Free Email Login
Click
here to Sign up
|
» Jackson's
Military Road
Built by Andrew Jackson, 1816-1820.
Shortened by 200 miles the route from Nashville to New Orleans for movement
of supply wagons and artillery. Built with U.S. funds and troops. Followed
in part Doublehead's Road from Columbia, Tenn., to Muscle Shoals. After
1819 mail route was transferred from Natchez Trace to pass through Florence
via Military Road. A portion of Hood's army followed the road to Franklin
and Nashville in 1864. In later years called Jackson Highway.
»Jackson's Military
Road From Wikipedia
Jackson's Military Road was a route
from Nashville, Tennessee to New Orleans, Louisiana. After the War of 1812,
it was improved with federal funds, and it was named after Andrew Jackson.
Construction
The appropriation for Jackson's Military
Road was made on 24 April 1816:
Be it enacted by the
Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in
Congress assembled, That the sum of ten thousand dollars be and are
hereby appropriated, and payable out of any moneys in the treasury not
otherwise appropriated for the purpose of repairing and keeping in repair
the road between Columbia, on Duck River in the state of Tennessee, and
Madisonville, in the state of Louisiana, by the Choctaw Agency, and also
the road between Fort Hawkins, in the state of Georgia, and Fort Stoddard,
under the direction of the Secretary of War.
On 24 September 1816, William H. Crawford,
Secretary of War, informed General Andrew Jackson, who was then commanding
the Army district at Nashville, of the appropriation, and directing that
$5,000 be spent on the road to Louisiana. He noted that "I have received
no information of the length of this road, the nature of the country through
which it passes, or its present state. If there are many bridges to be
erected the appropriation will be inadequate to the object. In that event
the employment of a part of the troops may become necessary."
Jackson was officially in charge
of the entire construction, including the First and Eighth Infantry and
the artillery detachment who supplied the labor. However, much of the construction
was done by his subordinates. Captain H. Young surveyed the route, completing
this task by June of 1817. Bridges were indeed needed, and an additional
$5,000 was apbpropriated in March of 1818. Major Perrin Willis took command
of the construction gang, then numbering about fifty, in April of 1819,
when the road reached the Pearl River. The road was completed in May, 1820,
after 75,801 man-days of labor.
Description
The Tuscumbian of Tuscumbia, Alabama
printed a description of "General Jackson's Military Road" on 12 November
1824. It states its length at 436 miles (Nashville to Madisonville) or
516 miles (Nashville to New Orleans), an improvement of 200 miles over
the Natchez Trace. The article describes the construction gang as averaging
300, "including sawyers, carpenters, blacksmiths, etc." The road included
35 bridges and 20,000 feet of causeway, particularly through the swamps
of Noxubee County, Mississippi.
From Columbia, Tennessee, the Military
Road passed near Lawrenceburg and crossed the Tennessee River between Killen,
Alabama and Florence, Alabama. The road intersected the Gaines Trace at
Russellville, Alabama (where it still exists as Jackson Avenue). It then
cut cross-country through then-mostly unoccupied lands of Alabama and Mississippi,
including some still owned by the Choctaw Nation.
In Hamilton, Alabama, "Military Street"
marks the route of the Military Road. The road crossed the Tombigbee River
in Columbus, Mississippi; the route still exists in that town and still
bears the name "Military Road" from the Alabama border to downtown. West
of the Tombigbee, the road passed through lands later assigned to Lowndes,
Noxubee, Kemper, Newton, Jasper, Jones, Marion, and Pearl River Counties
before crossing into Louisiana at the Pearl River twenty miles west of
Poplarville, Mississippi. The road then passed directly from the future
site of Bogalusa, Louisiana to Madisonville, Louisiana on the north shore
of Lake Ponchartrain.
Jackson's Military Road declined
in importance in the 1840's due to disrepair and the difficult route through
the swamps of Noxubee, and was largely replaced by the Robinson Road.
The route later became part of the
Jackson Highway.
>> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia >>
|
