History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 43

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202

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But the supposed constitutional obstacles to the enterprise had not been sur- mounted. In May, 1822, President Monroe vetoed a bill to establish tollgates on the Cumberland Road, and accompanied his veto with an elaborate argument against the constitutional right of Congress to execute works of internal improve- ment, although admitting the power to aid such works from the National Treasury if constructed by the States. The same subject was brought forward again by a bill reported in January, 1824, authorizing the President to canse surveys, plans and estimates to be made for such roads, canals and like improvements as might be deemed necessary for postal, commercial or military purposes. To defray the ex- pense of carrying out its purposes, this bill appropriated the sum of thirty thousand dollars. Eloquently and vigorously supported by Mr. Clay, it passed both houses of Congress, and was signed by President Monroe, who waived his objections to it on the ground that it only provided for the collection of information.

Although the particular measure thus enacted resulted in nothing more impor- tant than a few surveys, it was a turning-point in the history of the National, or as the statutes call it, the Cumberland Road, and thenceforward its extension through Ohio proceeded steadily. On the fifth of October, 1825, Jonathan Knight, engaged in locating the road from Zanesville westward, arrived in Colum- bus at the head of a corps of engineers, among whom was Joseph E. Johnston, afterwards one of the most distinguished generals of the Confederate Army. "We understand," says the Ohio State Journal in announcing this arrival, "that he [Knight] will return to Zanesville, and divide the line he has located into halfinile sections, and make estimates of the probable expense of constructing it. We are further informed that the line he will locate will be only about one mile longer than a straight line ; that it goes about seven miles south of Newark, fourteen north of Lancaster, and intersects the canal about twentysix miles cast of this place. No grade of the road, it is said, will exceed three degrees, except about fourteen miles of the hilly country near Zanesville, some of which will probably amount to four and a half."

During the summer of 1826 Engineers Knight and Weaver, with their assist- ants, completed the permanent location of the road as far west as Zanesville, and made a preliminary survey of the line from Columbus west to Indianapolis. In Mr. Knight's report, laid before Congress during the winter of 1826.7, it was stated that between Zanesville and Columbus five different routes had been surveyed, that cia Newark being the longest by two miles, twentyfive chains and fortyseven links, but having the lowest grade and being least expensive by 82,740. As to the location of the line westward from Columbus the Ohio State Journal says :4

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

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 spacious as could be desired, yet it may answer the intended purpose for several years to come. Thence the location passes through the village of Franklinton, and across the low grounds to the bluff which is surmounted at a depression formed by a ravine, and at a point nearly in the prolongation of . the direction of Broad Street ; thence, by a small angle, a straight line to the bluffs of Darby Creek ; to pass 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 the valley of Beaver Creek.

In June, 1827, the engineers left Columbus for the boundary of Indiana to locate the road through that State. At the same time it was announced that the grad- ing between Wheeling and Cambridge had been nearly completed, and that the construction contracts as far west as Zanesville would soon be let.

The construction superintendent of the Ohio divisions of the road in 1827, was Caspar W. Weaver, whose report, for that year, to General Alexander McComb, Chief Engineer of the United States, contains the following statements indicative of the progress then being made in the work :

Upon the first, second and third divisions, with a cover of metal of six inches in thick- ness, composed of stone reduced to particles of not more than four ounces in weight, the travel was admitted in the month of June last. Those divisions that lie eastward of the village of Fairview together embrace a distance of very nearly twentyeight and a half miles, and were put under contract on the first of July, and first and thirtyfirst of August, 1825. This portion of the road has been, in pursuance of contracts made last fall and spring, covered with the third stratum of metal of three inches in thickness, and similarly reduced. On parts of this distance, say about five miles made up of detached pieces, the travel was admitted at the commencement of the last winter, and has continued on to this time. In those places where the cover has been under the travel a sufficient time to render it compact and solid, it is very firm, elastic and smooth. The effect has been to dissipate the prejudices which existed very generally, in the minds of the citizens, against the MacAdam system, and to establish full confidence over the former plan of constructing roads.

