G32 TRANSPORTATION IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 



It was the first effort in America to build a railroad expressly for loco- 

 motive power, and in England the railroads were short straight lines, 

 built at enormous expense. 



The Baltimore and Ohio, begun bafore the Charleston and Hamburg, 

 was intended for horse-power, it being then supposed to be impracticable 

 to use locomotives on short curves. 



]Mr. Peter Cooper practicalh^ refuted this notion, in August, 1830, but 

 some months before his experiment at Baltimore, viz : on the 14th Jan- 

 uary, 1830, five days after the commencement of work on the road, the 

 Board of Directors of the Charleston and Hamburg railroad adopted the 

 report of Mr. Bennett, containing this memorable sentence : 



" The locomotive shall alone be used. The perfection of this power 

 in its anplication to railroads is fast maturing, and will certainly reach, 

 within the period of constructing our road, a degree of excellence which 

 will render the application of animal power a gross abuse of the gifts of 

 genius and science " 



George Stephenson's "Rocket" made its trial trip at Liverpool, on the 

 Gth October, 1829, so that there was barel}^ time for the news of it to have 

 reached Charleston, in January, 1830. 



On the 2Sth of December, 1829, the contracts were given out, and on 

 the 9th of January, 1830, the railroad was actually begun, by the driving 

 of piles at " Lines' street." 



Mr. E. L. Miller, one of the directors, undertook, at his private risk, to 

 provide a locomotive that should draw three times her own weight at a 

 speed often miles an hour, and the contract was accepted b}' the Board 

 of Directors on the 1st March, 1830. The locomotive was built in New 

 York, under Mr. Miller's direction, and was the first constructed in the 

 United States for actual service on a railroad. It weighed four tons, had 

 four wheels, made with spokes, was called the " Best Friend," arrived in 

 Charleston on the 23d October, 1830, and made one trip on 2d Novem- 

 ber, when the wheels proved of insufficient strength. Others had to be 

 got from New York, and finally, on the 14th and loth December, 1830, 

 trial trips were made, when the " Best Friend" accomplished from six- 

 teen to twenty-one miles per hour, drawing four or five cars with forty 

 or fifty passengers. Without the cars the locomotive run thirty-five 

 miles an hour, to the amazement of the community. 



This achievement will be considered all the greater when we remem- 

 ber that the roadway was formed by stringers set on posts, with only a 

 strap of iron spiked along one edge of the surface of the stringers. 



In 1830 six miles of road were built. In 1831 the whole line was 

 placed under contract. On the 7th November, 1832, the road was opened 

 to Branchville, sixty-two miles ; on the 7th February, 1833, to Midway, 



