The twelfth:  By this act authority was given to the President to appoint three commissioners for the purpose of examining the country and laying out a road from the termination of the Cumberland road, at Wheeling, on the Ohio, through the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, to a point to be chosen by them, on the left bank of the Mississippi, between St. Louis and the mouth of the Illinois River, and to report an accurate plan of the said road, with an estimate of the expense of making it.  It is, however, declared by the act that nothing was thereby intended to imply an obligation on the part of the United States to make or defray the expense of making the said road or any part thereof.

In the late war two other roads were made by the troops for military purposes—­one from the Upper Sandusky, in the State of Ohio, through the Black Swamp, toward Detroit, and another from Plattsburg, on Lake Champlain, through the Chatauga woods toward Sacketts Harbor, which have since been repaired and improved by the troops.  Of these latter there is no notice in the laws.  The extra pay to the soldiers for repairing and improving those roads was advanced in the first instance from the appropriation to the Quartermaster’s Department and afterwards provided for by a specific appropriation by Congress.  The necessity of keeping those roads open and in good repair, being on the frontier, to facilitate a communication between our posts, is apparent.

All of these roads except the first were formed merely by cutting down the trees and throwing logs across, so as to make causeways over such parts as were otherwise impassable.  The execution was of the coarsest kind.  The Cumberland road is the only regular work which has been undertaken by the General Government or which could give rise to any question between the two Governments respecting its powers.  It is a great work, over the highest mountains in our Union, connecting from the seat of the General Government the Eastern with the Western waters, and more intimately the Atlantic with the Western States, in the formation of which $1,800,000 have been expended.  The measures pursued in this case require to be particularly noticed as fixing the opinion of the parties, and particularly of Congress, on the important question of the right.  Passing through Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, it was thought necessary and proper to bring the subject before their respective legislatures to obtain their sanction, which was granted by each State by a legislative act, approving the route and providing for the purchase and condemnation of the land.  This road was founded on an article of compact between the United States and the State of Ohio, under which that State came into the Union, and by which the expense attending it was to be defrayed by the application of a certain portion of the money arising from the sale of the public lands within that State.  In this instance, which is by far the strongest in respect to the expense,