On the first day of last July, the travel was admitted upon the fourth and fifth divisions, and upon the second, third, fourth and fifth sections of the sixth division of the road, in its graduated state. This part of the line was put under contract on the eleventh day of Sep- tember, 1826, terminating at a point three miles west of Cambridge, and embraces a distance of twentythree and a half miles. . .. On the twentyfirst of July the balance of the line to Zanesville, comprising a distance of a little over twentyone miles, was let. This letting of the road was taken at more regular and fairer prices than any former one.

The engineer concludes by recommending, in earnest words, that " a system or plan for the regular repair and preservation of the road should be early devised and adopted." This suggestion he reinforces with the remark that " that great monu- ment of wisdom and beneficence of the General Government, the road from Cum- berland through the Alleghany Mountains to the Ohio River, has nearly gone to destruction for want of that provident care and constant attention which it required, and its great utility claimed." The contentions which arose as to the choice of routes through Licking and Franklin Counties, caused considerable delay in the westward progress of the work, and seem to have assumed some political aspects, for in September, 1827, we find Mr. John Kilbourne, then a candidate for Congress, announcing that, as to " location of the National Road from Zanesville

THE NATIONAL ROAD.

325

FORT CUMBERLAND IN 1755.

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ILISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

to Columbus " he was " decidedly in favor of the straight and direct route through the town of Hebron." Efforts were made to induce the General Assembly to declare its preference as to the rival routes, but a resolution by Senator Gault, of Licking, having that object in view was defeated. Referring to this subject in a letter written from Columbus August 18, 1831, Mr. Isaac Appleton Jewett remarked :

The progress of the National Road has been retarded by a great variety of conflicting interests among private persons who are not reconciled to the destined route between this and Hebron, twenty miles east of us. But the department have recently dispatched an officer into this quarter, wbo, after investigating, decided the matter, and operations are about to be resumed.

This controversy being allayed, and the Hebron route chosen, the Superintend- ent gave notice, in July, 1830, that he would receive proposals, in Columbus, "for grubbing, clearing and grading that part of the National Road lying from Colum- bus to the Big Darby, a distance of about twelve miles," and for " constructing the bridges, culverts and other necessary masonry for the above space;" also, " for grubbing, clearing and grading twentysix sections of one mile each, east of Colum- bus, extending from the Ohio Canal to said town, which will be divided into sec- tions of six and a half miles each for the construction of bridges, culverts, and other necessary masonry." Fourteen miles of the road westward from Columbus were put under contract about the same time, the first three miles to be graveled. The following additional appropriations for the construction, repair and extension of the road were made by Congress :

March 2, 1827, 830,000, for repairs from Cumberland to Wheeling.

March 2, 1829, 8100,000, " for opening and making the Cumberland Road west- ward from Zanesville, in the State of Ohio."

March 3, 1829, $100,000 to repair the road east of Wheeling.

March 2, 1831, $100,000 " for opening, grading and making the Cumberland Road westwardly of Zanesville, in the State of Ohio."

On March 2, 1831, Congress also passed an act consenting to and ratifying an act of the General Assembly of Ohio, passed February 4, 1831, taking into the care of the State so much of the completed road as lay within its borders.

An act of June 24, 1834, appropriated $200,000 for continuing the road through Ohio, and the same amount for its continuance through the States of Indiana and Illinois. This act further provided that, as soon as completed, the finished portions of the road should be surrendered to State control, and make no further claim upon the National Treasury. A similar provision was contained in the acts making subsequent appropriations for the work. "The Cumberland Road cost $6,670,000 in money," says Mr. Benton, " and was a prominent subject in Congress for thirty- four years - from 1802, when it was first conceived, to 1836, when it was aban- doned to the states."" Its total length in Ohio was three hundred and twenty miles, but that portion of it lying between Springfield and the Indiana boundary was still uncompleted when, by act of January 20, 1853, it was surrendered by Congress to the State. By appointment of the Governor, Seth Adams, of Zanes- ville, became State Superintendent of the road in 1831; in 1833, Mr. Adams was succeeded by Colonel George W. Manypenny, then editor of the St. Clairstille

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THE NATIONAL ROAD.

