From 1830, when the Legislature authorized construction to begin, until 1840, the sale of the Indian lands yielded $241,332, with several hundred acres remaining to be sold. As noted earlier, Indiana also received grants from Congress under its Statehood Act from the proceeds of public land sales within the State. For a decade, these were the two principal sources of funds for wagon roads. When they were exhausted, Indiana, like its neighbors, turned to private financing and chartered plank road and turnpike companies to finish the job.
Land Grants to the States for Wagon Roads
The grant of Potowatomi lands to Indiana was not the first Federal land grant to a State for roads, or the last. The first significant Federal land grant was in February 1823 when Congress granted Ohio a 120-foot right-of-way for a public road from the lower rapids of the Miami River of Lake Erie to the western boundary of the Western Reserve. To finance the road, Congress gave the State all the public lands for 1 mile on each side of the road, with the proviso that they could not be sold for less than $1.25 per acre.[1]
Congress subsidized a toll turnpike from Columbus to Sandusky by another grant to Ohio in 1827. This grant gave the State every alternate section of land abutting the west side of the road.[2]
The Maysville Turnpike veto put an end to further wagon road subsidies, other than the National Road, until the Civil War. Between 1863 and 1869, however, Congress made 10 separate grants of land to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Oregon for certain “military” wagon roads. These, with the previous grants to Indiana and Ohio, totaled 3,560,000 acres,[3] or about 5,500 square miles—an area somewhat larger than Connecticut.
Federal Land Subsidies for Canals
Prior to President Jackson’s administration (1829–1837), Federal largesse extended not only to roads, but canal and river improvements as well. In March 1822, Congress granted Illinois a 180-foot right-of-way for a canal to connect the Illinois River and Lake Michigan. This act authorized the State to take construction materials from adjacent public lands and, in addition, granted Illinois one-half of the public lands in a strip 10 miles wide centered on the canal. In return, the State agreed that the canal would be “a public highway for the use of the Government of the United States, free from any toll or charge whatever, for any property of the United States, or any persons in their service.”[4]
This Illinois River-Lake Michigan Canal grant was the first land subsidy voted by Congress for internal improvements, and became a precedent for the subsequent granting of immense tracts of the public domain.
An act of May 24, 1828, which, as a subsidy to canals, granted Ohio 500,000 acres to be selected from any available public lands within the State, became the precedent for the general act of September 4, 1841, granting 500,000 acres each to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Michigan and to each public land State admitted thereafter.[N 1] These grants were to be used for specified internal improvements, such as roads, railways, bridges, canals, river improvements, and draining of swamps.[5]
Military Roads—The Natchez Trace
Until the construction of the Cumberland Road and the Pennsylvania Road, the only outlets for the produce of the Ohio River Valley were by packhorse trains across the mountains or downriver in flatboats and rafts. At New Orleans the crews sold the vessels and their cargoes and either embarked by sea for eastern ports or returned overland by foot or horseback through the lands of the friendly Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians, to the Mero Settlements, now Nashville, Tennessee. From here, they could find their way to the upper valley by trails through central Kentucky to Zane’s Trace and beyond.
In 1801 the Government negotiated agreements with the Choctaws and Chickasaws “ ‘to lay out, open, and make, a convenient wagon road through their land, between the settlements of Mero District (Nashville), in the State of Tennessee, and those of Natchez, in the Mississippi Territory.’ ”[6] Upon conclusion of these agreements, the Army began widening the old Indian trails, eight companies of infantry working south from Mero District and six companies northward from Natchez. This military road, later called the Natchez Trace, was completed in 1803.[7] Although it served a peaceful purpose to thousands of returning flatboat-men, this road was initially conceived with strategic military ends in view, in the event the United States should become embroiled with Spain over the port of New Orleans.
The Jackson Military Road
Following the War of 1812, Congress authorized a more direct military road from Nashville to New Orleans, which would shorten the distance between those cities by 220 miles.
The First and Eighth Infantry Regiments began work on this road in June 1817, completing it in May 1820. Two congressional appropriations totaling $15,000 were only a small part of the cost of this road. Over 75,800 man-days of labor were expended on it by the troops, and the total disbursement from military funds was well over $300,000. For this, the Army cleared a right-of-way 40 feet wide through dense forest, graded an earth road 35 feet wide, built 20,000 feet of corduroy causeways, and over 35 substantial bridges from 60 to 200 feet long. By 1824 most of this road south of Columbus, Mississippi, was grown over and abandoned.[8]
Military Roads on the Frontiers
The Army built more than 100 other military wagon roads in the period from 1807 to 1880, most of them in the territories. Their total length was well over 21,000 miles, and they cost at least $4 million, not counting the labor of the troops.[9] Some were built by the troops and some by hired labor.
- ↑ States admitted after 1889 received cash grants for educational and penal institutions instead of acreage.
24
- ↑ Off. of Fed. Coordinator, supra, note 4, p. 7.
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ Id., p. 8.
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ Id., p. 9.
- ↑ A. Rose, supra, note 3, pp. 44, 45.
- ↑ Id., p. 44.
- ↑ Id., p. 51.
- ↑ Military Roads. A Brief History of the Construction of Highways by the Military Establishment and a Gazetteer of the Military Roads in Continental United States (National Highway Users Conference, Washington, D.C., 1935) pp. 1-14.
