Transportation was long a difficult problem, although it became gradually less so. Travel by either water or land was slow and difficult. When a party of about one hundred men, conducted by Colonel R. M. Johnson, went, in six or eight boats, from St. Louis to the site of the present Galena, in 1819, to make an arrangement with the Indians which would permit the whites to mine lead, the upward voyage occupied some twenty days.390 Doubtless the journey of Edward Coles from Albemarle county, Virginia, to [pg 154] Illinois, in 1819, was typical of that of the better class of immigrants. At the Virginia homestead, slaves, horses and wagons were prepared for the long journey. A trusty slave was put in charge of the caravan of emigrant wagons and started out on the long journey over the Alleghanies to Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Mr. Coles started a few days later, overtook the party one day's journey from Brownsville, and upon arriving at that place bought two flat-bottomed boats, upon which negroes, horses and wagons, with their owner, were embarked. The drunken pilot was discharged at Pittsburg, and Coles acted as captain and pilot on the voyage of some six hundred miles down the Ohio to a point below Louisville, whence, the boats being sold, the journey was continued by land to Edwardsville, Illinois.391
April 5, 1823, a party of forty-three started from Cincinnati in a keel-boat, arriving at Galena, June 1, 1823. Twenty-two days were required to stem the flooded Mississippi from the mouth of the Ohio to St. Louis, and twenty of these were rainy days.392 In 1822 the English settlement in Edwards county sent several flat-boats loaded with corn, flour, beef, pork, sausage, etc., to New Orleans.393 Improvement of the Wabash was entrusted to an incorporated company in 1825, and several years earlier a canal across the peninsula at the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi was contemplated.394
Many immigrants came overland. The following is typical: “In the year 1819 a party of six men, and families [pg 155] of three of them, started from Casey County, Kentucky, for Illinois.... The first three were young unmarried men, the last three had their wives and children with them. They came in an old-fashioned Tennessee wagon, that resembled a flat-boat on wheels. The younger readers of this sketch can form but a faint idea of the curious and awkward appearance of one of these old fashioned wagons, covered over with white sheeting, the front and rear bows set at an angle of forty-five degrees to correspond with the ends of the body, and then the enormous quantity of freight that could be stowed away in the hole would astonish even a modern omnibus driver! Women, children, beds, buckets, tubs, old fashioned chairs, including all the household furniture usually used by our log-cabin ancestors; a chicken coop, with ‘two or three hens and a jolly rooster for a start,’ tied on behind, while, under the wagon, trotted a full-blood, long-eared hound, fastened by a short rope to the hind axle. Without much effort on your part, you can, in imagination, see this party on the road, one of the men in the saddle on the near horse, driving; the other two, perhaps on horseback, slowly plodding along in the rear of the wagon, while the boys ‘walked ahead,’ with rifles on their shoulders ‘at half-mast,’ on the lookout for squirrels, turkey, deer, or ‘Injin.’ ”395 Muddy roads sometimes caused emigrants to make long detours in the hope of finding better ones, and if the roads became impassable water transportation might be resorted to when the locality permitted.396 The fear of breaking down was omnipresent and danger from professional bandits397 was not [pg 156] lacking. There was also danger of being lost on the enormous prairies in Illinois.398
The best road from North Carolina to Indiana, for loaded wagons, was that which crossed the Blue Ridge at Ward's Gap, in Western Virginia, led through East Tennessee and Kentucky, and reached the Ohio River at Cincinnati,399 and this was a part of the route for some of the Illinois immigrants. Illustrations of the moving instinct, the ever-present desire to go frontierward, were constantly appearing.400 Although the greater proportion of immigrants came by either wagon or boat, some came on horseback and some on foot.401 One pioneer wrote: “My mother was a delicate woman and in the hope of prolonging her life, my father, in 1830, broke up his home at Windsor, Connecticut, and started overland for Jacksonville, Illinois. Most of the household furniture was shipped by water, via New Orleans and did not reach its destination until a year afterwards, six months after our arrival. The wagon for my mother was made strong and wide, drawn by three horses, so that a bed could be put in it and most of the way she lay in this bed. Most of the time the drive was pleasant but over the mountains it was rough and over the national corduroy road of Indiana, it was perfectly horrible.”402 A journey was made in 1827 in about four weeks over the same route that it had taken the same traveler seven and a half weeks to cover in 1822.403
