, lay them down on the floor before the bar-room fire side by
side, and sleep with their feet near the blaze as soundly as under the
parental roof."

Meanwhile New York, the other great rival for Western trade, was intent
on its own darling project, the Erie Canal. In 1808, three years before
the building of the Cumberland Road, Joshua Forman offered a bill
in favor of the canal in the Legislature of New York. In plain but
dignified language this document stated that New York possessed "the
best route of communication between the Atlantic and western waters,"
and that it held "the first commercial rank in the United States." The
bill also noted that, while "several of our sister States" were seeking
to secure "the trade of that wide extended country," their natural
advantages were "vastly inferior." Six hundred dollars was the amount
appropriated for a brief survey, and Congress was asked to vote aid for
the construction of the "Buffalo-Utica Canal." The matter was widely
talked about but action was delayed. Doubt as to the best route to
be pursued caused some discussion. If the western terminus were to be
located on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Oswego, as some advocated,
would produce not make its way to Montreal instead of to New York? In
1810 a new committee was appointed and, though their report favored
the paralleling of the course of the Mohawk and Oswego rivers, their
engineer, James Geddes, gave strength to the party which believed a
direct canal would best serve the interests of the State. It is worth
noting that Livingston and Fulton were added to the committee in 1811.

The hopes of outside aid from Congress and adjacent States met with
disappointment. In vain did the advocates of the canal in 1812 plead
that its construction would promote "a free and general intercourse
between different parts of the United States, tend to the aggrandizement
and prosperity of the country, and consolidate and strengthen the
Union." The plan to have the Government subsidize the canal by vesting
in the State of New York four million acres of Michigan land brought out
a protest from the West which is notable not so much because it
records the opposition of this section as because it illustrates the
shortsightedness of most of the arguments raised against the New York
enterprise. The purpose of the canal, the detractors asserted, was to
build up New York City to the detriment of Montreal, and the navigation
of Lake Ontario,