yond dispute that a locomotive could drag a train round a curve.* Pennsylvania chartered five railroads. The business men of Baltimore, fully aware that the activity of Pennsylvania threatened their western connections, called a public meeting, at which it was resolved to form a company and seek a charter for a railway to the West. The charter was obtained," and on the fourth of July, 1828, the corner-stone of what is now the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was laid with imposing ceremonies at Baltimore.|| Meanwhile the merchants of Charleston, South Carolina, became enthusiastic, called a public meeting, and sent a memorial to the Legislature praying for State aid and a charter. The State was asked to bear the cost of the survey of a route from Charleston to Hamburg-a town on the Savannah river, opposite Augusta-grant an act of incorporation, and exempt the property of the company from taxation. After a brief contest the act was passed. Almost at the same time the old idea of a railroad from Camden to some point on the rivers emptying into New York Bay was revived in earnest in New Jersey. There, too, a public meeting was held, at Mount Holly, and a memorial adopted. Situated as the State was, between two great centres of trade and commerce, and blessed with resources of her own waiting to be developed, it was a reproach to the enterprise of her citizens, the resolutions declared, that no line of interstate communication had been extended across her territory. Such a link in the chain of internal intercourse along the Atlantic coast was of the utmost importance to New Jersey. Therefore the meeting earnestly recommended the Legislature to grant a charter, and a liberal one, to a company for the construction of a railway from Camden to Amboy. Like meetings were *A model of the locomotive, together with the original tubular boiler and & drawing of the circular track, are in the National Museum at Washington. The ate was 1826. Laws of Pennsylvania. February 12 and 19, 1827. # Laws of Maryland, Chapter CXXIII, February 28, 1827. Niles's Weekly Register, July 12, 1828, vol. xxxiv, pp. 316-328. A Laws of South Carolina. New Jersey Mirror, January 16, 1828. 1827-28. MECHANICAL DIFFICULTIES. 145 now held at Burlington, Bordentown, Princeton, Trenton, and similar memorials sent up to the Legislature in behalf of four proposed railroads,* none of which were chartered. Virginia had already surveyed a route for a railroad from the coal pits of Chesterfield County to the banks of the James river opposite Richmond,† and had incorporated the Chesterfield Railroad Company. In Delaware, the people of Wilmington and vicinity met and discussed the expediency of a railroad from Elkton to Wilmington." Though many were planned, the work of construction went slowly on. The period 1825 to 1830 was one of preparation, and closed with but thirty-six miles of railroad in the country. The mechanical difficulties were great. The supply of engineers, of instrument-makers, of iron, was out of all proportion to the demand. When the Pennsylvania commissioners began work the president of the board reported that he had "made most diligent search and anxious inquiry after an engineer," and had not succeeded. When the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company was about to begin the building of its road-bed, Congress was asked to grant it permission to import the strap iron for its rails free of duty, because the quantity wanted—some fifteen thousand tons could not be had in the United States. The statement was flatly denied by the friends of American manufactures. Nevertheless, the Senate passed a bill remitting the duties.|| The only roads on which the work of track-laying went steadily forward were the Hudson and Mohawk, the Philadelphia and Columbia, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the South Carolina, and about as much was built in a year as can now be laid with ease in one day. Everything was experimental. The best form of road-bed, the strongest and *Camden to Amboy, Bordentown to South Amboy, Trenton to New Brunswick, Elizabethtown Point to Easton. + Resolutions passed at a General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Resolution No. 4, December 10, 1827. # Laws of Virginia, Chapter XCIII, February 27, 1828. Journal of the Senate, p. 328. most durable kind of rail, the most economical sort of motive power, were problems yet to be solved. According to the ideas then prevalent, there must be no steep grades, as few curves as possible, and these of the sharpest and worst sort. At first the rails were long wooden stringers, protected on the upper surface from the wear of the wheels by strap iron nailed on.* Then they were great blocks of granite, resting on granite ties,† and plated on the upper inner surface with strap iron bolted or riveted on; and, finally, “edge rails" of rolled iron on stone blocks and stone sills, or edge rails on stone blocks and wooden sills. Even when the rails were laid what was the best kind of motive power had not been determined. The astonishing success of Stephenson's locomotives on the Stockton and Darlington Railroad in England, and the signal triumph of his Rocket over all other competitors in the Liverpool and Manchester contest, convinced many that steam was the proper agent to use. But every experiment with a locomotive ended in failure. The Stourbridge Lion was imported from England and tried on the rails of the Delaware and Hudson Canal and Railroad Com * When the road had been graded, a series of trenches two feet long, two feet deep, and twenty inches wide was dug on either side of the road and filled with broken stone rammed down. These were joined in pairs by other trenches cut across the road-bed and also filled with broken stone, on which cross-ties were laid with the utmost care and accuracy. On top of the ties, and