Canal building was likewise an extensive development of this period. The idea of connecting the waters of the Chesapeake with those of the Ohio had been broached by George Washington before the Revolution, and he had also prophesied the union of the Hudson and Lake Erie by canal. He believed that a country of such great geographical extent as the United States could not be held together except by close commercial bonds. The opening of the Erie Canal to New York in 1825 stimulated other cities on the Atlantic seaboard to put themselves into closer commercial touch with the West. This was especially true of the city of Baltimore. A canal connecting Chesapeake Bay and the Ohio River was advocated to protect the trade of Baltimore and the South from the competition of New York and the East which would inevitably result from the construction of the Erie Canal and the Public Works of Pennsylvania. But discouragements in plenty frustrated the plan. The cost was believed to be excessive and the engineering difficulties were said to be almost insuperable. George Bernard, a French engineer, was of the opinion that the high elevations and scarcity of water along the route would prevent such a canal from having much practical value. For these reasons Baltimore believed that its position as a center for the rapidly developing Western trade was slowly but surely slipping away. This was the situation that led to the building of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Two men--Philip E. Thomas and George Brown--were the pioneers in this great undertaking. They spent the year 1826 investigating railway enterprises in England, which were at that time being tested in a comprehensive fashion as commercial ventures. Their investigation completed, they held a meeting on February 12, 1827, including about twenty-five citizens, most of whom were Baltimore merchants or bankers, "to take into consideration the best means of restoring to the city of Baltimore that portion of the western trade which has lately been diverted from it by the introduction of steam navigation and by other causes." The outcome was an application to the Maryland Legislature for a charter for a company to be known as "The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company" having the right to build and operate a railroad from the city of Baltimore to the Ohio River. The formal organization took place on April 24, 1827, with Philip E. Thomas as president and George Brown as treasurer. The capital of the proposed company was fixed at five million dollars. The construction of the railroad began on July 4, 1828. The venerable Charles Carroll of Carrollton, then more than ninety years old and the only surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence of fifty-two years before, said on this occasion, as he laid the first stone: "I consider this among the most important acts of my life, second only to my signing the Declaration of Independence." His vision was indeed prophetic.