Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 10).djvu/91

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

CHAPTER III

OPERATION AND CONTROL

THE Cumberland Road was built by the United States Government under the supervision of the War Department. Of its builders, whose names will ever live in the annals of the Middle West, Brigadier-general Gratiot, Captains Delafield, McKee, Bliss, Bartlett Hartzell, Williams, Colquit, and Cass, and Lieutenants Mansfield, Vance, and Pickell are best remembered on the eastern division. Nearly all became heroes of the Mexican or Civil Wars, McKee falling at Buena Vista, Williams at Monterey, and Mansfield, then major-general, at Antietam.

Among the best known supervisors in the west were Commissioners C. W. Weaver, G. Button, and Jonathan Knight.

The road had been built across the Ohio River but a short time when it was realized that a revenue must be raised for its sup-