About 1805, therefore, men began to think of reviving the old idea of canals, which had been abandoned in 1793, and one of these canal companies, the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, applied to Congress for aid. This brought up the question of a system of internal improvements at national expense, and Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, was asked to send a plan for such a system to Congress, which he did. Congress never approved it.
%284. The National Pike.%—Public sentiment, however, led to the commencement of a highway to the West known as the National Pike, or the Cumberland Road. When Ohio was admitted into the Union as a state in 1803, Congress promised that part of the money derived from the sale of land in Ohio should be used to build a road from some place on the Ohio River to tide water. By 1806 the money so set apart amounted to $12,000, and with this was begun the construction of a broad pike from Cumberland (on the Potomac) in Maryland to Wheeling (on the Ohio) in West Virginia.[1]
[Footnote 1: McMaster's History, Vol. III., pp. 469-470.]
[Illustration: Phoenix[1]
[Footnote 1: From an oil painting.]
%285. Steamboats.%—This increasing demand for cheap transportation now made it possible for Fulton to carry into successful operation an idea he had long had in mind. For twenty years past inventors had been exhibiting steamboats. James Rumsey had exhibited one on the Potomac. John Fitch had shown one on the Delaware in 1787. (See p. 190.) In 1804 Robert Fulton exhibited a steamboat on the Seine at Paris in France; Oliver Evans had a steam scow on the Delaware River at Philadelphia; and John Stevens crossed the Hudson from Hoboken to New York in a steamboat of his own construction. In 1806 Stevens built another, the Phoenix.[1]
[Footnote 1: Preble's History of Steam Navigation , pp. 35-66;
Thurston's Robert Fulton in Makers of America Series.]
These men were ahead of their time, and it was not till the August day, 1807, when Robert Fulton made his experiment on the Hudson, that the era of the steamboat opened. His vessel, called the Clermont, made the trip up the river from New York to Albany in thirty-two hours.
[Illustration: Model of the Clermont[2]
[Footnote 2: Made from the original drawings, and now in the National
Museum.]