[pg 157] Within the state changes in facilities for transportation were constant. From Shawneetown to St. Louis, by way of Kaskaskia and Cahokia, passed the great western road. There was also a road from Shawneetown, by way of Carmi, to Birkbeck's settlement in Edwards county.404 Frontier roads to different places seem to have been designated by different numbers of notches cut in the trees along the wayside.405 New roads were in constant demand. In February, 1821, the legislature authorized the building of a turnpike road, one hundred feet wide, from the Mississippi, opposite St. Louis, across the American Bottom to the Bluffs. Toll was to be regulated by the county commissioners, but it must be not less than twelve and one-half cents for a man and horse, twenty-five cents for a one-horse wagon or carriage, six and one-fourth cents for each wheel and each horse of other wagons and carriages, six and one-fourth cents for each single horse or head of cattle, and two cents for each hog or sheep. If at any time the county should pay the cost of the road, plus six per cent, the county should become the owner.406 A traveler writing late in 1822 says that a public road had just been opened between Vandalia and Springfield.407 During the same year, Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, one of the most active of the agents of the American Fur Company in Illinois, established a direct path or track from Iroquois Post to Danville. In 1824 this path, which was known as “Hubbard's Trail,” was extended northward to Chicago, and southward to a point about one hundred and fifty miles southwest of Danville. Along this trail trading-posts were established at intervals of forty or fifty miles. [pg 158] The southern extremity of the trail was Blue Point, in Effingham county.408 This became the regularly traveled route between points connected by it.
Springfield was the northern terminus of the mail route early in 1823, and the next year Sangamon county, in which the village lay, was almost entirely without ferries, bridges, or roads.409 In 1830 mail was carried between Vincennes and St. Louis thrice a week; between Maysville and St. Louis, and between Belleville and St. Charles twice a week. No point in Illinois, not on one of these routes, received mail oftener than once a week. There was at this time a mail route from Peoria to Galena.410 The legislatures of Indiana and Illinois petitioned Congress for an appropriation to improve the mail route from Louisville, Kentucky, to St. Louis, Missouri. The length of that part of the route which lay between Vincennes and St. Louis was one hundred and sixty miles, but a more direct route, recently surveyed by authority of the legislature of Illinois, reduced the distance to one hundred and forty-five miles. The distance between Vincennes and St. Louis was made up of about one-fourth of timber land and three-fourths of prairies, from five to twenty miles across. “The settlements are therefore scattered, and far between, and confined to the vicinity of the timbered land. More than nineteen-twentieths of the land, over which the road passes, is the property of the Federal Government. To make the necessary causeways and bridges, and to keep the road in a proper state of repair, is beyond the capacity of the people who reside upon it.” Another writer says of the [pg 159] route: “It must, for many years, be the channel of communication, through which the Government shall transmit, and receive, all its intelligence relative to the mines in the region of Galena, and Prairie Du Chien, the Military Posts of the Upper Mississippi, Missouri, and their tributary streams, and the whole northwestern Indian frontier.”411
