The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1927-09-22
National Road Threads More Than
A Century Of Nations History.

been with Braddock in trying before
that to force open the way into Ohio.
Boone, as one of Braddock's team
sters, learned of Cumberland Gap
from an older scout at the Pennsyl-
vania mountain camp fires.
This was the first of four armies
sent to make the Ohio country inhab-
liable for the English. Of the Bri-
fish armies Braddock's was a failure
and Forbes a success. Of the A
merican armies St.Clair's was a fail
ure and Wayne's a success.
Four military campaigns, great for
the time and region, excluding that
of George Rogers Clark, had been re-
quired for the Northwest territory
and meanwhile the unaided frontiers
men, going up the Shenandoah Val
ley and into the folds and gaps of the
mountains and north by Cumberland
Gap or west from Knoxville by the
States.
Moreover, the stubbornly resisting
territory had become the first great
public domain and common property
of the nation, receiving it's laws and
its land tenure from the sovereignty
of the republic and not tracing it to
the grant of the crown. 1t was ap-
parent that the nation had to bind
this child to it.
When the enabling act permitting
Ohio to form State was passed by
Congress one section provided that
five percent of the money derived
from the sale Of public lands should
be devoted to the construction of
roads from navigable waters in the
East to and within the new State.
The new States south of the Ohio
were slave. The northwest Territory
by it's fundamental law in the con-
gressional ordinance of 1887 was
free. Rufus Putnam and his New
England associates had settled at
Marietta marie Antoinette) on the
Ohio. They had entered by the
Forbes road through Pennsylvania, by
Lancaster, Carlisle, Shippensburg and
Bedford.
The energy of the Kentuckians a
gainst the Indians and the George
Rogers Clark invasion Of Illinois had
made that settlement possible.
Settlers from Connecticut had come
through New York to lay the founda-
lions of Cleveland. Near Cincinnati
there were three settlements from
New Jersey. Virginians were in the
Scioto valley.
Ohio, Indiana and Illinois along the
Ohio are perceptibly Southern to this
day. In the Civil War the Southern
sympathies were of political if not
military importance. The struggle
for the new territory was to be conse-
quential. The great highway was a
determining factor.
Before this road found its way
from Atlantic tidewater to the Missis-
sippi the nation underwent a mighty
Transformation. Before it was begun
the Louisiana purchase sent the from
tier from the Mississippi to the Pa
cific. The aristocracy of the Federal
lists disappeared.
Henry Clay's American plan of in
ternal improvements and protected in
dustries won against Jeffersonian de-
Capitalization. Jackson appeared to
rewrite jefferson and reestablish the
Union, asserting that there could be
central strength with democracy.
A steamboat went not only down
but up the Mississippi in 1872.
A canal carried the waters of Lake
Erie to the Atlantic. The canal fever
began and was run into delirium,
and Baltimore, alarmed for it's future,
began to lay rails for railroad, ex-
perimenting with sails and horse
tread mills for motive power.
The National road, known by law
and at first in usage as the Cumber-
land road or pike, was built by army
engineers, many of whom later found
reputation and some later death, in
the Mexican war and some in the Civil
war.
They built a road which was Roman
in it's purposes. Macadam had been
used in some building before by pri-
vate capital, and MacAdam himself
was one of the engineers of the Ma
tional road. Jefferson signed the first
act of Congress providing for the
building in 1906.
Costs were very high. From Cum
berland, Md, to Uniontown, Pa, it
was nearly $4,000 mile, and more
from there to Wheeling. The mountain
stretch made an average from Mary
land to the Ohio of $4,000 mile. The
highest point of the road was Negro
Mountain, where it was at an eleva-
ton of 1888 feet. The roadbed was
eighty feet wide.
The bridges were the famous S
structures of the most durable mas
onry. Some are now being taken out
because the motorist finds the curves
inconvenient if not hazardous, but
they resisted floods and flood debris by
not presenting a surface to a frontal