty wagoner on the lookout for trade yells, " S-t-e-a-m-b-o-a-t a-comin'," and the scene changes. The town drunkards stir; the clerks wake up; a furious clatter of drays follows. Every house and store pours out its human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys all go hurrying from all quarters to a common centre, the wharf. After the cargo is un- loaded, and new freight and passengers taken on, the boat steams away over the placid waters, and the town resumes its normal state.
Mr. Cottman has given an interesting account of river navigation in Indiana, and the vital importance which that form of transportation assumed in early days. Among other things, he tells of the strenuous insistence on considering, as navigable, streams that were hopelessly useless for such purpose, ofttimes approaching the ludicrous. As an example, Indian- apolis, for nearly two decades after its founding, would have White River a highway of commerce, in spite of nature and the inability of craft to get over ripples, sandbars, and drifts. As early as 1820, it
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was officially declared navigable. In 1825, Alexander Ralston, the surveyor, was appointed to make a thorough inspection of the river and to report in detail at the next session of the legislature. The sanguine hopes that were nourished at the young capital are shown by existing records.
"For three years past efforts had been made by Noah Noble to induce steamboats to ascend the river, and . . . very liberal offers had been made by that gentleman to the first steamboat captain who would ascend the river as far as this place. . . . As early as February, 1827, he offered the Kanawha Salt Company $150 as an induce- ment to send a load of salt, agreeing to sell the salt without charge.
"In 1830, Noble offered a Capt. Stephen Butler $200 to come to Indianapolis, and $100 in addition if Nobles- ville and Anderson were reached, though what efforts were made to earn these bonuses is not known. From time to time the newspapers made mention of boats which, according to rumor, got 'almost' to the capital and eventually one made for itself a historic reputation by performing the much-desired feat. This one was the General Hanna, a craft which Robert Hanna, a well-known character in early politics, had purchased for the purpose of bringing stones up the river for the old National road bridge. The Hanna, which in addition to its own loading, towed up a heavily-laden keel-boat, arrived April 1I, 1831, and, according to a contemporary chronicle, every man, woman, and child who could possibly leave home availed themselves of this opportunity of gratifying a laudable curosity to see a steamboat. On Monday evening and during the most of the succeeding day, the river bank was filled with delighted spectators. Captain Blythe and the artillery company marched down and fired salutes. The leading citizens and the boats' crew peppered each other
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with elegant, formal compliments, and the former, in approved parliamentary style, 'Resolved, That the arrival at Indianapolis of the Steamboat General Hanna, from Cincinnati, should be viewed by the citizens of the White River country and of our State at large, as a proud triumph and as a fair and unanswerable demonstration of the fact that our beautiful river is susceptible of safe navigation.'
" A public banquet in honor of the occasion was arranged, and the visiting navigators invited to attend, but they were in haste to get out of the woods while the water might permit, and so declined with regrets. Legend has it that the boat ran aground on an island a short distance down the river, and there lay ignominiously for six weeks, and that was the last of the 'proud triumph' and White River 'navigation.'
"But despite these and many similar absurdities, the Indiana streams were a factor, and an important one, in our earlier commerce. The number of rivers and creeks that have been declared 'public highways' by our legis- lators is a matter for surprise. An examination of the statutes through the twenties and thirties discloses from thirty to forty. According to Timothy Flint, who wrote in 1833, the navigable waters of the State had been rated at 2500 miles, and this estimate he thought moderate. These streams ranged in size from the Wabash to insig- nificant hill drains that run down the short water-shed into the Ohio, some of which, at the present day at least, would scarce float a plank. Such streams were, however, supposed to have sufficient volume during high water to float flatboats and the purpose of the legislation was to interdict impeding of the waterway by dams or otherwise, and the clearing of the channel was under State law. To this end many of these streams were divided into districts, as were the roads, and worked." 1
1 Magazine of History, 1907, Geo. S. Cottman, Editor.
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That is, the streams were cleared of drifts, and other obstructions, by the male residents living adjacent to either shore.