Galena remained much isolated. A man who had horses and cattle, purchased in southern Illinois and driven to Galena, by way of Springfield and Peoria, in 1823, says that there was no settlement between Peoria and Fever River. A year before, a traveler who went from St. Louis to Galena, on horseback, arrived in time to assist in completing the second cabin in the place.412 Two travelers who walked from Upper Alton to Galena, in January and February, 1826, had to camp out several nights, because no residence was in reach. Much of the way no trail existed.413 About 1827 it was common for men to go with teams of four yoke of oxen, and strong canvas-covered wagons from southern Illinois to the lead regions. In those regions they spent the summer in hauling from the mines to the furnaces or from the furnaces to the place of shipment, usually Galena, and taking back to the mines a load of supplies. In the fall the teamsters returned to their homes, sometimes, in the early days, taking a load of lead to St. Louis. These men lived in their wagons, and cooked their own food. The oxen lived by browsing at night.414
Transportation rates can be only approximately given, [pg 160] because they varied with the condition of the weather or of the roads, and were frequently agreed upon by a special bargain. In 1817 steamboats are said to have descended the Ohio and the Mississippi at the rate of ten miles per hour, and to have charged passengers six cents per mile. Freight, by steamboat, from New Orleans to Shippingport (Falls of the Ohio), and thence by boats to Zanesville, was about $6.50 per 100 pounds.415 It took about one month to make the trip from New Orleans to Shawneetown—June 6 to July 10 in a specific case. Nine-tenths of the trade was still carried on in the old style—by flat-boats, barges, pirogues, etc.416 In December, 1817, freight from Shawneetown to Louisville was $1.12-½ per hundred weight; to New Orleans, $1.00; to Pittsburg, $3.50; to Shawneetown from Pittsburg, $1.00; from Louisville, $0.37-½; from New Orleans, $4.50. The great difference between the rates up stream and those down stream was due to the difficulty of going against the current.417 Cobbett estimated that Birkbeck's settlement, fifty miles north of Shawneetown, could be reached from the eastern seaboard for five pounds sterling per person.418 In 1819, the passenger rate, by steamboat, from New Orleans to Shawneetown, was $110; the freight rate $0.04-½ to $0.06 per pound, the high charges being attributed to a lack of competition, which the many new boats then building were expected to remedy.419 A party of nine people with somewhat more than six thousand pounds of luggage, wishing to start from Baltimore [pg 161] for Illinois, in July, 1819, learned that the water was so low that large boats could with difficulty pass from Pittsburg to Wheeling. They accordingly went from Baltimore to Wheeling, a distance of two hundred and eighty miles, by land. They had two wagons with six horses and a driver to each wagon. The price for transportation was three hundred and fifty dollars. At Wheeling a contract was made for transportation to Louisville, six hundred miles distance. For this, fifty dollars was paid, the passengers agreeing to help navigate the boat. At Louisville an ark was bought for twenty-five dollars, and two men were hired for eighteen dollars and their board, to take the party to Shawneetown, about three hundred miles distant. At Shawneetown the master of a keel-boat was engaged to take the luggage of six thousand pounds to a point about eleven miles from Birkbeck's settlement, for 37-½ cents per hundred pounds. The travelers proceeded on foot. The time occupied in the journey was: From Baltimore to Wheeling, sixteen days; from Wheeling to Shawneetown, thirty-eight days; from Shawneetown to the Birkbeck settlement, four days.420 A traveler in Illinois, in 1819, said that the usual price of land carriage was fifty cents per hundred pounds for each twenty miles; sometimes higher, never lower, and that it would not pay to have corn transported twenty miles.421 In 1820, the charge for carrying either baggage or persons from Baltimore to Wheeling was reported as from five to seven dollars per hundred weight. Persons wishing to travel cheaply had their luggage transported while they walked.422
