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 16
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 16
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From an old print.
" We could hear the driver winding his horn and it all seemed too fine and grand."
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Lake Michigan, and the National road. The last was the turnpike continuing that road from the Ohio State line, and extending thence to Indianapolis, and from there west to Illinois, and by a State road toward the north to Lake Michigan. There were also to be constructed turnpikes from the capital to La Fayette, and to Jeffersonville. The Wabash River channel from Vincennes to the Ohio was to have the obstruc- tions removed. Before these grand schemes for trans- portation in Indiana were entirely outlined, steam had been applied to railroads in England, and such a road was added to the project and planned to run from Madison to Indianapolis. Other railroads were also suggested. Even a casual glance at this bare outline of roads and canals, mapped out by the State Commissioner, will reveal the deeply felt demand for means of reaching the markets.
When we follow the itinerary of a load of merchan- dise from New York to Indiana, we can realize through what a tortuous journey it passed and what length of time it took to transport merchandise. From New York, goods by freight were taken by boat up the Hudson River, to Albany, then fifteen miles over the turnpike to Schenectady, up the Mohawk by man power, through the canal and eight locks, around the Falls, and on from Utica to Lake Oneida by a canal and creek, through that lake to Onondaga and Oswego River- into Lake Ontario; thence to Lewiston, then overland along the Niagara, by boat on Lake Erie; thence by land to Fort Bœuf, again by water to Pittsburgh and down the Ohio and up the Wabash River. One hun- dred thousand bushels of salt, annually, passed this way from Central New York to Indiana.
The passage of the bill authorizing the internal
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improvements was vastly popular. The news was carried from village to village and celebrated with the ringing of bells, firing of cannon, and processions marching through the streets. The people rejoiced over the prospect of an outlet to the seaboard for the products of the country, of which they could raise so much more than they could use. Work was begun on the Wabash Canal in 1832, on the White-water in 1836, and on the Central Canal in 1837. It was undertaken in sections, and in different parts of the State at the same time, by different contractors. Immediately, labor was in demand, and immigrants from Ireland and Germany were brought into the State to work on the canals. These families remained as permanent residents, and many of them became prosperous. In time, they were thoroughly absorbed into the body politic, as loyal citizens. For the next four years, the work went on throughout the projected system of public improvements. Along the lines of the canals, Paddy, just over from Ireland, and Hans from Germany, were making the dirt fly; and laborers, already resident, were employed on the turnpikes, or in building warehouses and wharves, for the opening of commerce. The only grumbling heard came from the counties through which none of the projected highways were to pass. There were citizens who, for economic reasons, had opposed the whole scheme of internal improvements being undertaken by the State; but the majority had won. As soon as the bill had passed, the wildest speculation in lands ensued; farmers added to their farms and investors flocked into the State. If all had been paid for, distress need not have followed, but many of the ventures were undertaken on credit, and ruin of fortunes came.
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People had visions of the revenues from the canals and roads paying all taxes, and the dawn of a new era was prophesied. While manual labor on the various public works was progressing in many sections, a cloud appeared on the commercial horizon, to dis- quiet careful citizens. Grave errors in financing the system of highways were made, which brought finan- cial disaster to the State, long before anything had approached completion. The total of the canals, turnpikes, and railroads surveyed and included in the estimates, under the Act of 1836, was about twelve hundred and eighty-nine miles; which, it was es- timated then, would incur an expenditure of $19,914,- 244.00. A permanent Commission was created to represent the State, in organizing the department of construction, and negotiating for funding the debt to be assumed. To meet the amounts necessary, so large for a frontier commonwealth, required wisdom and exceedingly provident management. This, the momentous question certainly failed to receive. Many mistakes were made. One of the fundamental errors was the result of pressure from each section, that their improvements should be executed at once; and the Board tried to satisfy public clamor, by endeavor- ing to construct all of the projects simultaneously. Then when the bonds were issued to raise the funds to build the canals and roads, they were sold on credit. As a consequence, there was, very soon, no money to meet the demands of contractors for supplies and construction. The wages of laborers went far in arrears and, of course, this immediately affected the small shopkeepers and general trade. Construction would be suspended for months, until funds might be forth- coming, causing great unrest and distress. To add
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to the misfortunes of the people, the great panic of IS37 swept over the nation, and financial disaster was general to the whole country.
