from wild animals. It could easily be split into shingles for roofs to cover cabins and barns. Its bark was used to make medicine and tannic acid for tanning and dyeing. In the fall, its rich nuts were used to fatten razorback hogs for the market and the home. Hemlock was also highly valued for its many uses. Commerce and mail The Wilderness Road served as a great path of commerce for the early settlers in Kentucky, as well as for wagon-loads of slaves being transported through Tennessee to plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana. Horses, cattle, sheep and hogs herded in the other direction found waiting markets in the Carolinas, Maryland and Virginia. Hogs in groups of 500 or more were driven down the Road to market. Beef in Eastern markets had become a main source of income for farmers in Kentucky. A postal road was opened in 1792 from Bean Station, Tennessee through Cumberland Gap to Danville, Kentucky. This was due largely to the efforts of Governor Isaac Shelby of Kentucky. This connection of Kentucky to the East was a great advantage. Frontier settlers considered the postal riders heroes and waited eagerly for their arrival for news from settlements along the trails as well as getting their mail and newspapers. Civil War and decline Use of the Wilderness Road fell when the National Road was opened in 1818, allowing travel to the Ohio River on more level ground from the East. The Panic of 1837, geology and new railroad technology doomed the James River Canal, once envisioned as augmenting this commercial route. At the same time, the steamboat first appeared on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, allowing faster and cheaper travel both up and down the rivers. During the 1850s, the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad was constructed along part of this route. During the American Civil War, both the Union Army and the Confederate States Army used the Wilderness Road. An early battle (Camp Wildcat), stymied the first Confederate attempt to seize control of neutral Kentucky. The Cumberland Gap changed hands four times throughout the war. Southern troops used the road for marches into Virginia. General Ulysses S. Grant came down the road for the Union campaign in Tennessee in 1864. Grant was so taken by the Road that he said, "With two brigades of the Army of the Cumberland I could hold that pass against the army which