WAY BILL USED ON SLAYMAKER STAGE LINE FROM LANCASTER TO PHILADELPHIA, 1815
States wanted appropriations for other roads, but these were pretty generally vetoed. One important case was the veto, 1830, by Jackson of the bill authorizing a subscription by the United States for stock in the Maysville, Washington, Paris, and Lexington Road Company. The company was incorporated in Kentucky to build a road from the Cumberland Road at Tanesville, Ohio, to Florence, Alabama, on the Tennessee River, which had been surveyed by U. S. engineers in 1827. Maysville, through which the road was to pass, was on the south side of the Ohio River, and did considerable trade in Kentucky and Tennessee. A census was taken of the existing road, admitted to be in bad condition, showing an average daily traffic of 351 persons, 33 carriages and 51 wagons. The $150,000 to be subscribed by the government was not to be paid until an equal amount had been subscribed in equal parts by the State of Kentucky and private individuals. Other bills of a similar character were before Congress, one for a road from Buffalo to New Orleans having been laid on the table, and opponents of the bill insisted any road anywhere could be as well regarded to be a national road as could be the Maysville road. The Washington Turnpike Company bill of a similar tenor was vetoed.[46] Jackson evidently doubted the constitutional right of the government to enter into internal projects of this character. In his message to Congress he had conceded that “every member of the Union, in peace and in war, will be benefited by the improvement of inland navigation and the construction of highways in the several states,” he noted the opposition to methods heretofore adopted as unconstitutional and inexpedient. He therefore proposed an amendment to the constitution, to be submitted if it could not otherwise be done, whereby the surplus revenue might be appropriated to the several states in proportion to their representation in Congress for the purpose of internal improvements. State sovereignty was always to be maintained.
In 1838 when the road had reached Southern Illinois a new element entered the industrial world. The railroads were proving their ability to compete most successfully with other forms of transportation. The building of national highways ceased; canal and river transportation were practically put out of business with the entrance of this new leviathan.
SELECTED REFERENCES
Adams, Henry, “Life of Albert Gallatin,” Edited by Henry Adams, Vol. I, pp. 78, 79, 305, 309, 370, 395. J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia.
Boone, Daniel, “Autobiography,” dictated to John Filson, 1784, is given also as an appendix to Hartley’s “Life of Daniel Boone.”
Calk, William, “Diary of” in Filson Club publications.
Doddridge, Joseph, “Notes on the Settlement of Indian Wars.” Chaps. I, XIII, XVIII, XXIV; First publication, 1824, Third—Rittenour & Linsey, Pittsburgh, 1912.
Dunbar, Seymour, “A History of Travel in America,” 4 volumes, 1915, Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis.
Early, Alice Morse, “Stage Coach and Tavern Days.”