The National Road

The lack of easy and cheap transportation was a huge obstacle to western development.  The settlers found if difficult to reach their new homes.  Once there, supplies of salt, iron, hardware, fabrics, and food stuffs could be obtained only at great expense from the East.

The farmers produced maize, wheat, meats, and livestock, but these left little profit margin after the cost of getting the product to market.  It required a month to carry goods from central Ohio to Baltimore.  By 1820 three thousand wagons passed back and forth carrying western merchandise valued at 18 million dollars.

Internal improvements had to be made.  Indian trails became rough pioneer roadways, then developed into turnpikes.  Long before the War of 1812, Jefferson and other statesmen conceived of a great highway connecting the seaboard with the interior.When Ohio became a state in 1802, five percent of the sale of public lands were designated for building roads extending eastward.  In 1811, the greatest undertaking of its kind in the history of America began with 10 million dollars.

The Cumberland Road, known to settlers as the National Road, started at Cumberland, Maryland and pushed through the Alleghenies to Wheeling, West Virginia.  John McAdam of England developed the method of construction - laying crushed limestone over a prepared road bed in three layers, each layer packed down by traffic before the next was laid.  Curved to provide drainage in areas where spring rains were known to cause flooding, it worked well.

When it was proposed to extend further west to Indiana and Illinois by means of tolls, opinions raged.  Upkeep would be paid by the tolls, even extending roads to the north and south eventually.  While legal and constitutional battles went on, so did construction.  Columbus, Ohio in 1833,  Indianapolis in 1840, finally to Vandalia, Illinois.  Plans to take it to Jefferson City, Missouri were never completed. 

Cost was originally $10,000 a mile but became $13,000 a mile from West Virginia onward.  Until 1860 the National Road was a busy thoroughfare.  Lined with hospitable farmhouses and fast-growing towns, hardly a day passed without several covered wagons going by.  Citizens gathered to hear the travelers stories, news from the big Eastern cities like New York and Washington, even gossip from the next county.   The taverns and road houses offered a respite from travel and provided food and lodging.    Once the railroads and steamboats came, travel was easier and these small towns  faded from history, but in some parts of the rural Midwest you can still travel on what once was the iconic National Road that was so much a part of American history.

Next time...The Steamboat
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On May 27, 1831, Jedediah Smith, one of the nation's most important trapper-explorers is killed by Comanche Indians on the Santa Fe Trail.  Smith's role in opening the Far West was not fully appreciated until his far-ranging journeys were documented.  He "filled in the blanks" on many of the early explorers maps and gave a picture of the America West before it was settled.

Northwest Territory's First Governor

The Northwest Territory's first delegate to Congress was the son of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and from one of Virginia's most prominent families.  William Henry Harrison had been in the army as an aide to Anthony Wayne during the Fallen Timbers battle (see previous post about that battle).  Harrison was serving as Secretary for the Territory and Lieutenant Governor when elected to Congress.

William Henry Harrison was only twenty-six years of age, but his first victory in 1800 was to divide the Northwest Territory into two distinct governments.  The east side was Ohio and the west side was Indiana.  Harrison was made governor of Indiana and resided in Vincennes.  In 1802 Ohio would become the first state from the Northwest Territory.

Meanwhile, the white population was growing rapidly.  By 1810 Indiana had grown from a mere 2,500 people to 25,000.  In this new rush of pioneers, the rights of Indians were barely considered.  The great hunting grounds of deer, bear and buffalo had been laid waste by civilization by 1810.  The Congress had done little to uphold the law to protect natives and their property.  There were laws meant to prevent the sale of liquor to the Indian, but the courts only uphold them outside the boundaries of the state and the territory.

For the most part, the Northwest Territory ignored laws concerning Indians.  In a report, Harrison, known for his distaste for the native race, wrote that only 600 warriors were found on the Wabash and they consumed 6000 gallons of whiskey a year.  The effect was drunken brawls so often that the killing of natives by natives was no longer considered a crime.

Harrison made treaties with remnants of the Miami and Delaware (and smaller tribes) in the early 1800s which he viewed as "a body of the most depraved wretches on earth."  In 1809 Harrison acquired in the Treaty of Fort Wayne, 3 million acres up the Wabash.  This territory, more rich in game than any region south of Lake Michigan, was one more crisis for the natives in the long-brewing conflict with the white man.

Harrison as governor of the white settlers, would be put to the test by one young warrior arising from the Indian tribes...

Next time. Tecumseh calls for union
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On April 2, 1670, the Hudson Bay Company is chartered by King Charles II.  A permanent charter to a group of French explorers that opened the North American fur trade to London merchants, the charter conferred not only a trading monopoly but also control of the Hudson River and surrounding areas.

The Gloomiest Battle in the American West's History

On October 4, 1781, Governor St. Clair led an army of untrained forces from Cincinnati northward.  St. Clair made no secret of his plans nor did he protect his men from ambushes.  They made their way slowly through the deep forests, chopping down their own path, making only five or six miles a day.  The weather was good, game was plentiful, but the men were not content and desertions were a daily occurrence.  The men only made $2 a month and most men had no taste for Indian warfare, so their commander's threats did little to maintain order.

In November,  the remaining 1400 men camped on the eastern banks of the Wabash River, 100 miles north of Cincinnati near the Indian border.  In the early hours of November 4th, masses of Indians surrounded the troops giving them little chance of victory.  St. Clair called for his men to save themselves as best as they could.  Half of St. Clair's men were killed, less than 500 survived without injury and the remainder retreated starving and disheartened. 

The battle was one of the gloomiest defeats in the history of the West.  St. Clair's character and courage allowed him to be exonerated, but he resigned his military command but retained the governorship.

The situation went from serious to desperate.  The British along with aiding the Indians, invaded the disputed country and built a stockade at Fort Miami near the present site of the city of Toledo.  The Americans were once again told that "the Ohio will remain the boundary line between us." 
The new western campaign needed a new commander.  Washington's first choice was "Light Horse Harry" Lee, but the final assignment went to one "Mad" Anthony Wayne.

Next time...Mad Anthony Wayne
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On March 14, 1814, Albert Einstein is born as the son of a Jewish electrical engineer in Ulm, Germany. Einstein's theories of relativity greatly altered man' view of the universe, and his work in energy helped modernize our lives.