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11 Routes to the South Since May 6, we have been reconnoitering the country to the east and west of the Mississippi; this reconnaissance was long and difficult, given the rigors of the season and the nature of the country. The maps of the interior of this country are so faulty that they are not as useful to us as we would have wished. —General Bernard, New Orleans, August 13, 1817 In the first half of April 1817, in Philadelphia, the Colonial Society deliberated over how to get to its future place of settlement and retained three options accessible to each other at vari­ ous connection points. None of the proposed routes— land, maritime, and river—was without its risks, but on the scale of pitfalls and discomfort, the first easily outdistanced the other two. It took six weeks for Israel Pickens, a former congressman from North Carolina, to travel from Georgia to his post as registrar of the Land Office in St. Stephens on the Tombigbee River. He and his family arrived safe and sound, meeting with neither misfortune nor hostile Indians; on the other hand, they did suffer from the state of the road, which was at times indescribably bad and swampy.1 One could not count on making it unscathed through a long, solitary walk along a “nearly impracticable road”2 surrounded by dangers of which the Indians were actually not the worst. The Land Route With the purchase of Louisiana, the need had grown for a land link between America’s Northeast and its periphery bordering the Gulf of Mexico. A two-­ section route already existed: the Great Valley Road linking Philadelphia to Nashville , and the Natchez Trace continuing to New Orleans. In 1803 the postal service could travel it in two weeks, changing horses and men at regular intervals. But as it was difficult and not overly safe, it was imperative that a more direct alternative be found, passing between the Appalachians and the Atlantic, from Athens to west­ ern Georgia to New Orleans, through the territory of the Creeks, who granted right of passage. In 1806 Congress authorized the opening of a road that considerably reduced the distance: from the Oconee River in Georgia, it passed through Coweta (a large Indian town near present-­ day Columbus) to Fort Stod- 202 • Chapter 11 dert, located between Mobile and the confluence of the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers, and then on to the Mississippi. Despite faster mail delivery, this new road never managed to replace the one via Knoxville, Nashville, and Natchez. When the probability of a war with England and an attack from the south became a certainty, moving soldiers took priority over moving letters. In 1811 the Ameri­ can army opened the Federal Road that followed the postal route from Fort Stoddert to Milledgeville on the Oconee, but while the postal road went north from there, the new road continued toward the east, where troops could be recruited and resupplied—where also, in Georgia and the Carolinas, land-­ hungry colonists were growing impatient. But this new road, compared by a historian to the Appian Way3 and created in anticipation of a war, caused another. The Indians , who had refused the soldiers passage, never accepted their invading presence; they made war and were defeated. The military road became a passage for waves of emigrants, and in 1815 and 1816 Congress voted funds to repair, maintain, and improve it. This route from Washington to New Orleans via Mobile had, for the Colonial Society members, the advantage of distance. It is not known how many took it, but they were fewer than the risks incurred. In spite of progress in travel in these regions , crossing river valleys (the Tallapoosa, Coosa, Cahaba, and Black Warrior) was no picnic; they were long considered lands barely touched by civilization. To natural obstacles—forests, marshes, and impassible streams—were added human risks, for a journey through the Creek nation, signatory of a fragile peace treaty, remained a hazardous undertaking. Captain Charassin, a former lancer of the Old Guard whom Montulé met in New Orleans,4 had ventured onto this road with three companions, among them probably Captains Humbert, an infantryman, and Pfeuty, an artilleryman in the Guard. In 1816 they had traveled together on the Jeune-­Henriette from Antwerp to Charleston,5 then likely first to Philadelphia, where Charassin and Humbert bought shares in the Colonial Society before attempting to enter the service of the partisans of independence for the Spanish colonies...

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