The Demand for Canals and Navigable Rivers.—Washington's Search for a Route for a Canal or Road to bind the East and West.—Much Money spent in the Attempt to make Certain Rivers Navigable.—Failure of the Potomac Company to improve Navigation on the Potomac.—The Need for a Potomac and Ohio Canal to withhold the Western Trade from the Erie.—The Potomac Canal Company, re-named the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company.—Apparent Impossibility of building a Canal from the Potomac to Baltimore.—Philip E. Thomas conceives the Idea of a Railroad from Baltimore to the West.—The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company's Jealousy of this Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company.—Both the Canal and the Railroad started.—Difficulties in the Way of Both.—The Canal's Exclusive Right of Way up the Potomac to be now shared with the Railroad.—The Railroad completed to the Ohio, 1853.—A Canal from Philadelphia to Pittsburg built rapidly.—The Alleghany Portage Railway opened for Traffic in Three Years.—Washington's Efforts to accomplish the Same End.—The Railways to a Large Extent supersede the Canals.

THOMAS AND MERCER: RIVAL PROMOTERS OF CANAL AND RAILWAY

Although the Cumberland National Road proved a tremendous boon to the young West and meant to the East commercially all that its promoters hoped, other means of transportation were being hailed loudly as the nineteenth century dawned. Improved river-navigation was one of these, and canals were another. When it was fully realized how difficult was the transportation of freight across the Alleghanies on even the best of roads, the cry was raised, "Cannot waterways be improved or cut from Atlantic tide-water to the Ohio River?"

In our story of Washington as promoter and prophet it was seen that at the close of the Revolution the late commander gave himself up at once to the commercial problem of how the Potomac River might be made to hold the Middle West in fee. Passing westward in the Fall of 1784, he spent a month in the wilds of Northern Virginia seeking for a pathway for canal or road from the South Branch of the Potomac to the Cheat River. The result of his explorations was the classic letter to Harrison in 1784, calling Virginia to her duty in the matter of binding the East and West with those strongest of all bonds—commercial routes bringing mutual benefit.

The immediate result was the formation of the Potomac Company, which proposed to improve the navigation of the Potomac from tide-water, at Washington, D. C., to the highest practicable point, to build a road from that point to the nearest tributary of the Ohio River, and, in turn, to improve the navigation of that tributary.

One stands aghast at the amount of money spent by our forefathers in the sorry attempt to improve hundreds of unnavigable American rivers. You can count numbers of them, even between the Mohawk and Potomac, which were probably the poorest investments made by early promoters in the infant days of our Republic. When, in the Middle Ages, river improvement was common in Europe, it was proposed to make an unnavigable Spanish river navigable. The plan was stopped by a stately decree of an august Spanish council on the following grounds: "If it had pleased God that these rivers should have been navigable, He would not have wanted human assistance to have made them such; but that, as He has not done it, it is plain that He did not think it proper that it should be done. To attempt it, therefore, would be to violate the decree of His providence, and to mend these imperfections which He designedly left in His works." It is certain that stockholders in companies formed to improve the Potomac, Mohawk, Lehigh, Susquehanna, and scores of other American streams would have heartily agreed that it was, in truth, a sacrilege thus to violate the decrees of Providence.

With Washington as its president, however, the Potomac Company set to work in 1785 to build a canal around the Great Falls of the Potomac, fifteen miles above Washington, D. C., and blast out a channel in the rocky rapids at Seneca Falls and Shenandoah Falls. Even during Washington's presidency, which lasted until his election as President of the United States in 1788, there was great difficulty in getting the stockholders to remit their assessments. Other troubles, such as imperfect surveys, mismanagement, jealousy of managers, and floods, tended to delay and discourage. The act of incorporation demanded that the navigation from tide-water to Cumberland, Maryland, be completed in three years. Nearly a dozen times the Legislatures of Maryland and Virginia, under whose auspices the work was jointly done, postponed the day of reckoning. By 1820 nearly a million dollars had been emptied into the Potomac River, and a commission then appointed to examine the Company's affairs reported that the capital stock and all tolls had been expended, a large debt incurred, and that "the floods and freshets nevertheless gave the only navigation that was enjoyed."

