The railroad absorbed all passenger and freight traffic in the year 1852, after which date and to the close of the civil war, outside of home travel, the main vehicles on the Indiana division were “Prairie Schooners,” or semi-circular bedded, white-covered emigrant wagons, used by parties moving from Virginia and the Carolinas to Illinois.
Indianapolis as before stated is on the line of the road, but her proportions as a city are the outgrowth of other agencies. In the early days of Indiana’s capital the National Road was her only commercial artery, and her pioneer citizens regarded it as a great advantage to their aspiring town. The railway era dawned so soon after the road was located through Indianapolis that but few memories cluster about its history in that locality like those east of the Ohio river.
The last and only remaining large town of Indiana on the road is Terre Haute, a city like Indianapolis that has outgrown the memories of the road, and is probably little mindful of the time when her early inhabitants deemed it a matter of high importance to be located on its line. Though remote from the active centres of the historic road, Terre Haute is more or less associated with its stirring scenes and former prestige.
There was a striking similarity in the habits, manners and pursuits of the old inhabitants of the towns along the National Road, notably between Baltimore and Wheeling. The road was a bond that drew them together and united them as neighbors. There are many persons still living who remember when Frederic, Hagerstown, Cumberland, Uniontown, Brownsville, Washington and Wheeling derived their main support from the road, and their chief distinction from their location on its line. This feature was also true of the towns on the Appian Way, on authority of the classic author, Anthon.
Any one familiar with the National Road in its prosperous era, whose business or other engagements required a divergence from it, invariably returned to it with a sense of security and a feeling of rest and relief. This feeling was universal and profound. An illustration is furnished by Hon. William H. Playford, of Uniontown, who was born and reared on the road. After his college graduation he went South to teach, as did many other graduates of northern colleges. When his term as a teacher ended his heart of course yearned for home, and homeward he set his sails. He struck the National Road at Terre Haute, and the moment his eyes flashed upon its familiar surface he felt that he was among old friends and nearly home. It was the first object he had witnessed since his departure from the paternal roof that brought him in touch again with home.
Before the road was completed beyond the western boundary of the State of Indiana, the steam railway had become the chief agency of transportation and travel, and our grand old national highway was practically lost amid the primitive prairies of Illinois, so that whereas its splendor was favored by the rising, it was dispelled beneath the Setting Sun.
GEN. GEORGE W. CASS.