from the
Shawneetown, on the Ohio River, to the Sabine, and to Kaskaskias,
in Illinois (April 27, 1816, p. 112). The eleventh from Reynoldsburg,
on Tennessee River, in the State of Tennessee, through the Chickasaw
Nation, to intersect the Natchez road near the Chickasaw old town (March
3, 1817, p. 252). The twelfth: By this act authority was given to the
President to appoint three commissioners for the purpose of examining
the country and laying out a road from the termination of the Cumberland
road, at Wheeling, on the Ohio, through the States of Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois, to a point to be chosen by them, on the left bank of the
Mississippi, between St. Louis and the mouth of the Illinois River, and
to report an accurate plan of the said road, with an estimate of the
expense of making it. It is, however, declared by the act that nothing
was thereby intended to imply an obligation on the part of the United
States to make or defray the expense of making the said road or any part
thereof.

In the late war two other roads were made by the troops for military
purposes--one from the Upper Sandusky, in the State of Ohio, through
the Black Swamp, toward Detroit, and another from Plattsburg, on Lake
Champlain, through the Chatauga woods toward Sacketts Harbor, which have
since been repaired and improved by the troops. Of these latter there
is no notice in the laws. The extra pay to the soldiers for repairing
and improving those roads was advanced in the first instance from the
appropriation to the Quartermaster's Department and afterwards provided
for by a specific appropriation by Congress. The necessity of keeping
those roads open and in good repair, being on the frontier, to
facilitate a communication between our posts, is apparent.

All of these roads except the first were formed merely by cutting down
the trees and throwing logs across, so as to make causeways over such
parts as were otherwise impassable. The execution was of the coarsest
kind. The Cumberland road is the only regular work which has been
undertaken by the General Government or which could give rise to any
question between the two Governments respecting its powers. It is a
great work, over the highest mountains in our Union, connecting from
the seat of the General Government the Eastern with the Western waters,
and more intimately the Atlantic with the Western States, in the
formation of which $1,800,000 have been expended. The measures pursued
in this c