By this time the Erie Canal had been partly formed, and it was clear that it would prove a tremendous success; its operation was no longer a theory, and freight rates on merchandise across New York had dropped from one hundred dollars to ten dollars a ton. Of the many canals (which were now proposed by the score) the Potomac Canal, which should connect tide-water with the Ohio River by way of Cumberland and the Monongahela River, was considered of prime importance. Virginia and Maryland (in other words, Alexandria and Baltimore) had held, by means of the roads they had built and promoted, the trade of the West for half a century. The Erie Canal seemed about to deprive them of it all; the Potomac Canal must restore it! So the Virginians believed, and on this belief they quickly acted. The Potomac Canal Company—soon re-named the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company—was formed, and chartered by Virginia. Maryland hesitated; could Baltimore be connected by canal with the Potomac Valley? Before this doubt was banished a national commission had investigated the country through which the proposed canal was to run, and reported that its cost (the Company was capitalized at six millions) would exceed twenty millions! The seventy miles between the Potomac and the head of the Youghiogheny alone would cost nearly twice as much as the entire capital of the Company! And soon it became clear that it was impossible to build a connecting canal between the Potomac and Baltimore.

The situation now became intensely exciting. A resurvey of the canal route lowered the previous high estimate, and the Virginians and Marylanders (outside of Baltimore) believed fully that the Ohio and the Potomac could be connected, and that the Erie Canal would not, after all, monopolize the trade of the West. Alexandria and Georgetown would then become the great trade centres of the continental waterway from tide-water to the Mississippi basin,—in fact, secure the position Baltimore had held for nearly a century. Baltimore had been a famous market for Western produce during the days of the turnpike and "freighter"; the rise of the easy-gliding canal-boat, it seemed, was to put an end to those prosperous days. Trade already had become light; Philadelphia was forging ahead, and even New York seemed likely to become a rival of Baltimore's.

A Baltimore bank president—whose name must be enrolled high among those of the great promoters of early America—sat in his office considering the gloomy situation. That he saw it clearly there is no doubt; very likely his books showed with irresistible logic that things were not going well in the Maryland metropolis. This man was Philip Evan Thomas, president of the Mechanics' Bank. Before many days he conceived the idea of building a railroad from Baltimore to the West, which would bring back the trade that had been slipping away since the turnpike roads had been eclipsed by the canal. Baltimore's position necessitated her relying on roads; so far as the West was concerned there were no waterways of which she could avail herself. Railroads had been proving successful; one in Massachusetts three miles long served the purposes of a common road to a quarry advantageously. At Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, a railroad nine miles long connected a coal mine and the Lehigh River. Heavy loads could be deposited on the cars used on these roads, and on a level or on an upgrade horses could draw them with ease. If a short road was practicable, why not a long one? A three-hundred-mile railroad was as possible as a nine-mile road. Mr. Thomas admitted to his counsels Mr. George Brown; each had brothers in England who forwarded much information concerning the railway agitation abroad. On the night of February 12, 1826, an invited company of Baltimore merchants met at Mr. Thomas's home, and the plan was outlined. A committee was appointed to review the situation critically and report in one week. On February 19 the report was made, unanimously urging the formation of a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company.

The intense rivalry of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company forms of itself a historical novel. The name "Ohio" in their legal titles signifies the root of jealousy. The trade of the "Ohio country," which included all the trans-Alleghany empire, was the prize both companies would win. The story is the more interesting because in the long, bitter struggle which to its day was greater than any commercial warfare of our time, the seemingly weaker company, handicapped at every point by its stronger rival, and also held back because of the slow advance of the discoveries and improvements necessary to its success, at last triumphed splendidly in the face of every difficulty.

The first act in the drama was to hold rival inaugural celebrations. Accordingly, on July 4, 1828, two wonderful pageants were enacted, one at Baltimore and the other at Washington. At Baltimore the aged Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, laid the "cornerstone" of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. At Washington, President John Quincy Adams, amid the cheering of thousands, lifted the first spadeful of earth in the great work of digging a canal from Washington to Cumberland. The fact that the spade struck a root was in no wise considered an ill omen. Redoubling his efforts, President Adams again drove the implement into the ground. The root held stoutly. Whereupon the President threw off his coat, amid the wildest cheering, and, with a powerful effort, sent the spade full length downward and turned out its hallowed contents upon the ground. Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria were represented by dignified officials. Baltimore, so long mistress of the commerce of the West, was now to be distanced by the Potomac Valley cities.

