The empire of the Ohio Basin being thrown open to the world by the armies of pioneers inspired by Washington and led by such men as Henderson and Putnam, a great factor in its occupation were the men who succeeded Washington in carrying out his plan for opening avenues of immigration. Three great routes to the West, and their projectors, call for notice in this phase of our study. The rise of Henry Clay's famous National Road running from Cumberland, Maryland, almost to St. Louis was a potent factor in the awakening of the West. It was the one great American highway; it took millions of men and wealth into the West, and, more than any material object, "served to cement and save the Union." Three canals were factors in this great social movement, especially the Erie Canal, which was conceived by the inspiration of Morris and achieved by the patient genius of Clinton. As a promoter of the West, Thomas, father of our first railway, must be accounted of utmost importance. Is it not of interest that the famed Cumberland Road was not built to connect two large Eastern cities, or a seaport or river with a city? It was built from the East into the Western wilderness--from a town but little known to an indefinite destination where the towns were hardly yet named. Its promoters were men of faith in the West, hopeful of its prosperity and anxious as to its loyalty. Now the same was singularly true of our first three great canals, the Erie, the Chesapeake and Ohio, and the Pennsylvania. These were not built as avenues of commerce between great Eastern cities, but rather from the East to the awakening West, to the infant hamlets of Buffalo and Pittsburg. And, still more remarkable, our first railways were not laid out between large Eastern cities, but from the East into that same country of the setting sun where the forests were still spreading and little villages were here and there springing up. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was distinctly promoted in the hope that Baltimore might retain the trade of the West which the canals then building seemed to be likely to take from her. It was their faith in the West that inspired all these men to the tasks they severally conceived and enthusiastically completed. It would hardly be possible to emphasize sufficiently the part played in the history of early America by this supremely momentous intuition of the westward advance of the Republic, the divine logic of that advance, and its immeasurable consequences. CHAPTER II