Georgia had started its system from a point afterwards becoming Atlanta, towards which two roads were pointing, one from Augusta about due west and another from Savannah northwest to Macon, from which by an inclination north it moved towards the same point. Hayne’s review of the commercial situation in the spring of 1838 indicated how clearly he grasped the fact that the revision of the tariff had failed to cure the conditions under which the South labored; for exporting more than a sixth of the total exports of the country, the three States of Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia imported less than one fortieth. If the South could only have been made to see it before the opportunity passed. His comment put it fairly: “Look at the present course of trade between the South and the West. The importations from Tennessee and Kentucky into South Carolina and Georgia amount to millions of dollars, but instead of their being paid for in foreign goods imported directly into Charleston and Savannah in exchange for our own cotton and rice, we pay for them in gold or silver or in bills upon the North, thereby losing entirely the profits on the importation and greatly embarrassing our merchants by the operation. Now if we only had the means of transporting these goods by railroad to the West, everything would be changed. Not only would we pay for Western production consumed by the South, in foreign goods received in exchange for our own produce, but we should be able to supply a large portion of the Western country with all the goods now obtained by them from abroad, receiving in exchange their products to be distributed in Southern ships throughout the world. The truth is that all our efforts to establish a direct trade with Europe must in a great measure be unavailing unless we can provide a market in the West for the goods we may import. Our railroad with the aid of the South Western Railroad Bank, will achieve for us this important and peaceful victory.”[104] But Kentucky and Tennessee did not constitute all that the railroad to Cincinnati led to. The description given by the English student of American affairs in 1839, shows what Ohio was at that date: