Transportation and Communication Systems in the New Nation
When the United States gained its independence from England in the American Revolution (1775–83), the majority of American colonists lived within one hundred miles of the East Coast. They received manufactured goods, such as clothing, tools, and pottery, from Europe and paid for them with American raw materials, particularly timber, tobacco, fish, and grain. But as the nineteenth century began, available farmland along the East Coast of the United States was decreasing and large numbers of people began moving to lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. There were few roads in the western United States and it was highly expensive and time-consuming to transport goods there. Not only did farmers in the West need manufactured goods from the East, but East Coast merchants also needed crops from the West, and early textile industrialists needed cotton from the South. What was sorely lacking was the means to efficiently move goods where they were needed.
Most Americans understood that building transportation systems was essential to the prosperity of their new country, but the size and complexity of the job ahead of them was daunting. It was not clear whether private individuals, states, or the federal government would pay the tremendous expenses.
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