And it was soon seen that the Canal Company did hold the key to the situation. Having inherited the debts and assets of the old Potomac Company, it also inherited something of more value,—that priceless right of way up the Potomac Valley, the only possible Western route through Maryland for either a canal or a railroad. The railroad struck straight from Baltimore toward Harper's Ferry and the Point of Rocks, on the Potomac; the Canal Company immediately stopped its work by an injunction. The only terms on which it agreed to permit its rival to build to Harper's Ferry was that a promise should be given that the Railroad Company would not build any part of the road onward to Cumberland, Maryland, until the canal should have been completed to that point.

Could it have been realized at the time, this blow was not wholly unfortunate. There were problems before this first railroad company in America more difficult than the gaining of a right of way to Cumberland. Every feature of its undertaking was in most primitive condition,—road-bed, tracks, rails, sleepers, ties, cars, all, were most simple. The road was an ordinary macadamized pathway; the cars were common stagecoaches, on smaller, heavier wheels. More than all else, the motor force was an intrinsically vital problem. Horses and mules were now being used; a car with a sail was invented, but was, of course, useless in calm weather, or when the wind was not blowing in the right direction. In the meantime the steam locomotive was being perfected, and Peter Cooper's "Tom Thumb" settled the question in 1830, on these tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. For a number of years the ultimate practicability of the machine was in question, but when the railroad was in a position to expand westward, in 1836, the locomotive as a motor force was acknowledged on every hand to be a success. In all other departments, likewise, the railroad had been improving. The six years had seen a vast change.

With the canal, on the other hand, these had been discouraging years. Though master of the legal situation, money came to it slowly, labor became more costly, unexpected physical difficulties were encountered, floods delayed operations. Again and again aid from Maryland had been invoked successfully; and now, in 1836, it was reported that three millions more was necessary to complete the canal to Cumberland. Maryland now passed her famous "Eight-million-dollar Bill," giving the railroad and canal each three million dollars, with a condition imposed on the Canal Company that the two companies should have an equal right of way up the Potomac to Cumberland. Though the directors of the Canal Company objected bitterly at thus being compelled to resign control of the situation, the needs of the Company were such that acquiescence was imperatively necessary. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was completed to Cumberland in 1851, at a cost of over eleven million dollars, the root of Maryland's great State debt.

The passage of this epoch-making law was the turning-point in this long and fierce conflict. It marked the day when the city of Baltimore at last conquered the State of Maryland,—when the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad mastered the situation, of which in 1832 the canal was master. The panic of 1837 delayed temporarily the sweep of the railway up the Potomac to Cumberland, but it reached that strategic point in 1842. Work on the route across the mountains was begun at various points, and the whole line was opened almost simultaneously. The first division, from Cumberland to Piedmont, was opened in June, 1851; by the next June the road was completed to Fairmount on the Monongahela River; and on the night of January 12, 1853, a banquet-board was spread in the city of Wheeling to celebrate the completion of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to the Ohio River. Of the five regular toasts of the evening none was so typical or so welcome as that to the president under whose auspices this first railway had been thrown across the Alleghanies,—"Thomas Swann: standing upon the banks of the Ohio, and looking back upon the mighty peaks of the Alleghanies, surmounted by his efforts, he can proudly exclaim, 'Veni, vidi, vici.'"

The story of the building of the Pennsylvania Canal, and later the Pennsylvania Railway, a little to the north of the two Maryland works, is not a story of bitter rivalry, but is remarkable in point of enterprise and swift success; it also shows another of the results of the successful operation of the Erie Canal.

In 1824 the Pennsylvania Legislature authorized the appointment of a commission to select a route for a canal from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. The success of New York's canal (now practically completed) impressed the Pennsylvanians as forcefully as it did Marylanders and Virginians; Philadelphia desired to control the trade of the West as much as New York or Baltimore. The earnestness of the Pennsylvanians could not be more clearly shown than by the rapid building of their canal. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal up the Potomac Valley was over twenty-five years in building; within ten years of the time the above commission was appointed, canal-boats could pass from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. The route, at first, was by the Schuylkill to the Union Canal, which entered the Susquehanna at Middletown; this was nominally the eastern division of the Pennsylvania Canal, it having been completed in 1827. The central division extended from Middletown (later from Columbia) up the Susquehanna and Juniata rivers to Hollidaysburg. This division was completed in 1834, at a cost of nearly five and one-half millions. The western division ran from Johnstown down the Conemaugh, Kiskiminetas, and Alleghany valleys; it was completed to Pittsburg in 1830, at a cost of a little over three millions.