During all this time of steamboat commerce, the wagon roads were being slowly opened up through the forests to the river towns. The lands were so rich and mellow, through which the roads passed, that these highways were a vexation to the soul of the settlers for many years, until the days when they were made into turnpikes. In that early time the cattle and hogs were driven overland to the packing centres, the drivers walking the weary way back and forth. Hog driving was a separate occupation, and teaming was a regular business. An idea of the toil and weariness encountered on these overland trips may be gleaned from Mr. Smith's story of John Hager. He says:
" As I was travelling one rainy day on horseback through the woods, between Indianapolis and Connersville, near where Greenfield now stands, I heard a loud voice before me, some half a mile off. My horse was wading through the mud and water, up to the saddle-skirts. I moved slowly on, until I met John Hager driving a team of four oxen, hauling a heavy load of merchandise, or store goods, as he called it, from Cincinnati to Indianapolis, then in the woods. He had been fifteen days on the road, and it would take him three days more to get through, but said he must move on, as they would be anxiously looking for him at Indianapolis, as they were nearly out of powder and lead when he left, and they could get none until he got there, as his was the only wagon that could get through the mud between Cincinnati and Indianapolis, and it was just as much as he could do. He hallooed to the oxen, plied the lash of his long whip, and the team moved on
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at the rate of a mile an hour-the wheels up to the hub in mud, carrying the whole commerce between the Queen city and the Railroad city of the West, in that early day." 1
When the Rev. Thomas Goodwin, the pioneer Methodist preacher, was journeying to Asbury College in 1837, he passed over the roads when the fifty miles toward Indianapolis were one great quagmire. He tells the old story of the passengers having to get rails from the near-by fence, to help pry the stage-coach from the mudholes. When the wagon broke down beyond repair, the driver took young Goodwin's trunk on the horse before him, and the mail agent, with his mail-bag in front of him, and the student up behind, rode the other horse into the capital. When he reached his destination, he had travelled four days and two nights, to cover 124 miles.
It would look very strange to the moderns, ac- customed as we are to rapid transit means of loco- motion, to see slow plodding oxen used, but in that day they were worked on all of the Western roads. Heavy loads over rough highways could be hauled by these strong beasts of burden even better than by horses. Until after the Civil War, the making of neck-yokes was a regular trade in every community, and the patient ox was a common sight on the roads.
The fertility of the soil, which produced such spreading forests, shading the lands and preventing the equally deep soil on the roads from drying out, was what attracted immigration, and also what made it necessary to build roads, before the country could properly develop. Four years after the organization
1 Smith, O. H., Early Trials, page 583. Cincinnati, 1858.
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of the State, and when it had been determined to place the capital inland, a real system of wagon roads was projected. Twenty-six turnpikes were planned in 1820; five were to centre at Indianapolis, the others were to connect the older towns of the State; and the revenues for their establishment and maintenance were designated from the sale of public lands, and a road tax, and labor per capita, to be rendered. As in other public works, the enactment of laws did not make good roads immediately. Travelling by land was still travelling by mud and water, as the depressed Professor Hall termed it, at that time. Legislation was but a beginning. The work went slowly on through corduroy and toll roads, until the belated discovery that they had excellent gravel beds within the borders of the State made it improvident to have further delays. Even the National road limped lamely across Indiana; the only real work being the clearing of the trail, and plowing drains by the side of the road- way. East of the Alleghanies and across Ohio, it gave emigrants and commerce a famous highway toward the West. When Ohio and Indiana were admitted into the Union, Ohio fourteen years previous, there was a provision made by Congress reserving two per cent. from the sale of public lands within their limits, to be held and applied to the construction of a public highway, leading from the coast to a point to be designated within their borders. In 1806, Congress authorized President Jefferson to appoint a commission to lay out the best route; and the trail from Cumberland, Maryland, across a part of Penn- sylvania and Virginia, on into Ohio was chosen. It was eventually carried forward, in a much less thorough manner, and very imperfectly constructed, through
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Indiana to Vandalia, Illinois. For a half-century, the legislation regarding this highway had dragged its way through political campaigns, the sessions of Congress, and the various legislatures. It was never satisfactorily constructed at full length, and was very shiftlessly maintained; but it served a great purpose. It developed a vast territory, and served as a bond of communication and union between the tide-water States and the prairies. It also connected a network of State roads, which gave access to the whole interior of the Ohio Valley. It reduced freight rates one half. In 1820 three thousand wagons ran from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh for this trade, reaching a value of eighteen millions annually.
