A Short History of Pittsburgh | Page 9

great Indian troubles, and money was scarce, of low value, and very hard to obtain. The people of the new country were unused to the exercise of stringent laws. The progress of the French Revolution encouraged the settlers to account themselves oppressed by similar tyrannies, against which some of them persuaded themselves similar resistance should be made. Genêt, the French demagogue, was sowing sedition everywhere. Lafayette's participation in the French Revolution gave it in America, where he was deservedly beloved, a prestige which it could never have gained for itself. Distillers who paid the tax were assaulted; some of them were tarred and feathered; others were taken into the forest and tied to trees; their houses and barns were burned; their property was carried away or destroyed. Several thousand insurgents assembled at Braddock's Field, and marched on Pittsburgh, where the citizens gave them food and submitted to a reign of terror. Then President Washington sent an army of fifteen thousand troops against them, and they melted away, as a mob will ever do when the strong arm of government smites it without fear or respect.
[Illustration: Conestoga wagon]
XII
It was not long after the close of the Revolutionary War before Pittsburgh was recognized as the natural gateway of the Atlantic seaboard to the West and South, and the necessity for an improved system of transportation became imperative. The earliest method of transportation through the American wilderness required the eastern merchants to forward their goods in Conestoga wagons to Shippensburg and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and Hagerstown, Maryland, and thence to Pittsburgh on packhorses, where they were exchanged for Pittsburgh products, and these in turn were carried by boat to New Orleans, where they were exchanged for sugar, molasses, and similar commodities, which were carried through the gulf and along the coast to Baltimore and Philadelphia. For passenger travel the stage-coach furnished the most luxurious method then known.
[Illustration: Stage-coach]
The people of Pennsylvania had given considerable attention to inland improvements and as early as 1791 they began to formulate the daring project of constructing a canal system from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, with a portage road over the crest of the Alleghany Mountains. In 1825, the governor appointed commissioners for making surveys, certain residents of Pittsburgh being chosen on the board, and in 1826 (February 25th) the Legislature passed an act authorizing the commencement of work on the canal at the expense of the State. The western section was completed and the first boat entered Pittsburgh on November 10, 1829. Subsequent acts provided for the various eastern sections, including the building of the portage railroad over the mountains, and by April 16, 1834, a through line was in operation from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The termini of the road were Hollidaysburg, 1,398 feet below the mountain summit, and Johnstown, 1,771 feet below the summit. The boats were taken from the water like amphibious monsters and hauled up the ten inclined planes by stationary engines. The total cost of the canal and portage railroad was about ten million dollars, and the entire system was sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in 1857 (June 25th) for $7,500,000. The importance of canal transportation in the popular mind is shown by the fact that in 1828, when the Pennsylvania Legislature granted a charter to the Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad Company (which never constructed its road), the act stated that the purpose of the railroad was to connect Pittsburgh with the canal at Massillon, Ohio. The railroad quickly superseded the canal, however, and when men perceived that the mountains could be conquered by a portage road, it was a natural step to plan the Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio railroads on a system of easy grades, so that all obstacles of height and distance were annihilated. The Pennsylvania Railroad was incorporated April 13, 1846, and completed its roadway from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh February 15, 1854. The canal was for a time operated by the Pennsylvania Canal Company in the interest of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, but its use was gradually abandoned. The division from Pittsburgh to Johnstown ceased to be operated in 1864, and that portion which was in the Juniata Valley was used until 1899, while the portion lying along the Susquehanna River was operated until 1900.[C]
[Footnote C: There is an interesting relief map of the portage railroad of the Pennsylvania Canal in the Carnegie Museum.]
[Illustration: Over the mountains in 1839; canal boat being hauled over the portage road]
Other railroads came as they were needed. The Baltimore and Ohio received a charter from the State of Maryland on February 28, 1827, but did not reach Pittsburgh until December 12, 1860, when its Pittsburgh and Connellsville branch was opened. The Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad was built into Pittsburgh July 4, 1851, and became part of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway in