CABELL'S CANAL - James River & Kanawha Virginia History Richmond Scottsville, VA

Description

CABELL'S CANAL
The Story of the James River and Kanawha
by Langhorne Gibson, Jr.
No other transportation venture in Virginia's history has had the far-reaching impact of the James River and Kanawha Canal. Its design was both grand and grandiose. A completed waterway from the Atlantic to the West meant continued dominance of the Commonwealth Of Virginia - the Mother State. The dream of economic wealth was tantalizing: the vision, a smooth, narrow band of water snaking west from Richmond through the gently rolling Piedmont to Lynchburg, then climbing over the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny ranges where the rivers of West Virginia joined it to the Ohio. The bounty of the rich valleys of the Mississippi and the Ohio, borne on sturdy freight boats, would find its way to the sea. Gliding packets would offer the long-distance traveler comfort and ease, if not speed.
The concept of a Virginia Gateway to the West began long before Washington, Jefferson, and Chief Justice Marshall took up the challenge. Then, the mantle passed to Joseph Carrington Cabell. Almost singlehandedly, he forged the James River and Kanawha Company. Without his courageous and persistent leadership, no canal 200 miles deep into the backwoods would have been completed. Without him, the state's massive and burdensome financial commitment would not have been made; and 3500 black slaves, Germans, and Irishmen would not have toiled in appalling conditions to fashion an engineering marvel unparalleled in the South.
In this sense Cabell is the "hero" of the story; another argument brands him as the "villain." Other men, more farsighted, understood that railroads were the wave of the future. Because Virginia staked her future on canals, she lost her chance to compete with her more progressive neighbors to the north.
Hardcover, 6" x 9", 306 pages, indexed, dust jacket, 1st edition 2000.