York city, by April 5, 1825, for a loan of $400,000. Though the enemies of the canal did their best to defeat it, even sending to New York and Philadelphia newspapers material detrimental to the project, a favorable offer was made by the firm of Lord and Rathbone, of New York city, and a contract was drawn for the advance of money to begin the construction of the several Ohio canals. Here again the Miami and Erie portion is treated in the management of the general scheme. The firm, it was agreed, should pay $390,000 in three installments. Ten per cent, or $39,000, should be paid at the time of drawing the contract; forty per cent, or $156,000, on August 1, 1825; and fifty per cent, or $195,000, on November 1. The money, it was agreed, should be deposited in banks at convenient points near the construction. The firm should receive certification of debt to the amount of $400,000, bearing five per cent per annum, payable semi-annually in January and July, at the Manhattan bank, in New York. The Manhattan company agreed to receive the installments from the Manhattan bank and pay to the Ohio canal commissioners interest on any portion thereof that remained undrawn, except an initial $20,000 to be exempt from an interest charge as a partial compensation for handling the deal.30

At the time of the completion of the Miami canal, in 1828, the canal commissioners reported a total cost of $457,969.68 for the forty-four miles of canal constructed. This was an average cost per mile of $10,408.40 and covers actual construction only, including such items as raising banks, strengthening, securing, and repairing the aqueducts, and building the lock houses up to December 1, 1827. To this sum must be added enough to bring the total cost to $469,183.68, the additional amount figuring in damage claims, unexpected advances in prices, and bills rendered during the last few weeks of the work and not included in the earlier figures. The original estimate of the cost of this division of the canal, beginning at the Ohio river and including the dam and feeder, was $274,254.3

31

In the prosecution of the work, the commissioners experienced much difficulty in the want of integrity on the part of some of the contractors and sub-contractors. New and then one finds in the

30 Report of canal commissioners, 1825, 1826; Cincinnati Gazette, April 19, 1825. 31 Report of canal commissioners, 1828; Ohio State Journal, January 16, 1828.

reports a tone of despair akin to that met even today, of which the following is a fair example:

Experience has demonstrated that the most faithless men sometimes obtain letters of recommendation from men of standing and character and thus are enabled to obtain a confidence which they are not entitled to. 32

The United States congress, in order to facilitate the work of the Miami extension canal, granted 464,106 acres in tracts of land five miles wide in alternate sections along the proposed route. This land was to be sold at $1.25 per acre. In 1837 engineers made the final locations for the portion of the Wabash and Erie canal lying within the state of Ohio, and contracts were let for all of its sections in 1837 and 1838. Funds from the sale of the Wabash and Erie canal lands formed the financial basis for the construction of this portion of the work, most of the lands being withheld from the market until the completion of the work.33

The portion of the canal extending from the mouth of Loramie's creek to a point twelve miles north of St. Mary's, a distance of forty-five miles and including the Mercer county reservoir and Sidney feeder, was the most costly piece of canal work of equal distance in Ohio, despite the fact that all of the locks, culverts, and feeders on this line were built of wood. "Domestic bonds" were floated by the state to meet the financial emergency created by the shortage of funds for canal construction. Many persons, owing to the discount on bonds, refused to accept them, preferring to hold deferred payment checks. Again and again the credit of the state, involving every class of citizens who sold material or worked or bought bonds, was stretched almost to the breaking point to meet the demands of the hour. Funds necessary for the construction were raised by private contributions, by loans, by county and municipal aid, and by the sale of the land ceded by the United States government. The greater part of the financial burden through the construction of the two northern divisions was borne by patient citizens, workers, farmers, merchants, retailers, and purchasers of canal bonds, all of whom shared in the inconveniences and hardships incident to 32 Report of canal commissioners, in Ohio State Journal, January 4, 1827. 33 Report of board of public works, 1837; Canal commissioners' report, 1838, 1839.

long postponements in meeting obligations. Laborers were paid from eight to ten dollars a month for digging, shoveling, and all unskilled work, with lodging and board in addition. Men came considerable distances, evidently glad, as a rule, to get the work at such figures, particularly in winter. Engineers received from $1000 a year up.*

84

The total cost of the Miami and Erie canal was $7,414,915, divided as follows: 35

$1,237,552

The Miami canal and its branches... The Miami extension canal and its branches........ 3,167,440 The Wabash and Erie canal and its branches....... 3,009,923 The state of Ohio, in addition to securing this valuable waterway, kept most of this money within her own boundaries, for a state officer of Ohio writes to the National Intelligencer, in February, 1833, stating that of the money used in construction of public works in Ohio, not over one per cent had been expended outside of the state.36

