State Papers,
Miscellaneous, 534.] and he favored the use of the engineering corps
for surveying the routes and of federal troops for the actual work
of construction.
By 1818 the National Road [Footnote: Cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality
(Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv.; Young, Cumberland Road, 15; Hulbert,
Historic Highways, X., chap. i.] had been constructed from
Cumberland, on the Potomac, across the mountains to Wheeling, on the
Ohio, and two years later Congress made appropriations for a survey
of the road westward to the Mississippi River. The panic of 1819,
however, left the treasury in such a condition that it was not until
1822 that the preservation and construction of this highway was
again taken up with vigor. In that year a bill was introduced
authorizing the president to cause toll-houses, gates, and turnpikes
to be erected on the Cumberland Road, and to appoint toll-gatherers,
with power to enforce the collection of tolls to be used for the
preservation of the road. The bill further provided for a system of
fines for violation of the laws of the road.
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