must manage badly, Mr. President, who can find himself in the presence of that great man, and retire from it without bringing off from it some fact, or some maxim, of eminent utility to the human race. I trust that I did not so manage. I trust that, in bringing off a fact which led to the discovery of the precedent which is to remove the only serious objection to the road in question, I have done a service, if not to the human family, at least to the citizens of the two greatest Republics in the world. It was on the evening of Christmas Day that I called upon Mr. Jefferson. The conversation, among other things, turned upon roads. He spoke of one from Georgia to New Orleans, made during the last term of his own administration. He said there was a manuscript map of it in the Library of Congress (formerly his own), bound up in a certain volume of maps, which he described to me. On my return to Washington, I searched the statute book, and I found the Acts which authorized the road to be made; they are the same which I have just read to the Senate. I searched the Congress Library, and I found the volume of maps which he had described; and here it is (presenting a huge folio,) and there is the map of the road from Georgia to New Orleans, more than two hundred miles of which, marked in blue ink, is traced through the then dominions of the King of Spain!"

The foreign part of the road was the difficulty, and was not entirely covered by the precedent. That was a road to our own city, and no other direct territorial way from the Southern States than through the Spanish Province of West Florida; this was a road to be, not only on foreign territory, but to go to a foreign country. Some Senators, favorable to the Bill, were startled at it, and Mr. Loyd, of Massachusetts, moved to strike out the part of the section which provided for this exterritorial national highway; but not in a spirit of hostility to the Bill itself providing for the protection to a branch of commerce. Mr. Lowrie, of Pennsylvania, could not admit the force of the objection, and held it to be only a modification of what was now done for the protection of commerce-the substitution of land for water; and instanced the sums annually spent in maintaining a fleet in the Mediterranean Sea, and in the most remote oceans for the same purpose. Mr. Van Buren thought the Government was bound to extend the same protection to this branch of trade as to any other; and the road upon the foreign territory was only to be marked out, not made. Mr. Macon thought the question no great matter. Formerly Indian traders followed "traces"; now they must have roads. He did not care for precedents; they are generally good or bad as they suit or cross our purposes. The case of the road made by Mr. Jefferson was different. That road was made among Indians comparatively civilized, and who had some notions of property. But the proposed road now to be marked out would

pass through wild tribes who think of nothing but killing and robbing a white man the moment they see him, and would not be restrained by treaty obligations even if they entered into them. Col. Johnson, of Kentucky, had never hesitated to vote the money which was necessary to protect the lives or property of our sea-faring men, or for Atlantic fortifications, or to suppress Piracies. We had, at this session, voted $500,000 to suppress piracy in the West Indies. We build ships of war, erect lighthouses, spend anual millions for the protection of ocean commerce; and he could not suppose that the sum proposed in this Bill for the protection of an inland branch of trade so valuable to the West could be denied. Mr. Kelly, of Alabama, said the great object of the Bill was to cherish and foster a branch of commerce already in existence. It is carried on by land through several Indian tribes. To be safe, a road must be had a right-of-way-"a trace", if you please. To answer its purpose, this road, or "trace" must pass the boundary of the United States, and extend several hundred miles through the wilderness country, in the Mexican Republic to the settlements with which the traffic must be carried on. It may be well to remember that the Mexican Government is in the germ of its existence, struggling with difficulties that we have long since surmounted, and may not feel it convenient to make the road, and that it is enough to permit us to mark it out upon their soil; which is all that this Bill proposes to do within her limits. Mr. Smith, of Maryland, would vote for the Bill. The only question with him was, whether commerce could be carried on to advantage on the proposed route; and, being satisfied that it could be, he should vote for the Bill. Mr. Brown, of Ohio, (Ethan A.), was very glad to hear such sentiments from the Senator from Maryland, and hoped that a reciprocal good feeling would always prevail between different sections of the Union. He thought there could be no objection to the Bill, and approved the policy of getting the road into Mexican territory with the consent of the Mexican government. The Bill passed the Senate by a large vote-thirty to twelve; and these are the names of the Senators voting for and against it.

Yeas: Messers. Barton, Benton, Bouligny, Brown, DeWolf, Eaton, Edwards, Elliott, Holmes, of Mississippi, Jackson (the General), Johnson of Kentucky, Johnston of Louisiana, Kelly, Knight, Lanman, Lloyd of Massachusetts, Lowrie, McIlvaine, McLean, Noble, Palmer, Parrott, Ruggles, Seymore, Smith, Talbot, Taylor, Thomas, Van Buren, Van Dyke-30.

Nays: Messrs. Branch, Chandler, Clayton, Cobb, Gaillard, Hayne, Holmes of Maine, King of Alabama, King of New York, Macon, Tazewell. Williams-12.

It passed the House of Representatives by a majority of thirty; received the approving signature of Mr. Monroe, among the last acts of his public life; was carried into effect by his successor, Mr. John Quincy Adams. This road has remained a thoroughfare of commerce between Missouri and New Mexico, and all the western internal provinces ever since.

CHAPTER X.

Proposed National Or Interstate Highways Address Delivered by J. M. Lowe at Atlanta, Georgia, in 1897, at the Southwestern Commercial Congress.

I love the South. To me it is a land of sweet and sad memories. Nowhere else does the sun shine so brightly, nor the birds sing so sweetly, nor the women seem so lovely as in the beautiful Southland.

And I never miss a chance to come to Atlanta. I love to read her history and study her achievements. I want to catch some of the inspiration of your progressive spirit and carry it back to my own beautiful city. Your city is full of sacred. mementos. While here I want to go to the home of Henry L. Grady, and there with head uncovered, bow humbly and pay my tribute of respect to the loftiest genius and purest patriot of all Georgia's noblest sons. I want to go to the old home of Uncle Remus" and sit on his vine-clad veranda, and listen in spirit to his homely stories of a people and a civilization which has passed into the realm of poetry and song. I want to go out to Crawfordsville and sit in the shadow of Liberty Hall, and commune with that lofty and inspired spirit of the old South, to the "greatest Roman of them all," the illustrious and immortal Alexander H. Stephens. And I want to visit a still more sacred spot to me, out here at Chicamaugua, where a little mound marks the last resting place of a best loved brother who laid down his young life trying to protect Atlanta from the ruthless tread of a hostile army.

But while we love to indulge in these sad and sacred memories, yet we meet in a most intensely practical period to discuss most intensely practical questions. We loved the "old South," but we love the "new South" better.

When the incubus of slavery, fastened upon an unwilling people by King George III, was unwittingly removed as the inevitable result of war directed by the overruling hand of Providence, and over the protest of both North and South, she sprang forward like a young athlete, and has never slackened her pace. Her people no longer meet in political conventions so much as they do in industrial gatherings like this, where schemes for material and civic betterments are devised and discussed. I, too, have been entranced by the eloquence