"A Perfect System of Roads and Canals"

After the close of the war with England in 1815, Americans turned their attention from the Atlantic to domestic problems at home. The rich agricultural production of the country, the small but expanding factories of eastern cities, and the largely untapped natural resources of the nation—all of these called for improvements in transport. In the half-dozen years after the Treaty of Ghent nearly every state and large city started to agitate for an expanded system of internal improvements. Taverns and exchanges across the land heard the warm arguments of farmers, merchants, and politicians as they advanced the rival claims of canals and turnpikes, of steamboats and railroads. The domestic and western trade increased, even with the internal improvements still in the dream stage, and there was a relative decline in the importance of foreign trade. This was to be expected for the growing population, which was increasing roughly a third each decade, was on the march to the interior. The center of population, which in 1810 had been but a few miles up the Potomac from Washington, had moved by the eve of the Civil War to a spot west of Athens, Ohio. While in 1815 only four of the states had lacked a seacoast, the new states of the next half-century were nearly all in the interior.

The expansion and growth were more than sectional. As John C. Calhoun (1782–1850), at the time a nationalist leader, said in 1817: "We are greatly and rapidly—I was about to say fearfully—growing. This is our pride, and our danger; our weakness and our strength ... Let us, then, bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals." Even before the nation had its roads and canals, Oliver Evans (1755–1819), the frustrated Philadelphia inventor and steam engine builder, was having a bigger dream. In 1812 Evans foresaw the day when "carriages propelled by steam will be in general use, as well for the transportation of passengers as goods, travelling at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, or 300 miles per day." The country first had to build its turnpikes, dig its canals, and fill its rivers with steamboats before it could construct its railroads. But it was the dream of Oliver Evans that was to bring much of the material progress gained in the new century. Farmers, factory owners, and merchants were soon to become impatient with the interruptions and delays of the slow-moving wagons and boats that were typical even with completed turnpikes and canals. They did not like to wait upon late winters, spring freshets, or muddy roads. They desired a form of land transport that was fast, cheap, and dependable. By the standards of the early nineteenth century even the first railroads soon were to provide that kind of transportation.

With peace the nation quickly turned to internal improvements. Less than a month after the Battle of New Orleans, Colonel John Stevens (1749–1838) of Hoboken obtained from the New Jersey legislature the first railroad charter in America, a grant to build a railroad between the Delaware and Raritan rivers. In 1817, when the longest completed American canal extended less than 28 miles, the New York legislature authorized the building of the Erie Canal, a 364-mile project. The next year saw the completion of the Cumberland, or National, Road to Wheeling, Virginia, an event which made westward migration to the new states of Indiana and Illinois much easier. The average western emigrant in 1818 probably floated down the Ohio River from Wheeling in a flat-boat, but in that year at least a dozen small, wheezing steamboats were already plying western rivers, a number destined to increase tenfold in a decade. Late in 1825 the westward movement was stimulated by the completion of the Erie Canal. Much earlier in that year Colonel Stevens had confounded his critics, who were pointing to his chartered but unbuilt railroad, by operating the first locomotive to run on rails in America. His sixteen-foot "Steam Waggon" carried hardy house guests around circular track on the grounds of his Hoboken estate at the rate of 12 miles an hour.

For half a generation after Ghent the roads and canals desired by Calhoun made most of the significant transportation headlines in America. Much progress in the construction of improved toll roads had been made before the War of 1812. Generally built by private-stock companies with charters from the state legislatures, the turnpikes were built along the major travel routes. The companies were allowed to gain a return on their investment by charging tolls on the traffic using the new road. The early success of the well-built Lancaster Turnpike, completed from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1794, resulted in a widespread demand for more roads. Dozens of turnpike companies planned and built roads in New England in the first years of the nineteenth century, and by 1825 a number of major roads criss-crossed southern New England. The record amount of land carriage caused by the blockade during the war with England made all sections of the country increase their road-building activity. The Pennsylvania legislature in 1816–17 granted state aid to 46 separate internal improvements, most of them turnpikes. By 1821 some 150 turnpike companies had been chartered in Pennsylvania, with state aid accounting for 35 per cent of the total subscribed capital of $6,401,000. Of the 1,807 miles of completed roadway, about two-thirds was well constructed with stone surfacing. In the same year New York could boast of 4,000 miles of completed roads, but the absence of any large amounts of state aid probably explained the lighter construction and lower cost or capitalization per mile in the Empire State ($3,500 per mile in Pennsylvania and $2,750 per mile in New York).

The rage for turnpikes was also present in the Old Northwest during the 1820s and 1830s, but few roads were ever completed, except in Ohio. In the southern states, except for Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, there was more promotion and planning than accomplished construction. Few of the turnpikes, North or South, ever achieved the profits promised by their promoters. New England was probably typical; only half a dozen of the 230 turnpike companies in the New England states ever returned their owners a reasonable dividend on investment.

The National Road was the greatest of all the turnpikes. Despite its extension to Wheeling in 1818 and to Columbus, Ohio, in 1833, this broad artery to the West had its problems. Although the federal government had spent $1,300,000 on the road in the preceding six years, Postmaster General Return J. Meigs, Jr. (1764–1824), complained to Congress in January, 1823, that on a recent inspection trip he found "the western (being the...