An additional short-sighted financial measure at the very beginning was, that even the money to pay the very interest on the debt was borrowed; which compounded the indebtedness to the further embar- rassment of the Treasury. In 1839, a large portion of the contemplated improvements were abandoned. The construction of the railroads was left to private enterprise. The Wabash Canal, which had been started before the General Improvements Bill had passed, was now in use over part of the route and yielding a revenue. This was not abandoned, as it had the land grants from the general government still unsold, from which it could yet realize funds. In 1842, when of the twelve hundred miles of improvements contemplated, 281 miles had been completed, the State found itself in debt, for all causes, $207,894,613. Thus, Indiana, like several other States at that period, faced bankruptcy. It was often heard said, Indiana cannot pay the interest on her public debt. Her resources were very much crippled on account of her remoteness from markets, which limited production. As in some other States, it was openly claimed that the indebted- ness would have to go by default, but this was abhorrent to honest citizens and was very widely opposed. Sensational speeches were made in the State Assembly about "preserving the honor of the State, sir," one member asserting that he would chop wood to pay his proportion of the State debt before he would listen to repudiation. Mr. Butler and others representing the foreign bondholders spent season after season in the State, trying to avoid total loss, and have the
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work go on until revenues might be realized. Finally most of the works were permanently abandoned, and the Wabash and Erie Canal, with its lands and tolls, was taken in part payment of the claims, the bondholders promising to complete the canal. This they did by 1851. This waterway extended from Evansville, on the Ohio, to Toledo, 379 miles of it lying within the State of Indiana. After the intro- duction of railroads had made the canal unprofit- able, the legality of the compromise was questioned, and the bondholders wanted the State to pay half of the debt for which the canal had been taken, as they claimed they had been defrauded of tolls, on account of the franchise granted to the railroads. They never realized more than 92% of their principal, making the investment disastrous individually. The whole project had been so to the State exchequer; but the canal was a wonderful impetus to the develop- ment of the West.
It has always been conceded that the economic and social influence of the public works was far reaching. Every mile of improved transportation by turnpike facilitated the mail service and overland immigration, and made it possible for the inland settlers to reach the waterways with their produce. The canal in- creased the production of the country in a wonderful way. Before its completion, trade was stagnant. There was little incentive for industry among the people, for there was no market for more produce than could be consumed within their own territory, and lands lay idle. At one time, when Mr. Henry T. Sample was going overland, collecting pelts for a cargo, his business led him across the fertile Wea plains, fit to be called the Garden of the Gods. He
IS
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soliloquized thus to himself and his gray pony: "This stretch of country is beautiful beyond compare, but I would not give this bale of pelts for the whole of it, as I could not sell what it would produce." He lived to see the plains then stretched before him, worth millions of dollars.
Before the canal was built, wheat sold for 37 to 45 cents a bushel and corn from 10 to 20 cents a bushel, while at the same time for their imports they paid $10.00 a barrel for salt, and sugar brought from 25 to 35 cents per pound. A Putnam County settler says that prior to the completion of the canal he hauled a load of wheat (25 bushels) to Hamilton County, Ohio, a distance of 150 miles, for which he received 38 cents a bushel.
In less than two years after the canal reached a district, wheat advanced to 90 cents a bushel and salt could be bought for less than $4.00 a barrel. Mr. Benton says that
"before the opening of the canal in 1844, the zone of the Maumee and upper Wabash valleys had sent towards Toledo only 5622 bushels of corn, five years later the exports from the same region, sent to that port, reached 2,755,149 bushels.
