Part III 



Internal Improvements 



At the time of Sellers's birth, in 1808, the first halting steps were being made toward 

 a system of internal improvements. Along the eastern seaboard, roads of a sort 

 existed, although nearly all commerce and many passengers were still carried in 

 sailing vessels wherever navigable waters permitted. Many of the better roads were 

 owned and operated by turnpike companies. It was possible to go by coach from 

 Philadelphia to New York in a single day if one started before dawn and kept to the 

 road until after dark. Two days were required to travel the 100 miles from Phila- 

 delphia to Baltimore. A few turnpikes, such as the gravelled road from Philadelphia 

 to Lancaster, tentatively probed the interior of the great continent. 



When the traveler approached the foothills of the Alleghenies, however, he found 

 the going from rough to impossible. Emigrants, hauling families and belongings 

 westward over the mountains, often were forced to add their brawn to that of their 

 horses in order to drag their vehicles through the bottomless, sticky mud. Stage 

 passengers frequently walked while the stage wagon was dragged along at a pace 

 discouragingly slow. 171 



In 1808, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin laid before Congress a report 

 calling for federal appropriations of nearly $20 million for roads and canals sufficient, 

 in his considered opinion, to link the eastern seaboard with the western rivers and 

 Great Lakes. 172 However, except for the National Road, finally completed from 

 Cumberland, Maryland, to Springfield, Ohio, and partially completed as far as 

 central Illinois, none of the many internal improvements that were undertaken during 

 succeeding decades were paid for with federal funds. State governments were forced 

 to engage in some works whose size or complexity exceeded the resources of private 

 companies. The Erie Canal, begun in 181 7 and opened in 1825, was a New York 

 State work. The Pennsylvania thoroughfare from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, com- 

 bining canal, railroad, and inclined planes, was commenced soon after the Erie Canal 

 was finished. 



The Sellers brothers, George Escol and Charles, built two locomotives for the 

 Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, which formed the eastern division of the Penn- 

 sylvania works. Through his former schoolmates William Milnor Roberts and 

 Solomon White Roberts, who were civil engineers on the remarkable Portage Rail- 

 road, which scaled the Alleghenies between Hollidaysburg on the east and Johns- 

 town on the west, George Escol was thoroughly conversant also with that part of 

 the great undertaking. 



Sellers sets the stage, in the following chapter, for his experiences with railroads, 

 locomotives, and locomotive builders. 



171 A graphic description of conditions in Pennsylvania in 1817 is in Henry B. Fearon, Sketches 

 of America, 3d ed. (London, 1819), pp. 184-196. 



172 American Stale Papers, 38 vols. (Washington, 1832-1861), class 10, miscellaneous, vol. 1, pp. 

 724-921. 



143 



