and Cass, General Lafayette, General Santa Anna, Black Hawk, Jenny Lind, P. T. Barnum, and John Quincy Adams are all mentioned in the records of the stirring days of the old road. As has been suggested elsewhere, politics entered largely into the consideration of the building and maintenance of the road. Enemies of internal improvement were not forgotten as they passed along the great road which they voted to neglect, as even Martin Van Buren once realized when the axle of his coach was sawed in two, breaking down where the mud was deepest. Many episodes are remembered, indicating that all the political prejudice and rancor known elsewhere was especially in evidence on this highway, which owed its existence and future to the machinations of politicians. But the greatest blessing of the Cumberland Road was the splendid era of growth which it did its share toward hastening. Its best friends could see in its decline and decay only evidences of unhappiest fortune, while in reality the great road had done its noble work and was to be superseded by better things which owed to it their coming. Historic roads there had been, before this great highway of America was built, but none in all the past had been the means of supplanting themselves by greater and more efficient means of communication. The far-famed Appian Way witnessed many triumphal processions of consuls and proconsuls, but it never was the means of bringing into existence something to take its place in a new and more progressive era. It helped to create no free empire at its extremity, and they who traversed it in so much pride and power would find it today nothing but a ponderous memorial of their vanity. The Cumberland Road was built by the people and for the people, and served well its high purpose. It became a highway for the products of the factories, the fisheries and the commerce of the eastern states. It made possible that interchange of the courtesies of social life necessary in a republic of united states. It was one of the great strands which bound the nation together in early days when there was much to excite animosity and provoke disunion. It became the pride of New England as well as of the West which it more immediately benefited; "The state of which I am a citizen," said Edward Everett at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1829, "has already paid between one and two thousand dollars toward the construction and repair of that road; and I doubt not she is prepared to contribute her proportion toward its extension to the place of its destination."[75]