In 1800 three wagon-roads connected the Atlantic coast with the country west of the Alleghanies, one leading from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, one from the Potomac to the Monongahela, and a third passed through Virginia to Knoxville, in Tennessee. Much as was done during this period for the improvement of the roads, stage-coach travel remained for years comparatively slow. In 1792 Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State, wrote to the Postmaster-General to know if the post, which was then carried at the rate of fifty miles a day, could not be expedited to one hundred. Even this latter rate was considered slow on the great post-roads forty years later. In the year 1800 one general mail-route was extended from Maine to Georgia, the trip being made in twenty days. From Philadelphia a line went to Lexington in sixteen and to Nashville in twenty-two days. The government of the United States, appreciating the importance, for military purposes, of good roads leading to the frontiers, commenced the construction of national, or military, roads. A road was thus built from Baltimore through Cincinnati to St. Louis, and another from Bangor to Houlton, in Maine. In 1807 Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, advocated the extensive construction of public roads and canals by the general government. Mr. Gallatin took the ground that the inconveniences, complaints, and perhaps dangers, resulting from a vast extent of territory cannot otherwise be radically removed than by opening speedy and easy communications through all its parts; that good roads and canals would shorten distances, facilitate commercial and personal intercourse, and unite by a still more intimate community of interests the most remote quarters of the United States, and that no other single operation within the power of the government could more effectually tend to strengthen and perpetuate that union which secured external independence, domestic peace and internal liberty. The principal improvements recommended by Mr. Gallatin were the following: 1. Canals opening an inland navigation from Massachusetts to North Carolina. 2. Improvement of the navigation of the four great Atlantic rivers, including canals parallel to them. 3. Great inland navigation by canals from the North River to Lake Ontario. 4. Inland navigation from the North River to Lake Champlain. 5. Canal around the Falls and Rapids of Niagara. 6. A great turnpike road from Maine to Georgia, along the whole extent of the Atlantic sea-coast. 7. Four turnpike roads from the four great Atlantic rivers across the mountains to the four corresponding Western rivers. 8. Improvement of the roads to Detroit, St. Louis and New Orleans.