Gazette. The Superintendent of Construction in 1836 was Lieutenant G. Dutton, of the United States Engineers. In 1847 the resident engineer of the western divi- sion was John Field, of Columbus. Late in the thirties, the resident engineer and superintendent of repairs for the castern division was Thomas M. Drake.

One of the most important adjuncts of the road was the great suspension bridge by which it leaped the Ohio at Wheeling. This daring, aerial structure - a thrilling recollection of the writer's childhood -was begun in 1848 and com- pleted in 1854. The river interest fought it stubbornly, and obtained from the National Supreme Court a decision to the effect that the State of Virginia had no right to authorize the erection of such a bridge. To obviate this difficulty, Congress passed an act declaring the bridge a post route, whereupon the constitu- tionality of that act was contested in a famous legal argument at Washington, in which Edwin M. Stanton, afterwards the great War Secretary, represented the State of Pennsylvania, and Reverdy Johnson the City of Wheeling.

In Eastern Ohio, where the writer remembers it best - for beside it was his boyhood home - the National Road when completed, appeared like a white riband meandering over the green hills and valleys. It was surfaced with broken lime- stone, which, when compacted by the pressure of heavy wagons, became smooth as a floor, and after a rain almost as clean. Wagons, stages, pedestrians and vast droves of cattle, sheep, horses and hogs crowded it constantly, all pressing eagerly by the great arterial thoroughfare - for there were no railways then - to the mar- kets of the East. Westwardly, on foot and in wagons, traveled an interminable caravan of emigrants, or " movers," as they were commonly called, whose gipsy fires illuminated at night the roadside woods and meadows. For the heavy trans- portation both east and west huge covered wagons were used, built with massive axles and broad tires, and usually drawn by from four to six, and sometimes eight horses. The teamsters who conducted these " mountain ships," as they were known in the Alleghanies, were a peculiar class of men, rough, hearty, whiskered and sun- burned, fond of grog, voluble in their stories of adventure, and shockingly profane. Their horses were sturdy roadsters, well shod, fed and curried, and heavily har- nessed as became the enormous burdens they had to draw. When on duty, each of the animals in the larger teams bore upon its hames a chime of from three to six small bells, which jingled musically, and no doubt cheered the sweating toilers al their task, while the groaning wain rolled slowly but steadily up hill and down. Should one of these teams encounter another of its kind stalled in the road the teamster latest come was entitled by custom to attach an equal number of his horses to the stalled wagon, and should be be able to draw it out of its difficulty he had the right to appropriate as trophies as many of the bells of the balked team as he pleased. Thus the jingling of the champion was sometimes so prodigious, from the multiplicity of its bells, as to herald its coming from afar.

The road was frequented by traders, hucksters, peddlers, traveling musicians, small showmen, sharpers, tramps, beggars and odd characters, some of whom made periodical pilgrimages, and were familiar to the wayside dwellers from Columbus to Cumberland. The solitary places were also haunted, sometimes, by villains bent on crime, and many were the highway legends of robbery, murder and accident.

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

To Columbus, as to many other towns and cities along its line, the opening of this great thoroughfare was an event of immense importance. ' Commercially speaking it was a revolution.7 By means of it the East and West were for the first time brought into practicable and profitable trade relations. The difficulties of the slow, costly and painful methods of travel and transportation which had hitherto prevailed were immensely mitigated. But not trade alone profited by means of it ; the National Road was the great original pathway of civilization on this continent. The vast current of commerce which flowed along its path was a powerful agent, as commerce always and everywhere is, for the diffusion not of wealth only but also of light and knowledge. To this splendid enterprise, and to the statesmen who conceived it, Ohio and her capital owe an incalculable debt both material and moral.