"For home consumption, the large number of laborers added to the population increased the demand for pro- duce, and much more money than ever before came into circulation.
" When the canal was begun, the upper Wabash Valley was a wilderness. There were only 12,000 scattered pop- ulation in all that district, but people began to flock int by wagon-loads so that the number had increased to two hundred and seventy thousand by 1840. In 1846, over thirty families every day settled in the State. Five
The Old Canal and Deserted Towpath.
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new counties were organized in three years following the opening of the first section of the canal from Fort Wayne to Huntington. Thirty per cent. of the emigrants entering the port of New York passed into the group of States where the Eric Canal and its connections were being con- structed. The boats that took grain up the canal brought back emigrants and homesteaders from the East. Thirty- eight counties in Indiana and nine in southeastern Illinois were directly affected by the new waterway. Long wagon trains of produce wended their way to the towns on the shores of the canal. In the year 1844, four hundred wagons in a day were waiting to unload at points like La Fayette and Wabash." 1
Towns rose and grew as a result of the canal com- merce, and the larger ones, which grew into cities, owed their first impetus to the same cause, and the railroad which succeeded it made their existence secure. We are told that in 1836 alone the land sales in Indiana amounted to three million acres. In addition to the enormous impetus given to agricul- tural exportation, the canal also supplied water-power for manufacturing. In one year nine flour mills were built along the new line, and eight saw-mills, and paper, woolen, and oil mills came into existence, doing a flourishing business. The population of the counties bordering along the canal increased 397% from 1840 to 1850, while counties containing better lands, but more remote from the waterway, only increased 190% in the same decade. The incoming population was of the most desirable quality, the majority being from Eastern and Northern States, and it was this inter- state migration of American-born people which caused
1 Benton, Elbert Jay, The Wabash Trade Route in the Development of the Old Northwest, Indiana Hist. Soc. Publications.
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an entire political change in the State. The element which came in from the North helped to counter- balance the early settlement of Southern pro-slavery people along the Ohio and lower Wabash rivers. The canal, also, largely reversed the tide of trade from New Orleans to New York, and changed the centre of population. In 1830, five-sixths of the people within the State lived in the southern tier of counties bordering on the navigable streams. Ten years later, says Mr. Benton,
"the line had pushed up and by 1850 there was an equal distribution, about as many living in the canal zone as the river counties. In 1860, the population on the Wabash was from forty-nine to ninety to the square mile, while along the Ohio River it varied from eighteen to forty- five persons to the square mile." 1
The Virginia, Carolina, and Kentucky settlements formerly had outnumbered the combined totals of New England and Middle State emigration. The finest flower of the Western States was from the intermar- riage of these families from the East joined with the South. Of the valuable acquisition of foreign laborers, it should be remembered that the Germans who came in were tired of monarchical traditions, and, attracted by the name and the opposition to slavery, they very largely attached themselves to the Republican party. Owing to the Know-Nothing agitation, just at this time the Irish became to a great extent affiliated with the Democrats, all of which helped to maintain the baiance of numbers between the two parties in Indiana, and made it, proverbially, a battle-ground in politics.
1 Benton, E. J., The Wabash Trade Route, Publications of Ind. II:st. Soc.
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The period from 1841 to 1843 saw the opening of through traffic on the Wabash and Erie Canal from the Lake to La Fayette. Ten years later, after passing through deep financial hindrances, as we have seen, it was completed-the 459 miles to Evansville. The years from 1847 to 1856, says Mr. Benton, may be considered the heyday of the canal. Within that period the tolls and income reached the highest mark, amounting in 1852 to $193,400.18. The passenger "packets " ran regularly, proceeding in a most leisurely way, stopping at every wharf for produce and pas- sengers. The little towns on the way could be recon- noitred during the delay of taking on and putting off freight, and one could call upon a friend, or conclude a business transaction, before the next stage of the journey was begun! Weary with the monotony of the journey, travellers often strolled along the tow- path ahead of the boat, while it was going through the locks, and they would gather berries or wild flowers along the banks. If it chanced to be in the autumn, they sometimes went nutting in the near-by forests. Games at cards were a great relief to the tedium of the voyage, and often the play ran high, and bunco men followed the line, as they did on the river steamers. There was time for reading and reflection on such a journey. Lifelong friendships were formed during the leisurely passage, and children played about as if at home. In pleasant weather the passengers always sat about on the top deck of the boat, arrayed in holiday attire, now unknown in travelling, and gliding smoothly along past field and forest, they found it a delightful way of seeing the country.