Travel was not then the matter-of-course affair of a few hours to the coast that it is in these days. The coaches driven over that old Cumberland road went across the mountains at the rate of five miles an hour, changing horses three or four times a day, and stopping for rest over night at the famous old way- side taverns. The merchant who went east in those days, and the belle who had spent a season in Phil- adelphia or Boston, were envied personages, who really had seen the world, had actually known life! If a citizen and his wife contemplated a journey to their old home, on the coast, it was an event to be planned months in advance. A new dozen of shirts, all of finest linen, must be hand-stitched for the jour- ney. His best blue broadcloth clothes, and flowered waistcoat, must be brushed, his gold fob polished, and the beaver hat remodelled and ironed. Mother would content herself with a made-over outfit, so that she might purchase " brand new " peau de soie and French merino at the centres of fashion. Their
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clothes were packed in the old hair trunk, studded with brass nails; and the things for the journey were placed in the huge carpet-bag of gay flowered brussels. In it, were letters from all of the neighborhood, to friends in the East; for postage was ruinously high then, and it was a matter of etiquette for every traveller to carry mail for his friends. Funds for the journey were carried very secretly in a belt about the waist, with a brace of pistols for defence against pos- sible highwaymen. Family and friends gathered at the gate to say good-bye to the travellers when the gay stage-coach, with its six spirited horses, drew up at the door with many a dash and flourish. The fellow-passengers, who were held in close companion- ship for this long journey, had plenty of time to exhaust topics of conversation. The talk ranged from pre- destination, high tariff, federalism, border wars, and early planting, to the latest news from the State and National capitals. And then there was always politics to be discussed, and new stories to be told. If there were lady passengers, no man would presume to light a cigar, for in those days such a lack of deference was
unknown in America. Hospitable inns, with great blazing fires and a lavish table of homely fare, were established at intervals on the route. There is said to have been a score of these old taverns in Wayne County alone, which shows how much travel there was by the old National road. Recalling these jour- neys, an old timer mused: What stories they told, too, around that fire after supper! Men took time to tell stories in that day. Each had his half-dozen nar- ratives, carefully elaborated, and given with dramatic effect. It was something to be a raconteur on the road. The best drivers, too, of these coaches on the pike
" Journeying to their new homes you passed people seated in the great canvas-topped Conestoga wagons." From an old print.
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reached a position of national distinction. Sometimes in lonely stretches of interminable forest, your only vis-à-vis might be a villainous-looking cutthroat, whose side glances would make one feel to see if his holsters were in place. Journeying to their new homes, you passed people seated in the great canvas-topped Conestoga wagons, going towards the setting sun.
" Old America seems to be breaking up and moving westward," wrote Morris Birkbeck in 1817. On the National road he said that "we are seldom out of sight of family groups, behind and before us. No possessions but two horses and sometimes a cow or two; excepting a little hard-earned money, for the land office of the dis- trict, where they may obtain a title for as many acres as they have half dollars, being one fourth of the purchase price. The family are seen before, behind, or within the vehicle, according to the road, the weather, or perhaps the spirit of the party. Sometimes a horse and a pack saddle afford the means of transfer." 1
A traveller would pass in one journey four to five thousand hogs being driven to the Eastern market. In Benjamin Parker's reminiscences, we gain a vivid impression of the vast commerce and travel, which passed toward the West; and also have a quaint picture of the little Indiana boy, who was afterwards to be noted as one of her writers, as he sat by the roadside of the great national way, and observed the travel from that mysterious East toward the setting sun. He wrote:
"From morning till night there was a continual rumble of wheels, and, when the rush was greatest, there was
