Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/32

 labored for the cause of public education and of literary and scientific development with an earnestness that should not be forgotten in spite of the paucity of results, saw clearly that something must be done to enhance the city's wealth and growth if the State herself, or, indeed, the section, was to maintain an important place in the union of rapidly developing commonwealths. They saw, furthermore, what this something must be. The cotton of the South and the agricultural and other products of the great West must be drawn away from Northern ports to ships lying in the harbor of Charleston. The distance to be traversed and the mountain barriers made all thought of a canal similar to the one that had brought fortune to New York out of the question, and the hopes of enterprising citizens centered on the newly invented railway. As early as 1831 the first steam locomotive used successfully on rails in this country was put on its tracks at Charleston by the South Carolina Railroad Company, and, as Mr. Snowden tells us in his chapter, the longest railway in the world was at one time contained within the borders of what is not familiarly known as a progressive State. It was but a short time before ambitious plans