%283.  Internal Improvements:  Roads; Canals; Steamboats.%—­But there was yet another great change for the better which took place between 1790 and 1815.  We have seen how during this quarter of a century our country grew in area, how the people increased in number, how new states and territories were made, how agriculture and commerce prospered, and how manufactures arose.  It is now time to see how the people improved the means of interstate commerce and communication.

You will remember that in 1790 there were no bridges over the great rivers of the country, that the roads were very bad, that all journeys were made on horseback or in stagecoaches or in boats, and that it was not then possible to go as far in ten hours as we can now go in one.  You will remember, also, that the people were moving westward in great numbers.

As the people thus year by year went further and further westward, a demand arose for good roads to connect them with the East.  The merchants on the seaboard wanted to send them hardware, clothing, household goods, farming implements, and bring back to the seaports the potash, lumber, flour, skins, and grain with which the settlers paid for these things.  If they were too costly, frontiersmen could not buy them.  If the roads were bad, the difficulty of getting merchandise to the frontier would make them too costly.  People living in the towns and cities along the seaboard were no longer content with the old-fashioned slow way of travel.  They wanted to get their letters more often, make their journeys and have their freight carried more quickly.[1]

[Footnote 1:  McMaster’s History of the People of the United States, Vol.  III., pp. 462-465.]

About 1805, therefore, men began to think of reviving the old idea of canals, which had been abandoned in 1793, and one of these canal companies, the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, applied to Congress for aid.  This brought up the question of a system of internal improvements at national expense, and Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, was asked to send a plan for such a system to Congress, which he did.  Congress never approved it.

%284.  The National Pike.%—­Public sentiment, however, led to the commencement of a highway to the West known as the National Pike, or the Cumberland Road.  When Ohio was admitted into the Union as a state in 1803, Congress promised that part of the money derived from the sale of land in Ohio should be used to build a road from some place on the Ohio River to tide water.  By 1806 the money so set apart amounted to $12,000, and with this was begun the construction of a broad pike from Cumberland (on the Potomac) in Maryland to Wheeling (on the Ohio) in West Virginia.[1]

[Footnote 1:  McMaster’s History, Vol.  III., pp. 469-470.]

[Illustration:  Phoenix[1]]

[Footnote 1:  From an oil painting.]