1 Birkbeck, Morris, Notes on a Journey from Virginia, pages 25, 26.
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never a minute that wagons were not in sight. Many families occupied two or more of the big red wagons then in use, with household goods and their implements, while extra horses, colts, cattle, sheep, and sometimes hogs were led or driven behind. Thus, when five or ten families were moving in company, the procession of wagons, men, women, and children and stock was quite lengthy and imposing. Now and then there would be an old-fashioned carriage, set upon high wheels to go safely over stumps and through streams. The older women and little children occupied these, and went bobbing up and down on the great leather springs, which were the fashion sixty years ago. But everybody did not travel in that way. Single families, occupying a single one or two horse wagon or cart, frequently passed along, seeming as confident and hopeful as the others. With the tinkling of bells, the rumbling of wheels, and the chatter of the people as they went forever forward, the little boy who had gone to the road from his lonesome home in the woods was captivated, and carried away into the great active world. But the greatest wonder and delight of all was the stage-coach, radiant in new paint, and drawn by its four matched horses in their showy harness, and filled inside and on top with well-dressed people. We could hear the driver playing his bugle as he approached the little town, and it all seemed too fine and grand to be other than a dream." 1
In the early thirties, a new mode of reaching the centres of trade was advocated. Steam, applied to the running of boats, had worked wonders for those sections lying adjacent to the navigable streams. Alas! the fertile districts along shallow streams, and those remote from the waterways, including the in- land capital of Indiana, were greatly retarded in their
1 Parker, Benjamin, "Pioneer Days," in vol. iv., Ind. Mag. Hist., 1908.
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development by lack of adequate transportation. Railroads had only appeared on the horizon, and the agitation for the building of canals began. To-day we should hardly regard a slow-going canal-boat, travelling at the rate of eight miles an hour, as a great socializing influence; but in that earlier time, when the canals were first opened up, a traveller wrote back home from Ohio, that it was well worth while to make a trip to Cincinnati or Toledo, just to enjoy the luxury of the passage.
The development of the State under this new mode of transportation is a very definite and interesting phase of Indiana's history. As Mr. Dillon has said :
"the State system of internal improvement, which was adopted by Indiana in 1836, was not a new measure, nor did the adoption of the system at that time grow out of a new and hasty expression of popular sentiment. For a period of more than ten years, the expediency of providing by law for the commencement of a State system of pub- lic works had been discussed before the people of the State by governors, legislators, and distinguished private citizens." 1
They instanced the Erie Canal, which was begun by New York State in 1817, and within a decade after its completion the tolls repaid the cost of construction. In 1823, two years before steam was applied to the locomotive, the subject of connecting the Maumee and Wabash rivers by a canal over the old Indian trail, thus opening up navigation to the Lakes, had at- tracted the attention of the legislative authorities of Illinois and Indiana. The agitation entered politics,
1 Dillion, J. B., Hist. of Ind., page 569. Indianapolis, 1859.
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divided families, and sundered friendships. In 1816, the year that the State was admitted, there was an act passed by the legislature reserving five per cent. of the proceeds of sales of all public lands within its territory as a fund for the construction of roads and canals and three-fifths of this fund was to be expended by act of legislature. In 1821, this famous "three per cent. fund " was first drawn upon. In 1826, the State obtained from the general government a grant of land two miles and a half wide on each side of the proposed canal and projected State road, making 3200 acres per mile, and the whole grant was valued at a million and a quarter of dollars. The sale of the government lands was to aid in the construction of the proposed improvements. Great inland districts were to be connected with shipping privileges. The rivers had long been hampered by the obstructions in their channels, and canals were to be substituted, as a better means of transportation, with lateral canals and turnpikes, opening up other districts. These ambitious and far-reaching plans for internal improvements included the Wabash and Erie Canal, covering 4593 miles, and extending from Lake Erie down the Wabash where it was to be connected with the Ohio River, which Mr. Benton, in his very in- teresting monograph on the canal, calls the Indiana Appian Way; the Central Canal which was to connect the inland city, Indianapolis, with the Wabash and Erie, via Muncietown and the White River Valley, and another branch to place the capital in connection with Evansville; there was also to be built the White- water Canal, which was to be a cross-cut canal from the Ohio River and was completed to Brookville; the Erie and Michigan Canal, from Fort Wayne to
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