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Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE

well at Saint-Domingue, and Napoleon’s force was reduced to 7,000 due to losses from conflict and from disease. Meanwhile, war broke out between France and Britain and Napoleon, deciding to withdraw altogether from America, offered not only New Orleans, but the entire Louisiana Territory to the US for 15 million dollars . The US lacked financing for the purchase, but successively issued US six percent bonds through its British bank, Barings Brothers of London, and Hope & Co. of Amsterdam, enabling the payment to Napoleon, and thereby facilitating his ability to wage war on Britain. Stranger than fiction. Regardless, with this one move, the US nearly doubled in size: expanding from the Mississippi west to the Rockies and south of Rupert’s Land (Hudson Bay Watershed) down to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The historic debt was paid off ahead of schedule and served to establish creditworthiness of the young nation in the international markets. 1808. Slave Trade Banned. The British-operated slave trade across the Atlantic was one of the biggest businesses of the 18th century. Approximately 600,000 of 10 million African slaves made their way into the American colonies before the slave trade – but not slavery – was banned by Congress in 1808. (In 1860 the US would record nearly 4 million enslaved Blacks, 13% of the population; quite remarkable considering the brutal treatment and high death rate of African American slaves) 1811. Construction of The National Road (aka The Cumberland Road) Commenced. President George Washington (1732-99), who in his early years had been “aide-de-camp” to General Braddock during the construction of the Braddock Road, initiated early canals on the Potomac from Washington to the mountain pass at Fort Cumberland to facilitate migration and commerce. Washington and Thomas Jefferson believed that a trans- Appalachian Road was necessary for unifying the young country, and construction of the Cumberland Road, which later became part of the longer National Road, was authorized by Congress on March 29, 1806.

Fig. 18. Chesapeake and Ohio Canal-Potomac River from Washington to Cumberland, jump-off point for migration via the Cumberland Narrows into the Ohio River Valley.