Transit before Railroads.

If a person wanted to get from one town to another quickly in 1815, especially between the major cities on the Eastern seaboard, he or she took a stagecoach. The construction of good turnpikes had cut the length of a stagecoach journey from Boston to New York by more than half between 1800 and the early 1830s, from seventy-four hours and three overnightsovernights to just over thirty-three hours with no overnight stops. With their horse relays and colorful but often reckless drivers, the express stages could sometimes muster eleven and one-half miles an hour on the most competitive routes. The cost to customers for such blazing speed was about seven cents a mile and severely shaken internal organs, especially on the rougher Western roads. In fact, beyond the Appalachians, the most popular slang terms for stagecoaches were the "shake guts" and "spankers...