“The work contemplated by this company (The Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad) is the establishment of a railroad communication between the city of Charleston and the Ohio. The distance between Charleston and Cincinnati in a straight line, is about five hundred miles. Several routes have been surveyed by which the length of the railroad will be about six hundred, but no line seems to have been definitely fixed upon. A railroad called the South Carolina, already exists between Charleston and Hamburg, a town situated on the Savannah opposite to Augusta, in Georgia, this railroad has been purchased by the company, and will be made use of as far as Branchville or Aiken. One plan is to carry the road projected from the former to Columbia, the seat of Government in South Carolina, and then up the valley of the Broad river into the State of North Carolina. After surmounting the Blue Ridge by inclined planes with stationary engines, the road would by this plan, be carried down the valley of the French Broad River to Knoxville, in Tennessee, and thence through Cumberland Gap, to Lexington in Kentucky; from the latter city separate roads would proceed to Louisville, Cincinnati and Mayesville. The distance from Charleston to Cincinnati by this route would be 607 miles.”[102]
Alluding to the Georgia route, he indicates the first as likely the route to be decided upon finally, and in the remarkably accurate map, for that date, shows that the line through North Carolina, is shorter by something like a fifth of the distance and that “the success of the South Carolina Railroad holds out a fair prospect for that of the greater work” as it—
“although thus successful had to contend with great disadvantages; it was not only the first railroad attempted in the Southern States, but was at the time it was completed the longest railroad that had been constructed in any part of the world ... so that the projectors could derive little benefit from the experience of other works of a similar nature—the whole work too, which is a singular circumstance, was executed by the black population. In addition to these drawbacks, the limited means of the company caused the work to be executed in a very imperfect manner.... The original cost of the road was $904,500.00 but the filling up of the spaces between the piles and other expenses increased the cost up to the 31st of October 1834 to $1,336,615.09. The present company have almost reconstructed the whole work; two-thirds of the purchase money which has been paid, together with the expenses which have already been incurred, having amounted to nearly two million of dollars.”[103]
Georgia had started its system from a point afterwards becoming Atlanta, towards which two roads were pointing, one from Augusta about due west and another from Savannah northwest to Macon, from which by an inclination north it moved towards the same point.
Hayne’s review of the commercial situation in the spring of 1838 indicated how clearly he grasped the fact that the revision of the tariff had failed to cure the conditions under which the South labored; for exporting more than a sixth of the total exports of the country, the three States of Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia imported less than one fortieth. If the South could only have been made to see it before the opportunity passed. His comment put it fairly:
“Look at the present course of trade between the South and the West. The importations from Tennessee and Kentucky into South Carolina and Georgia amount to millions of dollars, but instead of their being paid for in foreign goods imported directly into Charleston and Savannah in exchange for our own cotton and rice, we pay for them in gold or silver or in bills upon the North, thereby losing entirely the profits on the importation and greatly embarrassing our merchants by the operation. Now if we only had the means of transporting these goods by railroad to the West, everything would be changed. Not only would we pay for Western production consumed by the South, in foreign goods received in exchange for our own produce, but we should be able to supply a large portion of the Western country with all the goods now obtained by them from abroad, receiving in exchange their products to be distributed in Southern ships throughout the world. The truth is that all our efforts to establish a direct trade with Europe must in a great measure be unavailing unless we can provide a market in the West for the goods we may import. Our railroad with the aid of the South Western Railroad Bank, will achieve for us this important and peaceful victory.”[104]
But Kentucky and Tennessee did not constitute all that the railroad to Cincinnati led to. The description given by the English student of American affairs in 1839, shows what Ohio was at that date:
“Of the 75 counties of which it is composed, 14 lie upon the Ohio River, which in its windings bounds the State for 436 miles; while seven which border on Lake Erie possess a coast of upwards of 200 miles in extent. The great works which have been described, and others the result of private enterprise, have given almost equal advantage to the interior districts. Canals now made or making pass through 32 counties, railroads through six, and macadamized roads through five, so that of the 75 counties into which the State is divided, there are only 11 which do not benefit from either natural or improved means of communication, and many even of these are traversed or bounded by rivers of inferior magnitude. While its natural advantages and the industry of its inhabitants have thus secured for this State the benefits of an easy internal communication, its position is no less favorable for external commerce. The Ohio River affords a direct communication with all the country in the valley of the Mississippi, which requires much of its agricultural produce and of its manufactures while by means of Lake Erie, which has several good natural or artificial harbors, it communicates with Canada and New York on the one side and with the country of the upper lakes on the other.... When the communication is complete between the Ohio and Pennsylvania lines, and still more when the railroad is finished which is meant to connect Cincinnati with Charleston, in South Carolina, an additional stimulus will be given to the industry of the State. The completion of the latter work, by the importance it will confer on Cincinnati, is scarcely of less interest to Ohio than it is to the States whose territories it traverses.”[105]
It was from Ohio in 1835 that the movement had come headed by General Harrison, for railroad connection with South Carolina. We have discussed commercial conditions. What of political? Professor Paxson says:
“The Southern counties of the old Northwest were never unanimous for slavery, but they were thoroughly impregnated with the ideals of the South before the Northern tier of counties had been surveyed or cleared of Indians. North of the National Road (from Wheeling to Columbus, Indianapolis, Vandalia and St. Louis) roughly speaking, was the zone of the Erie Canal—by 1840 a new New England stood rival to a northern South within the three oldest States of the old Northwest. For another twenty years, from the election of Harrison to that of Lincoln, the political future of the section was indeterminate.”[106]