The National Road flourished until the railway era dawned, then began its decay. Gradually, as course after course was opened for the wheeled couriers of steam, its inter-state and transcontinental currents of travel and traffic were di- verted, dwindled, and disappeared until nothing remained of its original glory but its convenience for neighborhood use. First, in 1854, lessees took charge of it, and a renewed tide of wagon emigration to the West enabled them to derive a profit from it for a time, although the opening of the Central Ohio Railway swept away nearly the whole bulk of its ordinary revenues. In 1859 this condition of things had so far changed that the contractors claimed to have lost heavily, and begged to be released. As to the condition of the road at that time there were conflicting statements, but the signs were unmistakable that its degeneraey had begun. On April 6, 1876, the General Assembly passed an act surrendering the road to the care of the counties, and, last scene of all, on October 23, of the same year, the City of Columbus assumed by ordinance the care and control of the road within its corporate limits.

Let an unknown poet of 1871 here take up the refrain, and fitly close this chapter :

THE OLD TURNPIKE.8

We hear no more the clanking hoof And the stagecoach rattling by, For the Steamking ruleth the travel world, And the old pike's left to die.

The grape ereeps o'er the flinty path, And the stealthy daisies steal Where once the stagehorse day by day, Lifted his iron heel.

No more the weary stager dreads, The toil of the coming morn, No more the bustling landlord runs At the sound of the echoing horn ;

For the dust lies still upon the road And the brighteyed children play, Where once the clattering hoof and wheel Rattled along the way.

I Chinchard

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THE NATIONAL ROAD.

No more we hear the eracking whip, And the strong wheel's rumbling sound,

For now the steamsprite drives us on, And an iron horse is found. ·

The coach stands rusting in the yard, The horse has sought the plow, We have spanned the world with an iron rail, And the Steamking rules us now.

The old turnpike is a pike no more, Wide open stands its gate, We have made us a road for our horse of steel, And we ride at a flying rate ;

We have filled the valleys, leveled the hills, And tunneled the mountain side, And around the rough crag's dizzy verge Fearlessly now we ride.

On, on, with a haughty front, A puff, a shriek, and a bound,

While the tardy echoes wake too late To bring us back the sound ;

And the old pike road is left alone, And the roadsters seek the plow ;

We have belted the earth with an iron rail, And the Steamking rules us now.

NOTES.

1. Venable's Footprints in the Ohio Valley.

2. Two later Presidents, Madison and Monroe, raised the same constitutional objection, and suggested the same remedy.

3. General Johnston's next visit to Columbus, after his services as engineer of the Na- tional Road, was made in July, 1873.

4. February 22, 1827.

5. Superintendent Weaver's assistant was John S. Williams, whose efficiency he strongly commends.

6. Thirty Years in Congress ; by Thomas H. Benton.

7. The location of the road through the town gave rise to a great deal of rivalry. The North and South " ends " of the borough, then divided by State Street, and both lying south of the present railway station, were each jealous of the advantages which the location might afford to the other. A compromise was therefore effected by which the road entered the borough on Friend, now Main Street, passed down High to Broad, and down Broad to the Scioto. This, it is said, was a great disappointment to some of the property owners in Frank- linton, who confidently expected that the road would cross the river and go westward on State Street instead of Broad.

8. Ohio Statesman, June 30, 1871.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE CANAL.

The Seventh Governor of Ohio was Ethan Allen Brown, a native of Con- necticut. He studied law with Alexander Hamilton, was admitted to the bar in 1802, began the practice of his profession at Cincinnati in 1804, was chosen by the General Assembly as one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Ohio in 1810, and in 1818 was elected Governor of the State. To him belongs the honor of having first officially and practically inaugurated the connection of the Ohio Valley by artificial lines of water transportation with Lake Erie and the markets of the East.

