nsas, and the whole Western Territories would have the
benefit of the improvement of the Mississippi, of the routes by Chicago,
Green Bay, the Ohio, and the whole system. The glorious new free State
of Western Virginia would have the benefit of all the routes up and down
the Ohio and Mississippi to the lakes, the Hudson, Delaware,
Susquehanna, and the Gulf. So would Kentucky, and the enlargement of the
Louisville canal would be within her own limits. When we reflect that
Kentucky borders for nearly a thousand miles on the Ohio and
Mississippi, with her streams, the Big Sandy, Licking, Kentucky, Green
river, and Barren (which last four have 766 miles of slackwater
navigation), Cumberland, and Tennessee, all tributaries of the Ohio, the
benefits to her would be prodigious. The interest of the States of
Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Alabama, on the
Tennessee river, and Texas, on the Red river, would be greatly promoted.
They would all have improved routes to and from the mouth of the
Mississippi, and to and from the Ohio, the lakes, and the Atlantic.
Eastern Virginia and North Carolina would derive great advantages by the
enlarged routes, connecting Albemarle sound and the Chesapeake with New
York, Philadelphia, the Hudson, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, and the
lakes. Delaware and Maryland could avail themselves most beneficially of
all these routes, and Baltimore would derive immense advantages from
the enlarged route by the Susquehanna to the lakes, having then as good
a route there as New York, and the difference of distance being only 30
miles. New Jersey, by her route from the Delaware and Raritan to the
Hudson, and by her rising cities near or opposite Philadelphia and New
York, and by the enlarged system to the lakes, would find all her
interests greatly advanced, and the business on her canals and railroads
vastly increased. Michigan, with a larger lake shore than any other
State, fronting on Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, St. Clair, the
connecting straits and rivers, and Lake Erie, would derive immense
advantages. By her immediate connection with the whole New York and
Eastern system, and by Toledo, Cleveland or Erie city, to the Ohio
river, and by the Chicago or Green Bay routes to the Mississippi and the
Gulf, her vast agricultural products in the peninsula would find new and
augmented markets; while, with the ship canal to Lake Superior, her
magnificent iron and copper mines on that immens