four feet apart, were the wooden rails, six inches square and from twelve to twenty feet long, plated on their upper surfaces with strap iron two and a half inches by five eighths of an inch by fifteen feet. A committee of the New York Legislature thus describes the Baltimore and Ohio track: "A line of road is first graded, free from short curves, as nearly level as possible. A small trench is formed for each track, and filled with rubble on which are laid granite blocks one foot square and as long as possible. The upper end and inner surface of each track are dressed smooth, as well as the ends of the blocks where they join. Bars or plates of wrought iron, half an inch thick, are laid on the granite blocks or rails in a line with the inner surface, and fastened with iron bolts or rivets entering four inches into the blocks, and eighteen inches apart." The "edge rails" were usually fifteen feet long, three and a half inches high, and weighed about forty-one pounds to the yard. The chairs into which the rail fitted weighed about fifteen pounds each, and rested either on stone blocks (12′′ × 12′′ × 20"), on stone stringers, twenty inches deep, or were made fast to wooden cross-ties or longitudinal sleepers. 1828. EARLY LOCOMOTIVES. 147 pany, only to be thrown aside.* The Tom Thumb was built by Peter Cooper, and run on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to prove that a locomotive could pass around a sharp curve,† and was soon forgotten. A locomotive built by Stephenson. was exhibited in New York city, but never drew a car. The early railroad managers were quite content to use the horse. While the people on the seaboard were thus promoting communication between the States by every means in their power by public meetings, by conventions, by subscriptions to the stock of railroads and canals, and by appeals to their Legislatures to undertake at public expense internal improvements too costly to be carried on by private enterprise, the Federal Government was besought year after year to do its share toward opening cheap communication with the remote parts of the far West. The veto of the Bonus Bill by Madison in the last hours of his administration checked but did not cool the ardor of the friends of internal improvement. A more liberal spirit, a less strict construction of the Constitution was hoped for from his successor a hope somewhat deferred by a passage in the first annual message of Monroe. Putting aside early impressions, I have given the subject, said he, all the deliberation required by its importance and a just sense of my duty; I am convinced that Congress does not possess the right, and suggest, therefore, that the States be asked to adopt such an amendment to the Constitution as will give Congress the right in question. The response of the House to this suggestion was prompt. Before a week had elapsed the proposed amendment was moved," and before a fortnight ended a long re * August 8, 1829. See History of the First Locomotives in America. W. H. Brown. Pp. 83, 87. The experiment is fully described in Brown's History of the First Locomotives in America, pp. 108-122. Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Richardson. Vol. ii, p. 18. See also History of the People of the United States, vol. iv, p. 423. # "Congress shall have power to pass laws appropriating money for constructing roads and canals and improving the navigation of watercourses. Provided, however, that no road or canal shall be constructed in any State, nor the navigation of its waters improved, without the consent of such State. And provided, also, VOL. V. port was made in which the objections of Monroe were answered.* Thus was the issue as to the constitutional power clearly drawn between the House and the President. It now remained to be determined whether or not the House would go further and make an appropriation, a step which it showed a readiness to take by adopting two resolutions calling for information. One asked the Secretary of War for a plan for the application "of such means as are within the power of Congress" for the construction of roads and canals that would be of use for military purposes in time of war. The other called on the Secretary of the Treasury for a similar report on roads and canals not especially designed for military purposes, and for a list of such public works then building or contemplated as might be deserving of congressional aid. Calhoun responded with a long report,† which the House laid on the table, and two years passed before anything more was heard of a national system of internal improvements. By that time the progress made in digging the Erie Canal, and the persistent demands of State after State for aid in the construction of some road or canal or the improvement of some watercourse or harbor,* once more forced the subject on the attention of the House, and a committee made bold to present a bill. Taking up the reports of Gallatin in 1808, and of Calhoun in 1819, it recommended a line of canals from Boston to Savannah; a great highway from Washington to New Orleans; a canal around the falls of the Ohio at Louisville, another from Lake Erie to the Ohio, and a third from that whenever Congress shall appropriate money to these objects the amount thereof shall be distributed among the several States in the ratio of representation which each State shall have in the most numerous branch of the National Legislature." * Report in part of the Committee of the House of Representatives of the United States on so much of the President's Message as relates to roads, canals, and seminaries of learning. House Documents, No. 11, Fifteenth Congress, First Session, vol. ii. See also History of the People of the United States, vol. iv, pp. 423-426. Report on Roads and Canals, January 7, 1819. January 10, 1821, a Committee of the House reported a bill. # May 4, 1822. |