In 1816, while yet serving on the Supreme Bench, Judge Brown conceived the vast importance and beneficence of this enterprise. He therefore opened a correspondence on the subject with the great originator and champion of the Erie Canal, De Witt Clinton, and when elected Governor in 1818 embodied the convic- tions he had thus matured in his inaugural address. The ideas thus expressed were repeated with more particularity and emphasis in a message which Governor Brown transmitted to the General Assembly in January, 1819. By that time a bill had been introduced in the Senate to incorporate a company to excavate a canal from Lake Erie to the Ohio, but no steps for obtaining reliable information as to the feasibility of such a scheme had up to that time been taken. That the law- makers would act blindly in such a matter was not expected, but that a profes- sional survey and report should be provided for, as a basis of action, was most cogently urged. The Governor's reasoning, repeated and further emphasized in his messages of 1821 and 1822, was acquiesced in, and in January, 1819, a commit- tee to consider a plan of interior navigation was appointed. Early in 1820 the subject was again taken up, and on February 20, of that year, an act was passed appointing three commissioners to locate, through the public lands, a route for a navigable canal from Lake Erie to the Ohio River, and providing that a proposi- tion should be made to Congress to grant, in support of the improvement, two million acres of the lands which had lately been acquired from the Indians. Through various misadventures this act failed to produce any important result, and nothing practical was done until December 6, 1821, when a resolution was presented in the General Assembly by the Hon. Micajah T. Williams, of Cincinnati, referring the canal recommendations of the Governor's message to a special committec. From the committee appointed in pursuance of this resolution an able report was made by Mr. Williams, accompanied by a bill "authorizing an examination into the

[330]

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THE CANAL.

practicability of connecting Lake Erie with the Ohio River by canal." The bill became a law Jannary 31, 1822, and in accordance with its provisions, Benjamin Tappan, Alfred Kelley, Thomas Worthington, Ethan Allen Brown, Jeremiah Mor- row, Isaac Minor and Ebenezer Buckingham, Junior, were appointed commis- sioners to obtain the desired surveys and estimates. Jeremiah Morrow resigned after a service of some months and was succeeded January 27, 1823, by IIon. Mienjah T. Williams. Of four rontes suggested for examination, one crossed the State from the Maumee River, one from Sandusky Bay, one by the sources of the Black and Mus- kingum rivers, and one along the headwaters of the Grand and Mahoning. Coti- cerning one of the abovenamed commissioners appointed to execute this prelimin- ary work, local considerations require that some incidental facts should here be stated. The commissioner referred to, Hon. Alfred Kelley, to whose financial genins and exeentive energy the successful completion of the canal system of Ohio was chiefly due, and who afterwards became a distinguished citizen of Columbus whose public spirit and services have in many ways honored and benefited the city, had been elected in 1814, at the age of twentyfive, to represent the counties of Ashtabula, Cuyahoga and Geauga in the General Assembly, had been re- elected in 1815, and in 1821 had been chosen Senator from a district comprising the counties of Cuyahoga, Sandusky and Huron. After a careful study of the topography of the State Mr. Kelley had been profoundly convinced of the importance and feasibility of an artificial system of inland and eastern water transportation for Ohio, and had devoted himself to its realization about the same time, and with the same zeal as Governor Brown, to whom, in the practical inauguration of the scheme, he became a sagacious counselor and energetie helper.

The first engineer appointed to the service of the commission was James Geddes, with Isaac Jerome as assistant. A hardy pioneer, and a selftaught survey- or, Geddes had been employed as one of the engineers of the New York and Erie Canal. He was engaged for the Ohio service by Governor Trimble, at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars a year, and expenses. Governor Brown resigned January 4, 1822, to accept the office of United States Senator, but continned to serve as a member of the commission, and in June, 1822, went to Upper Sandusky to meet Mr. Geddes, and cooperate with him in his examination of the country between the Manmee and the Miami. As indicative of the progress of the work during the summer and autumn of 1822 the following contemporary chronicle, from the Columbus Gazette of September 12, is important and interesting :

Judge Tappan, Governor Worthington, Colonel Kelley, Judge Minor and Governor Brown, Canal Commissioners, met in this town on the fourth instant. We understand that they have directed the engineer to ascertain the practicability of constructing a canal from the Muskingum to the Scioto, through the valley of the Licking, so as to open a navigation from the Scioto country to Lake Erie, provided the supply of water on the Sandusky and Scioto summits should be found insufficient.

They have also directed the engineer to gange the streams which may be brought on to the Sandusky summit, to ascertain their sufficiency or insufficiency ; also to make further examination to ascertain whether Mad River can be brought on to the summit between the Scioto and Miami valleys.

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History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 43

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1202

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202