Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 13).djvu/91

 building of the canal, the articles of import and export which would pass and repass over the great highway, the probable revenue which would be derived from tolls, the enhanced value, commercially, of a canal to the Ohio River whenever the Ohio was in turn connected with Lake Erie, and the strategic military position and value of the canal on the shortest route from Atlantic tide-water to the Ohio River and the Great Lakes by way of the national capital, are points considered at some length.

This report of the board, naming over twenty millions as the cost of the canal was an overwhelming and disappointing surprise. The capital of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company was, as we have seen, only six million—in itself a tremendous sum in that day. The blow fell heavily on Baltimore; while the building of the canal in the Potomac Valley was entirely reasonable, it was the larger interests of the great scheme that had a special appeal to the capitalists of the Maryland metropolis. As a highway between tide