Sometimes we read tales of hot summer nights in stuffy staterooms and cabins, and marvellous stories
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of swarms of mosquitoes, which were probably the cause of malarial fevers often contracted en route. One young girl has left a bitter complaint, in print, of her various experiences along the way, and added that all the mosquitoes ever hatched in the mud puddles of Indiana were condensed into one humming, ravenous swarm about their heads.
Notwithstanding the beneficial effects on commerce, from the introduction of steamboat and canal trans- portation, as compared with old flatboats and wagon trains, their doom in turn was approaching. Steam had been applied to rail locomotion; even before Indiana's dearly bought system of internal improve- ment had been fairly inaugurated, the very masses of immigrants brought in by the waterways made more rapid transit of merchandise imperative. Says Mr. Benton :
"While the canals were immensely stimulating the business of the State and encouraging immigration, the very enlargement of the volume of traffic, in turn, called for a more general system of transportation. As a direct result, there grew up a railroad system which ruined the canals." 1
In the thirties, the friends of internal improvement were sharply divided concerning the relative merits of canals and railroads. It was admitted that for novelty and speed, a railroad might be preferable to stage-coaches and canal boats, but it was contended that for a long journey, or for a man travelling with a family, a canal was better! It was pointed out that on a canal boat passengers could eat their meals, could walk about, write a letter, or play a game of
1 Benton, E. J., Wabash Trade Route, Indiana Hist. Soc. Pub.
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poker, whereas in a railway carriage these things were impossible! In a canal boat, too, the passengers were as safe as at home, whereas in a railway car nobody could tell what might happen! The incoming of the railways was necessarily gradual and river traffic died as gradually. For example, it took eight years to complete the first railway in the State, and it stretched only from the Ohio River to the capital of the State. Vast sums had been expended in the canal ventures, and the bondholders tried to maintain the business. Steadily, the whole system refused to become profitable, and repairs were too expensive to be undertaken in the face of the new steam power. After dragging along for years in a dying condition, the Whitewater Canal was sold, for railroad right of way, in 1862 and 1865. The last section of the Wabash Canal was abandoned in 1874. Only the towns that chanced to lie along the route that was touched by the railroads survived. The immense old warehouses were abandoned to humbler uses, and to this day may be seen, where there is no longer any sign of the old canal save a depression in the surface of the land, grown up with reeds and rushes. Shadowy advertisements of the imports of teas, coffees, and spices may be deciphered, we are told, on the beams and walls; but the channel, which carried that mer- chandise, has gone like a tale that is told. Only a right of way for some other mode of transportation can be resurrected from its past.
The old National road, already referred to, proved to be an open sesame to the West, a great impetus to immigration and commerce. For years it was the highway from the Southeast.
During the years that the Internal Improvement
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Act was being carried out by the building of turnpikes and canals to give other outlets to market, the traffic southward by steamboats on the rivers had continued to prosper. There were always passengers travelling on the steamers, as well as the freight they carried, all of which was often interrupted by obstructions in the rivers. The streams continued difficult of navigation, and the building of railroads was urged to further commerce. The same innovation which caused the canals to be unprofitable and finally abandoned, also made the river traffic languish and die.
