Civil War and Decline
Use of the Wilderness Road fell when the National Road was opened in 1818, allowing travel to the Ohio River on level ground from the East. At the same time, the steamboat first appeared on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, allowing travel both up and down the rivers. (Hitchcock, 85)
During the American Civil War, both the Union Army and the Confederate States Army used the Road. An early battle (Camp Wildcat), stymied the first attempt by the Confederates to seize control of neutral Kentucky. The Cumberland Gap changed hands four times throughout the war. The southern armies used the road for marches into Virginia. General Ulysses S. Grant came down the road for the Union campaign in Tennessee in 1864. Grant was so taken by the Road that he said, "With two brigades of the Army of the Cumberland I could hold that pass against the army which Napoleon led to Moscow."
Read more about this topic: Wilderness Road
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war and/or decline:
“The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.”
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And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away:
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“The decline of a culture
Mourned by scholars who dream of the ghosts of Greek boys.”
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