“Of the 75 counties of which it is composed, 14 lie upon the Ohio River, which in its windings bounds the State for 436 miles; while seven which border on Lake Erie possess a coast of upwards of 200 miles in extent. The great works which have been described, and others the result of private enterprise, have given almost equal advantage to the interior districts. Canals now made or making pass through 32 counties, railroads through six, and macadamized roads through five, so that of the 75 counties into which the State is divided, there are only 11 which do not benefit from either natural or improved means of communication, and many even of these are traversed or bounded by rivers of inferior magnitude. While its natural advantages and the industry of its inhabitants have thus secured for this State the benefits of an easy internal communication, its position is no less favorable for external commerce. The Ohio River affords a direct communication with all the country in the valley of the Mississippi, which requires much of its agricultural produce and of its manufactures while by means of Lake Erie, which has several good natural or artificial harbors, it communicates with Canada and New York on the one side and with the country of the upper lakes on the other.... When the communication is complete between the Ohio and Pennsylvania lines, and still more when the railroad is finished which is meant to connect Cincinnati with Charleston, in South Carolina, an additional stimulus will be given to the industry of the State. The completion of the latter work, by the importance it will confer on Cincinnati, is scarcely of less interest to Ohio than it is to the States whose territories it traverses.”[105] It was from Ohio in 1835 that the movement had come headed by General Harrison, for railroad connection with South Carolina. We have discussed commercial conditions. What of political? Professor Paxson says: “The Southern counties of the old Northwest were never unanimous for slavery, but they were thoroughly impregnated with the ideals of the South before the Northern tier of counties had been surveyed or cleared of Indians. North of the National Road (from Wheeling to Columbus, Indianapolis, Vandalia and St. Louis) roughly speaking, was the zone of the Erie Canal—by 1840 a new New England stood rival to a northern South within the three oldest States of the old Northwest. For another twenty years, from the election of Harrison to that of Lincoln, the political future of the section was indeterminate.”[106] But in 1835 Calhoun had been convinced that the movement of population and industry was towards Arkansas,[107] and that consequently “we should look much further West than Cincinnati or Lexington”.[108] This he announced in his letter to Hayne resigning from his position as one of the directors of the Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad in 1838.