In 1823 the following passenger rates, by steamboat, were quoted: From Cincinnati to New Orleans, $25.00; to [pg 162] Louisville, $4.00; to Pittsburg, $15.00; to Wheeling, $14.00; from New Orleans to Cincinnati, $50.00; from Louisville to Cincinnati, $6.00; from Pittsburg to Cincinnati, $12.00; from Wheeling to Cincinnati, $10.00. The time quoted for passage up stream was never less than twice that for passage down stream.423 Early in 1825 the Louisiana Gazette (presumably of New Orleans) reported that a steamboat had made the 2200 miles from Pittsburg in sixteen days,424 and a few weeks later another steamer arrived at Shippingport, at the Falls of the Ohio about two miles below Louisville, thirteen days from New Orleans, this time including three days detention from the breaking of a crank.425 Rates quoted in 1826, per one hundred pounds, were: From Pittsburg to St. Louis, in keel-boats, $1.62-½; to Nashville, $1.50; to Louisville, $0.75; to Cincinnati, $0.62-½; to Maysville, $0.50; to Marietta, $0.40; to Wheeling, $0.18-3/4; in wagons, from Pittsburg to Philadelphia, $1.00 to $1.12-½; from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, $3.00; from Philadelphia to Wheeling, $3.50.426 A Columbus, Ohio, editor declared that it required thirty days and cost $5.00 per hundred to transport goods from Philadelphia to Columbus, while it required but twenty days and $2.50 to transport from New York.427 No explanation was given, but the most probable one is the opening of the Erie Canal. Illinois buyers could, of course, take advantage of the cheaper rate as well as the inhabitants of Columbus. The freight schedule agreed upon by the owners, masters, and agents of steamboats in July, 1830, was, per 100 pounds, as follows: Pittsburg to Cincinnati, $0.45; Pittsburg to Louisville, [pg 163] $0.50; Wheeling to Cincinnati, $0.40; Wheeling to Louisville, $0.45; Cincinnati to Louisville, $0.12-½; in the reverse direction rates were the same, except that the rate from Louisville to Cincinnati was $0.16. Freight on pork, from Cincinnati to Louisville was $0.20 per barrel, and on flour and light (probably meaning empty) barrels, $0.15 per barrel. The schedule rates were not, however, generally adhered to, many boats carrying freight at from 2-½ to 5 cents lower than the quoted rate.428 At this time there were 213 steamboats in use in western waters—an increase of about three-fold since 1820.429 Improved transportation caused a better market price for produce in the West. In 1819, at Cincinnati, flour sold at $1.37-½ per barrel, corn at from $0.10 to $0.12 per bushel, and pork at $0.10-½ per pound,430 while in 1830, in the same market, flour from wagons sold at $2.65 per barrel, or from store at $3.00; corn at $0.18 to $0.20, and pork at $0.05 per pound ($10.00 to $10.50 per barrel).431 The influence of improved transportation on emigration is obvious. In regard to steamboat navigation it should be noted that in 1817 rates up-stream were more than three times as high as rates down-stream, in 1823 the former were less than twice the latter, and in 1830 the two were about equal. During the same period the time of up-stream passage was diminished more than one-half. Steamboats had not driven out the ruder crafts, but more and more use was being made of the more expeditious means of transportation, and its effect on the future economic activity of the West could already be seen.
Naturally the difference in price of the same commodity [pg 164] in two different markets was dependent in large measure on the ease or difficulty of transportation. In the latter part of 1817, corn was $0.24 to $0.30 and wheat $0.75, in Illinois, while corn was $0.50 and wheat $0.75 at Cincinnati.432 In 1825 wheat was worth hardly $0.25 per bushel, while it sold for $0.80 to $0.87-½ in Petersburg, Virginia, and flour was $6.00 per barrel at Charleston, South Carolina, and was scarce even at that price in Nashville, Tennessee. At the same time corn sold for from $0.08 to $0.10 in Illinois, and for $1.75 to $2.00 in Petersburg, Virginia.433 In 1826 wheat sold in Illinois at $0.37-½, and in England at $2.00 (nine shillings).434 In 1829 flour was scarce at Galena. A supply from the more southern settlements in Illinois sold at $8.00 per barrel, and the farmers were urged to bring more.435 This was in October. In November flour was quoted at Galena at $9.00 to $10.00 per barrel, while it sold at St. Louis for $4.50 to $5.50. In December, Cincinnati flour was from $10.00 to $10.50 and Illinois flour from $8.00 to $8.50, at Galena, whereas in the succeeding August they were $5.00 and $4.00, respectively. In November, 1829, the one article of food that was quoted as cheaper at Galena than at St. Louis was potatoes. They were $0.25 per bushel, at Galena, and from $0.37-½ to $0.50 at St. Louis. Butter was $0.25 to $0.37-½ at Galena, and $0.12-½ to $0.20 at St. Louis; corn, $0.50 at Galena, and $0.25 to $0.31 at St. Louis; beef, $0.03-½ to $0.04-½ at Galena, and $0.01-½ to $0.02 at St. Louis; whisky, $0.62-½ per gallon at Galena, and $0.30 to $0.33 at St. Louis.436
