st of
all to the longed-for market, found, through careful examination by
eminent engineers, that no canal was practicable for her, at a cost
within her means. In 1824 and 1825 the consequent general despondency
concerning the future of the city was so strong that Baltimore
merchants began to move to New York and Philadelphia.[3]

But at this period the world began to hear of railways. A well-known
merchant of Baltimore, returning from England, described with enthusiasm
the coal trains, drawn by the cumbrous ante-Stephenson engines, which he
had seen there. The idea of a tramway (with or without steam motors)
found ready acceptance in a community both enterprising and desperate. A
town meeting, held in 1826, to consider Western communications, resulted
in an application to the Maryland legislature, and the incorporation, in
March, 1827, of the Baltimore and Ohio,--the first railroad company thus
created in the United States for purposes of general transportation,--the
leader of that vast multitude of similar enterprises, the history of
which is the history of our nation's marvelous commercial progress. By
the legislative charter, the city of Baltimore and the State of Maryland
were authorized to subscribe to the company's stock.

In the address already cited, Mr. Latrobe, an eye-witness, says of the
scenes which followed:--

"Then came a scene which almost beggars description. By this time,
public excitement had gone beyond fever heat and reached the boiling
point. Everybody wanted stock. The number of shares subscribed were to
be apportioned, if the limit of the capital should be exceeded; and
every one set about obtaining proxies. Parents subscribed in the names
of their children, and paid the dollar on each share that the rules
prescribed. Before even a survey had been made, the possession of stock
in any quantity was regarded as a provision for old age; and great was
the scramble to obtain it. The excitement in Baltimore roused public
attention elsewhere; and a railroad mania began to pervade the land."

The proposed railroad was to pass through Mr. Cooper's Canton property,
which he had already begun to develop, "so that it should pay the
taxes," by building upon it charcoal kilns, after a design of his own,
with the purpose of turning the forest into charcoal, and, by means of
this fuel, smelting the iron ore which the land contained. What was the
immediate commercial outcome of this enterprise is not recorded.