When the national tragedy of the Civil War was ended, the steamboat owners awoke to the fact that their calling was gone forever. That enemy of the river boats, the railroad, whose growth even the war could not check, had rapidly stretched its fingers out over the land. By consulting a map of forty-five years ago, it will be seen that the railroads of that time closely followed the banks of the rivers. They reached out, like the strands of a craftily laid net, to ensnare the business of the steamboats. In the face of such odds, defeat was inevitable. The river boats had to go, but the fight was an obstinate one. Says an old record:
"For ten long years the struggle between the railroads and steamboats went on; fierce and bitter for the first five, and, for the steamboats, vindictive and heroic to the last. Millions of dollars were invested in the great white vessels that glided up and down the Mississippi and its tributaries, but they dropped out of the race one by one, to be tied up to the bank and become the sport of time. Some far-seeing owners, knowing the fight lost for all time, dismantled their vessels and sold the fittings
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and machinery. Others, more obstinate or hopeful, kept their boats trim and clean, ready against the day when public sentiment and the flow of business should again come their way. Every spring they painted them, every day they polished the brasswork. Through the long idle summers, they would sit in the pilot-houses watching the railroad engines write, in letters of smoke, against the sky, the story of their doom. The hungry race for cargoes was responsible for more than one river tragedy, during the period of waning trade. Where, six years before, captains had haughtily steamed past landings, regardless of the frantic signals of planters whose cotton, wheat, or hemp was piled on the shore, they now found them- selves driven to the humiliating expedient of arguing with shippers in favor of their boats, as against the railroads. Captains scented cargoes from afar. The wind seemed to carry news of a waiting shipment, and idle boats raced to the scene, like a school of sharks. The first to arrive nearly always secured the cargo."
In an address on the future prospects of the inland capital of Indiana, a pioneer orator dilated on its improved prospects owing to the new invention of the propelling power of steam on land which was to revolutionize the channels of commerce. About the same time, when Judge Test was running for Congress, he sought to attract popular approval by referring to the new steam roads: "I tell you, fellow-citizens, that in England they are now running the cars thirty miles an hour, and they will yet be run at a higher speed in America." 1 This was enough, said his competitor for the office, the crowd set up a loud laugh at the expense of the Judge. An old fellow standing by bawled out: "You are crazy, or do you think
Test, Judge, Campaign Address.
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we are all fools? a man could not live a moment at that speed." The Judge was lost. His successful opponent had reason to wish the trains were then running, as it took him seventeen days on horseback to reach Washington City. The people were so enthusi- astic in projecting railroads, that in 1832 the legis- lature granted six charters in one day, but building them was quite another affair. The one from Madison to Indianapolis was the first one to be built in Indiana. It was constructed part of the way by the State, at a very gradual pace; and the remainder of the distance by private persons, enjoying a subsidy of land from the State. In 1839, this road had been completed twenty miles, to Vernon, and so deliberate was the extension that it did not reach Indianapolis until 1847! With the exception of the Madison road all of the first railways in Indiana, as in other States, were laid with "strap iron " on wooden rails. When other roads were being constructed, the Madison Railroad officials complained that their monopoly was being ruined by the competition of the other roads, since the State had passed a law granting charters to them! At first the railroads of Indiana were not parts of great through systems of transcontinental roads; but rather they radiated from the capital like the spokes of a wheel, connecting that city with river and lake ports. These roads traversed counties possessing wonderfully rich soil, and their agricultural products and live stock traffic enriched the companies that built them. The capitalists of each town imagined that they saw fortunes in railroad-building, and by 1853 there had been over fifteen opened to traffic. The mileage increased constantly. After the Civil War, on account of Indiana's geographical position,
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which made it necessary for the roads running east and west, north of the Ohio River, to pass across the State, her roads were made part of the great trunk systems. In a few years the surface of the common- wealth was a network of railroads. In 1907, there were 6976 miles of railways within the State. The development of Indiana attributable to steam roads is so in common with that of the whole country that it needs no special mention. The first telegraph line in the State was put up in 1848.
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