sixteen and to Nashville
in twenty-two days. The government of the United States, appreciating
the importance, for military purposes, of good roads leading to the
frontiers, commenced the construction of national, or military, roads.
A road was thus built from Baltimore through Cincinnati to St. Louis,
and another from Bangor to Houlton, in Maine. In 1807 Albert Gallatin,
Secretary of the Treasury, advocated the extensive construction of
public roads and canals by the general government. Mr. Gallatin took the
ground that the inconveniences, complaints, and perhaps dangers,
resulting from a vast extent of territory cannot otherwise be radically
removed than by opening speedy and easy communications through all its
parts; that good roads and canals would shorten distances, facilitate
commercial and personal intercourse, and unite by a still more intimate
community of interests the most remote quarters of the United States,
and that no other single operation within the power of the government
could more effectually tend to strengthen and perpetuate that union
which secured external independence, domestic peace and internal
liberty. The principal improvements recommended by Mr. Gallatin were the
following:

1. Canals opening an inland navigation from Massachusetts to North
Carolina.

2. Improvement of the navigation of the four great Atlantic rivers,
including canals parallel to them.

3. Great inland navigation by canals from the North River to Lake
Ontario.

4. Inland navigation from the North River to Lake Champlain.

5. Canal around the Falls and Rapids of Niagara.

6. A great turnpike road from Maine to Georgia, along the whole extent
of the Atlantic sea-coast.

7. Four turnpike roads from the four great Atlantic rivers across the
mountains to the four corresponding Western rivers.

8. Improvement of the roads to Detroit, St. Louis and New Orleans.

Mr. Gallatin also recommended that a sufficient number of local
improvements, consisting either of roads or canals, be undertaken so as
to do substantial justice to all parts of the country. The expenditure
necessary for these improvements was estimated at twenty million
dollars. Local jealousy and State rights prejudice practically defeated
this movement, the Cumberland road, or National Pike, being the only
result of any importance. The failure of the government to provide the
country with adequate roads left the construction of turnpike roads to
private ente