New Orleans, Jan. 8, 1835.
One of the points in which modern society differs most from the ancient, is, certainly, the facility of travelling. Formerly it was possible only for a patrician to travel; it was necessary to be rich even to travel like a philosopher. Merchants moved in caravans, paying tribute to the Bedoweens of the desert, to the Tartars of the steppes, to the chieftains perched, like eagles, in castles built in the mountain passes. Instead of the English stage-coach, or the post-chaise, rattling at high speed over the paved road, they had the old Asiatic litter or palanquin, still preserved in Spanish America, or the camel, the ship of the desert, or four bullocks yoked to the slow wagon, or for the common citizens or the iron warriors, the horse; and instead of those sumptuous steam-packets, genuine floating palaces, the small and frail bark, pursued by robbers on the rivers and by pirates by sea, the sight of which extorted from the Epicurean Horace the exclamation of terror,
Illi robur et æs triplex—Circa pectus erat.
The roads were then rough and narrow paths, rendered dangerous by the violence of men, or by the monsters of the forest, or by precipices. A long train of luggage, provisions, servants, and guards, was necessary, and from time to time the traveller reposed himself with some hereditary friend of his family, for there were then no comfortable hotels, in which he can now procure all he needs for money, and command the attentive services of officious attendants. If there were any place of shelter, it was some filthy den, like the caravanserais of the East, wretched, naked, and comfortless, where he found nothing but water and a roof, or like the inns of Spain and South America, which are a happy mean between a caravanserai and a stable. The great bulk of mankind, slaves in fact and in name, were then attached to the glebe, chained to the soil by the difficulty of locomotion.
To improve the means of communication, then, is to promote a real, positive, and practical liberty; it is to extend to all the members of the human family the power of traversing and turning to account the globe, which has been given to them as their patrimony; it is to increase the rights and privileges of the greatest number, as truly and as amply as could be done by electoral laws; I go further, it is to establish equality and democracy. The effect of the most perfect system of transportation is to reduce the distance not only between different places, but between different classes. Where the rich and the great travel only with a pompous retinue, while the poor man, who goes to the next village, drags himself singly along in mud and sand, over rocks and through thickets, the word equality is a mockery and a falsehood, and aristocracy stares you in the face. In India and China, in the Mahometan countries, in half-Arabian Spain and her former American colonies, it matters little whether the government is called republic, empire, or limited monarchy; the peasant and the labourer cannot there persuade himself that he is the equal of the soldier, the brahmin, the mandarin, the pacha, or the noble, whose retinue runs over him, or covers him with mud. Spite of himself, he is filled with awe at its approach, and servilely bends before it as it passes him. In Great Britain, on the contrary, in spite of the wealth and the great privileges of the nobility, the mechanic and the labourer, who can go to the office and get a ticket for the railroad cars, if they have a few shillings in their pockets, and who have the right, if they will pay for it, of sitting in the same vehicle, on the same seat with the baronet or the peer and duke, feel their dignity as men, and touch, as it were, the fact, that there is not an impassable gulf between them and the nobility.
These considerations would make me slow to believe in the tyrannical projects of a government which should devote itself zealously to the task of opening roads through the country, and diminishing the time and expense of transportation. Is it not true that ideas, as well as goods, circulate along the great highways, the canals, and the rivers, and that every travelling clerk is more or less a missionary? Those who are possessed with the retrograde spirit, are fully convinced of this fact; they favour no projects of internal improvement; they fear an engineer almost as much as they do a publisher of Voltaire. As it is undeniable that one of the first railroads in Europe was constructed in the Austrian empire, as the imperial government has opened many fine roads from one end of its possessions to the other, and as it is encouraging the introduction of steamboats on the Danube, I may venture to conclude that Von Metternich deserves a better reputation than he enjoys, on this side the Rhine. You know, on the other hand, that during the short ministry of M. de Labourdonnaye, in 1829, the surveys and plans of various roads in Vendée disappeared from the archives, and have never since been found. Only a few months ago, in Puebla, one of the free and sovereign States of the Mexican confederacy, which, however, enjoys a very high reputation for ignorance and bigotry, the representatives of the people, animated with a holy wrath against those ruthless unbelievers (mostly foreigners), who have pushed the sacrilegious spirit of innovation so far as to set up a line of stage-coaches between Vera Cruz and Mexico, and to repair the great road between the two cities, imposed an annual tax of 135,000 dollars upon them, and prohibited their taking any tolls within the limits of the State.
There is a region where, by simply perfecting the means of water-transportation, a revolution has been produced, the consequences of which on the balance of power in the New World are incalculable. It is the great Valley of the Mississippi, which had, indeed, been conquered from the wild beasts and Red Skins previous to the invention of Fulton, but which, without the labours of his genius, would never have been covered with rich and populous States. After the conquest of Canada had put an end to the brilliant but sterile exploits of the French on the Ohio and the Mississippi, the Anglo-Americans, then subjects of the king of Great Britain, began to spread themselves over the Valley. The first settlers seated themselves in Kentucky, and occupied the soil for agricultural purposes. In a short time they had effaced from its surface the slight traces, which the French, almost exclusively engaged in hunting, had left of their passage. Instead of the little and restless, but indolent race produced by a cross of French with Indian blood, the new comers, avoiding all mixture with the natives, produced a laborious and energetic population, which, on this fertile soil, and like its natural productions, acquired those gigantic proportions, which characterise the West-Virginian, the Kentuckian, and the Tennesseean, no less than the trees of their forests. Without ever laying aside their rifles, which forty years ago were carried to divine service in Cincinnati itself, they cleared and brought under the plough, the fertile tracts, which were converted into fine farms for themselves and their rapidly multiplying families. They had to pass days of terrour and distress, and in many an encounter with the Indians, from whom they conquered the wilderness, more than one husband, and more than one father, fell under the balls of the Red men, were dragged into the most wretched captivity, or underwent the horrid torments of the stake. The name of Blue Licks still sounds in the ears of Kentucky, like that of Waterloo in ours. Before the decisive victory of the Fallen Timber, gained by General Wayne, two American armies, under the command of Generals Harmer and Saint Clair, were successively defeated with great slaughter. The story of this long struggle between the whites and the Red men is still repeated in the bar-rooms of the West.