CONCLUSION

Ohio looked upon the completion of the Ohio and Erie canal as the beginning of a new era in the business of the mid-continental west, for to her it opened the Mississippi valley as never before to the commercial enterprise of the north.37 On the other hand, it is fortunate that the work was completed as early as 1845, for the enthusiasm over railway construction and the competition with turnpike roads was rapidly causing the interest in canals to wane.38 Many issues of the newspapers of the state for some years prior to 1845 bear testimony to the fact that the railway had obscured the prominence formerly given to the canal. ARTHUR H. HIRSCH

OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

DELAWARE, OHIO

34 Report of canal commissioners, 1843; William C. Howells, Recollections of life in Ohio from 1813 to 1840 (Cincinnati, 1895), 139; Legislative documents, 1845-1846, p. 76.

35 Ohio State Journal, August 13, 1845.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid., May 28, July 2, 1845.

38 House journal, 1838; Report of board of public works, 1838.

THE STRATEGY OF CONCENTRATION, AS USED BY

THE CONFEDERATE FORCES IN THE MIS

SISSIPPI VALLEY IN THE SPRING OF 1862

Concentration in warfare, at least in practice, is not at all a recent idea. On the contrary it is practically as old as recorded military history. In fact, nearly five thousand years ago in the neighborhood of the Persian gulf, a Sumerian cityking had organized his infantry in phalanx formation, or in other words had adopted the idea of concentration in tactics.1 Less remote ancients-Persians, Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans-made frequent use of both the tactics and the strategy of concentration. Even the so-called dark ages furnish many examples of the application of what, in the course of time, had become not only the practice but the principle of concentration in warfare. It is not necessary to be specific, for the facts are everywhere accessible and only tedium would result from any attempt to trace, even with the greatest brevity, the application of this principle throughout the centuries.

It is necessary in this paper, however, to give a moment's consideration to the Corsican child of destiny, Napoleon Bonaparte, whose influence has vitally affected all later warfare and all later military theory. The strategy and tactics of concentration were the foundation of the military successes of this remarkable man, whom an Oxford tutor of mine, in a private conversation, described as "the sole outstanding personality of the first half of the nineteenth century." As we know, Napoleon obtained his ideas of strategy and tactics, partly at least, from profound study of the past. In early manhood, he pored over the campaigns of Alexander the Great and Julius Cæsar. He read eagerly and carefully Plutarch's Lives and Cæsar's Gallic wars. Of modern masters of military art, he made a particular study of Marlborough and Frederick the Great. Inevitably he found striking cases of the application 1 James H. Breasted, Ancient times (Boston, 1916), 120.

of this principle of concentration, and he profited well by his studies.

The location of his artillery at a vital central spot on the 13 Vendemiare illustrates Napoleon's early use of the principle of concentration. Concentration, in strategy or tactics or both, characterizes the majority of his compaigns. It is seen in Italy in 1797 and 1800, along the Danube in 1805 and 1809, in Prussia in 1806, in Russia in 1812, and above all in France in the memorable campaign of 1813-1814. It is true that at times Napoleon violated the principle of concentration. The failure to withdraw his garrisons from the German fortresses in 1813 may be cited by way of example. But on the whole he was an exponent of the principle of concentration. At his fall he left behind not only the example of his campaigns and battles, but written exposition of his maxims of war.

One of the most significant exhibits in the Confederate museum in Richmond, Virginia, is a small volume entitled Napoleon's maxims of war, which on the death of Stonewall Jackson was found in his haversack. Jackson, the greatest of the strategists in the confederate army, was essentially Napoleonic in his warfare.

"Concentrate to fight; unity of command is necessary to success; time is everything." Such are the maxims of Napoleon. I believe that few campaigns in history are more valuable for study of the application and validity of these maxims than that of the confederate armies in the Mississippi valley in the first half of the year 1862.

For political and economic reasons of great validity, which President Davis saw very clearly, the recognition of which involved him in serious quarrels with some of his generals, the confederate forces in the winter of 1861-1862 were scattered across southern Kentucky, and northern Tennessee. Polk was at Columbus, Kentucky, on the Mississippi; insignificant forces were at Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of the department, was at Bowling Green, Kentucky, watching Buell. 2 John H. Rose, Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe (Cambridge university press, 1894), 80.