Alabama State Intelligencer

From the Mobile Commercial Register.

Mr Sanford--I have taken a lively interest in your patriotic efforts in the cause of internal improvement. You have awakened a spirit of inquiry, on this subject, that cannot fail of resulting in the most signal success of all your anticipations, and whatever may be the difference of opinion on the means to be employed, whether by the appropriation of the national funds, or the resources of our own State, without foreign aid, none can deny to your efforts the credit of flowing from a disinterested regard for the public good. If you have not in the course you have pursued, regarded party distinction, you have certainly kept steadily in view, the great interest of your fellow citizens, and by them your efforts will be gratefully treasured in memory, when the factions of the day, and the petty interests that now distract us will have disappeared and left no trace of their existence.

I most cordially agree with you in the general views you have from time to time presented, of the important benefits to be derived from internal improvement, but I have not been able to bring my mind to approve of the mode, that seems to have suggested itself to you, as most practical. If the great object is to afford a channel of communication, by which the greatest quantity of the products of our state, together with those of the neighboring states can find the shortest route to the Gulf of Mexico, or in other words, to make Mobile the nearest and best market for the produce of the rich valley of Tennessee, and if it be an object to identify the heretofore discordant interest of North and South Alabama, then I would say, that a canal, uniting the waters of the Tennessee with a tributary branch of the Coosa, is not the best means of effecting those objects. The first objection that presents itself is, that the point of junction, would be too far north-east from the cotton growing region. We may lay it down as a rule subject to few exceptions, that whatever may be the staple commodity of our country, the exports will be more bulky than the articles imported for necessary home consumption. The cotton and tobacco of the rich counties of Madison, Limestone, and the adjacent parts of Tennessee, would not be shipped against the current one hundred and fifty miles, to the point of connexion with the waters of the Coosa, but when shipped would follow the current the long and tedious, but easier route to New-Orleans. Our market could only attract some of the surplus products of East Tennessee, North Carolina, and Western Virginia, all which can be as well secured to us by a different channel, and one too, that must, if it should be effected, inevitably as the law of nature, bring to our market the products of a great portion of Kentucky and the most fertile regions of Tennessee and North Alabama. Should Guiter's Landing on the Tennessee River, and Selma, on the Alabama, be assumed as the points of connexion, the slightest glance over the map would designate it as the shortest route for the various products of that rich and beautiful country to the Gulf of Mexico, saving many hundred miles of difficult navigation. On this route a water communication is not to be thought of but it is believed that when the various estimates of the amount of money to be expended in the construction of a Rail Road, shall be compared with the amount required for a canal to unite the waters of the Tennessee and Coosa, the result will be altogether in favor of the former. The distance does not much, if any, exceed one hundred and fifty miles. And the topography of the country over which the Rail Road would run, is most singularly favorable to success. The ascent from the Tennessee to the highest ground separating the waters of that river from the tributary streams of the Mobile Bay, is remarkably gradual and easy; and the descent thence to Selma, is scarcely perceptible. First, through Will's Valley and then through Cahawba Valley and Pleasant Valley. There are no rivers to cross, deep ravines to fill up, no mountains to cut down or tunnel. There is no part of our continent where Providence has been more bountiful in supplying the materials for the construction of a Rail Road, on the very spot where they would be required. On either hand, within a very short distance of where the road would run, there are immense cliffs of blue limestone, rising ledge above ledge, faintly resembling the work of art, and easily to be separated from the rest of the mass.

I have given no estimate of the amount of produce that would, through this channel, find a market, nor of the amount of money that would be required to complete the great work; but those estimates will be made, cautiously avoiding erroneous data, and when made, the public are earnestly invited to examine and weigh them well. If so, I have no fear but that the object to be effected, will be found to be worth ten times the amount to be expended, nor have I any fear as to the ability of the State, or even the City of Mobile, to furnish the means, if Constitutional scruples should deny us the aid of the National Government. It is intended in future numbers, to enter more minutely, not only into the estimate of advantages to be obtained and necessary expenditures to be incurred, but into the particular advantage that a Rail Road on the proposed route, would claim over any other practical channel of communication.

A FRIEND TO RAIL ROADS.