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 The bitterness of the rivalry was intensified by the fact that the two companies were organized within the same states, to operate in exactly the same territory and both seeking the same carrying trade. And, lastly, one company had its origin in a detrimental report from the highest authority made concerning the other. The seed of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway lay in General Bernard's report of 1826, in which the cost of building the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal across the mountains was estimated at a prohibitive figure.

Both companies went to work eagerly, and both sure of success. The infancy of the rail road science, and the fact that as yet nothing had been done in all the world on such a scale as was proposed by the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road, naturally rendered public opinion more or less skeptical; while as for the canal, success was practically assured It would be taking a very narrow outlook upon the situation to describe the building of the canal, without presenting a briefly sketched-in history of its great rival for western trade. The two must go hand in hand.