As stated, canal-boats could traverse this course as early as 1834, and the uninformed must wonder how a canal-boat could vault the towering crest lying between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown, which the Pennsylvania Railway crosses with difficulty at Gallitzin, more than two thousand feet above sea-level. The answer to this introduces us to the Alleghany Portage Railway, a splendid piece of early engineering, which deserves mention in any sketch of early deeds of expansion and promotion in America.

The feat was accomplished by means of inclined planes; the idea was not at all new, but, under the circumstances, it was wholly an experiment. The plan was to build a railway which could contain eleven sections with heavy grades, and between them ten inclined planes. A canal-boat having been run into a submerged car in the basin on either side of the mountain, it could be drawn over the level by horses or locomotives, and sent over the summit, 1,441 feet above Hollidaysburg, on the inclines by means of stationary engines. The scheme was first advanced early in the history of the canal, but it was not finally adopted until 1831, and in three years the portage railway was opened for traffic. The ten planes averaged about 2,000 feet in length and about 200 feet in elevation. They were numbered from west to east. Certain of the levels were quite long, that between Planes No. 1 and No. 2 being thirteen miles in length; the total length of the road was thirty-six miles. It was built through the primeval forests, and an aisle of one hundred and twenty feet in width (twice as wide as that made for the Erie Canal) was cleared, so that the structure would not be in danger of the falling trees which were continually blocking early highways and demolishing pioneer bridges. Two names should be remembered in connection with this momentous work,—Sylvester Welch and Moncure Robinson, the chief and the consulting engineer who erected it.

It was in October, 1834, that the first boat, the "Hit or Miss" from the Lackawanna, was sent over the Alleghany Portage Railway intact. According to a local newspaper, it "rested at night on the top of the mountain [Blair's Gap], like Noah's Ark on Ararat, and descended the next morning into the valley of the Mississippi and sailed for St. Louis." Fifty years before, to the month, the pioneer expansionist, Washington, was floundering along in Dunkard Bottom seeking a way for a boat to do what the "Hit or Miss" did in those October days of 1834. It is a far cry, measured by hopes and dreams, back to Washington, but one feature of the picture is of great interest: in Washington's famous appeal to Governor Harrison in 1784 he said of the young West: "The Western inhabitants would do their part [in forming a route of communication].... Weak as they are, they would meet us halfway." What a splendid comment on Washington's wisdom and foresight it is to record that the ten stationary engines on the Alleghany Portage Railway, which hauled the first load of freight that ever crossed the crest of the Alleghanies by artificial means, were made in the young West, in Pittsburg! The West was certainly ready to meet the East halfway when their union was to be perfected.

But no sooner was the Pennsylvania Canal in working order than the success of railways was conceded on every hand. At first the eastern section of the canal was superseded by the Philadelphia and Columbia Railway, a portage railway from the Schuylkill to the Susquehanna. Then, in 1846 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was organized. The old route was found to be the best. The advance was rapid. In two years the road was open to Lewisburg in the Juniata Valley; the western division from Pittsburg to Johnstown was also built rapidly, and in 1852 communication was possible between Pittsburg and Philadelphia, the Alleghany Portage Railway still serving to connect Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. In 1854 this cumbersome method was superseded by the railway over the mountain by way of Gallitzin.

The Pennsylvania Canal, instead of delaying the Pennsylvania Road, assisted it, for the latter was encouraged by the State, and the State owned the canal. In 1857 the railway bought both the canal and its portage railway. The latter was closed almost immediately; the canal has been operated by a separate company under the direction of the Pennsylvania Railroad. But the whole western division from Pittsburg to Johnstown was closed in 1864, and the portion in the Juniata Valley was abandoned in 1899, and that in the Susquehanna Valley in 1900.

Two magnificent railways, standing prominent among the great railways of the world, have succeeded the old canals and that old-time Alleghany Portage Railway. But these great successes are not their richest possessions; they still own, we may well believe, that spirit which wrought success out of difficulty,—the persistent, irresistible ambition to better present conditions and overcome present difficulties, which is the very essence of American genius and the great secret of America's progress. If you wish a painting that will portray the secret of America's marvellous growth, ask that the artist's brush draw Philip Evan Thomas in his bank office at Baltimore, struggling with the problem how his city could retain the trade of the West; or draw Sylvester Welch struggling with his plans for the inclined planes of the Alleghany Portage Railway. There, in those eager, unsatisfied, and hopeful men, you will find the typical American.