In 1811, although the formidable Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet, had not yet been conquered by General Harrison, the American had extended his undisputed empire over the most fertile districts of the West. Here and there villages had been built; and the forest every where showed clearings, in the midst of which stood the log-house of some squatter or some more legal proprietor. On the left bank of the Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee had been erected into States, and Western Virginia had been settled. A current of emigration had transported the industrious sons of New England upon the right bank of the river, and by their energy the State of Ohio had been founded, and already contained nearly 250,000 inhabitants. Indiana and Illinois, then mere Territories, gave fair promise of the future. The treaty of 1803 had added to the Union our Louisiana, in which one State and several Territories, with a total population of 160,000 souls had already been organised. The whole West, at that time, had a population of nearly a million and a half: Pittsburg and Cincinnati were considerable towns. The West had, then, made a rapid progress, but separated as it was from the Gulf of Mexico by the circuitous windings and the gloomy swamps of the Mississippi, from the eastern cities by the seven or eight ridges that form the Alleghany Mountains, destitute of outlets and markets, its further progress seemed to be arrested. The embryo could grow but slowly and painfully, for want of the proper channels through which the sources of life might circulate.
At present, routes of communication have been made or are making from all sides, connecting the rivers of the West with the Eastern coast, on which stand the great marts, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, and Charleston. At that time, there was not one which was practicable through the whole year, and there was not capital enough to undertake one. All the commerce of the West was carried on by the Ohio and the Mississippi, which is, indeed, still, and, probably, always will be, the most economical route for bulky objects. The western boatmen descended the rivers with their corn and salt-meat in flat boats, like the Seine coal-boats; the goods of Europe and the produce of the Antilles, were slowly transported up the rivers by the aid of the oar and the sail, the voyage consuming at the least one hundred days, and sometimes two hundred. One hundred days is nearly the length of a voyage from New York by the Cape of Good Hope to Canton; in the same space of time France was twice conquered, once by the allies and once by Napoleon. The commerce of the West, was, therefore, necessarily very limited, and the inhabitants, separated from the rest of the world, had all the rudeness of the forest. It was in this period and this state of manners, that the popular saying, which describes the Kentuckian as half horse, half alligator, had its origin. The number of boats, which made the voyage up and down once a year, did not exceed ten, measuring on an average about 100 tons; other small boats, averaging about 30 tons measurement, carried on the trade between different points on the rivers, beside which there were numerous flat boats, which did not make a return voyage. Freight from New Orleans to Louisville or Cincinnati was six, seven, and even nine cents a pound. At present the passage from Louisville to New Orleans is made in about 8 or 9 days, and the return voyage in 10 or 12, and freight is often less than half a cent a pound from the latter to the former.
In 1811, the first steamboat in the West, built by Fulton, started from Pittsburg for New Orleans; it bore the name of the latter city. But such are the difficulties in the navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi, and such was the imperfection of the first boats, that it was nearly six years before a steamboat ascended from New Orleans, and then not to Pittsburg, but to Louisville, 600 miles below it. The first voyage was made in twentyfive days, and it caused a great stir in the West; a public dinner was given to Captain Shreve, who had solved the problem. Then and not before, was the revolution completed in the condition of the West, and the hundred-day boats were supplanted. In 1818, the number of steamboats was 20, making an aggregate of 3,642 tons; in 1819 the whole number that had been built was 40, of which 33 were still running; in 1821, there were 72 in actual service. In that year the Car of Commerce, Captain Pierce, made the passage from New Orleans to Shawneetown, a little below Louisville, in 10 days. In 1835, after fourteen years of trials and experiments, the proper proportion between the machinery and the boats was finally settled (See Note 21). In 1827, the Tecumseh ascended from New Orleans to Louisville in eight days and two hours. In 1829, the number of boats was 200, with a total tonnage of 35,000 tons; in 1832, there were 220 boats making an aggregate of 40,000 tons, and at present there are 240, measuring 64,000 tons. According to statements made to me by experienced and well-informed persons, the whole amount of merchandise annually transported by them between New Orleans and the upper country, is at least 140,000 tons. The trade between the basins of the Ohio, the Tennessee, and the Upper Mississippi, not included in this amount, forms another considerable mass. To have an idea of the whole extent of the commerce on the western waters, we must also add from 160,000 to 180,000 tons of provisions and various objects, which go down in flat-boats. This amount is, indeed, enormous, and yet it is probably but a trifle compared with what will be transported on the rivers of the West in 20 years from this time; for on the Erie canal, which, compared with the Mississippi is a line of but secondary importance, and at a single point, Utica, 420,000 tons passed in a period of seven months and a half.