1823.

THE CUMBERLAND ROAD.

149

the Potomac at Washington to the Potomac at Cumberland; and good means of communication of some sort between the Susquehanna and the rivers Seneca and Genesee; between the Tennessee and the Savannah, and the Tombigbee and Alabama. That so grand a system might be undertaken intelligibly, the bill provided for the appropriation of a sum of money to procure the necessary surveys, plans, and estimates." To have passed it would have been idle, for ere the session closed Monroe sent back a bill far less radical in character with his veto.

66

The national road from Cumberland in Maryland to Wheeling on the bank of the Ohio in Virginia was fast going into decay for want of regular superintendence and repairs. The Postmaster-General, who rode over it from end to end, declared that in some places the bed was cut through by wheels; that in others it was covered with earth and rocks that had fallen down from the sides of the cuttings; and that here and there the embankment along deep fillings had so washed away that two wagons could not pass each other. A bill was therefore sent to the President providing for the establishment of toll-gates at regular intervals along the road for the collection of tolls, and setting apart the money so gathered as a fund with which to meet the cost of repairs. But, in the opinion of Monroe, a power to establish turnpikes with gates and tolls, and to enforce the collection of tolls, implied a power to adopt and execute a general system of internal improvement, and this he did not consider Congress possessed. That his views might not be misunderstood, the veto was followed by a long message reviewing the history and explaining the meaning of the Constitution.*

All hope of a national system of internal improvements during the rest of Monroe's term was now ended. Maryland, indeed, attempted to revive the project, and bade her senators and representative introduce a constitutional amendment,† pledge her to a hearty support of internal improvements,‡

* Views of the President of the United States on the Subject of Internal Improvements. Richardson. Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. ii, pp. 144-183. Resolution of January 11, 1823.

Resolution communicated January 3, 1823.

and urge an appropriation to repair the Cumberland Road.* But all to no purpose. The utmost that could be obtained was an act appropriating money for surveys, plans, and estimates for such canals and roads as the President might deem of national importance from a commercial or military point of view or necessary for the transmission of the public mails,† and in the last hours of his administration another extending the Cumberland Road from Canton to Zanesville, and providing for a survey for a further extension to the capital of Missouri.+

The completion of the National Pike was, in its day and time, a matter of much importance. It began at Cumberland, on the banks of the Potomac, passed through Hagerstown in Maryland, and Uniontown, Brownsville, and Washington in Pennsylvania, and across Virginia to Wheeling on the Ohio. With the pike from Baltimore to Cumberland, it made a great through line of communication between the East and the West, and was already the favorite highway with travellers bound for the Ohio Valley.

Such a journey was usually begun by taking boat at Philadelphia, going down the Delaware to New Castle, crossing by stage to Frenchtown on the Elk river, a tributary of Chesapeake Bay, and then boarding another steamboat for Baltimore. Twenty years had seen a marvellous betterment in the means and speed and cost of travel. Steamboats, turnpike, ferryboats, bridges, and, above all, competition, had accomplished wonders on the routes between the great seaboard cities. But no corresponding improvement had taken place in the comforts and conveniences of the inns and taverns at which the traveller was forced to stop. We lodged, said one traveller, at the City Hotel, which is the principal inn at New York. The house is immense, and was full of company; but what a wretched place! The floors were without carpets, the beds without curtains. There was neither glass, nor mug, nor cup, and a miserable little rag was dignified with the name of towel. At another inn the same traveller was shown to a

Resolution of December 18, 1822.
March 3, 1825.

† Approved April 30, 1824.

1826.

DISCOMFORT OF TRAVEL.

151

room with nine other men. "I secured a bed to myself," said he, "the narrow dimensions of which precluded the possibility of participation, and plunged into it with all possible haste, as there was not a moment to be lost." His companions "occupied by triplets the three other beds which the room contained.” * When you alight at a country tavern, says another, it is ten to one that you stand holding your horse, bawling for the hostler, while the landlord looks on. Once inside the tavern, every man, woman, and child plies you with questions. To get a dinner is the work of hours. At night you are put with a dozen others into the same room, and sleep two or three in a bed between sheets which have covered twenty wayfarers since they last saw the tub. In the morning you go out-of-doors to wash your face, and then repair to the bar-room to behold your countenance in the only looking-glass the tavern contains.† Much allowance must indeed be made for the tales of travellers. Yet the combined testimony of them all is that a night in a wayside inn was something to be dreaded, and to this the western highways afforded no exception. Saving the inns and such discomfort as came from rising at three o'clock in the morning and sitting for sixteen hours in a crowded coach, still made on the pattern of twenty years before, a ride from Baltimore to Wheeling was most enjoyable. The road-bed was hard, the horses were fine, and the scenery as the road crossed the mountains was magnificent.

Beyond the mountains every year wrought wonderful changes. In the river towns and on the farms bordering the Ohio and its tributaries life had become much easier. The steamboats supplied the large settlements already claiming to be cities, while smaller craft carried goods, wares, and merchandise to every farmhouse and cluster of cabins. The Ohio was now dotted with floating shops. At the sound of a horn the inhabitants of the village or the settler and his family would come to the river to find a dry-goods boat fitted with counters, seats, and shelves piled with finery of every sort making fast

* Personal Narrative of Frederick Fitzgerald De Roos, 1826, pp. 5, 85, 86. + Miner's Journal, November 28, 1825.