Ratification. Mending the Family Kettle. The U.S. Senate passed the proposed amendment by the required two-thirds majority on June 8, 1866, and the House of Representatives passed it on June 13, 1866, which sent it to the states for ratification. No Virginians served in Congress when it submitted the amendment to the states.
The Father of American Railroads. John Stevens (1749-1838) was the scion of a prominent family in colonial New Jersey. During the Revolutionary War he served as state treasurer. In the postwar period he became intrigued by experiments in steam navigation by men such as John Fitch.
Steam propulsion and railroads developed separately, but it was not until railroads adopted the technology of steam that they began to flourish. By the 1870s, railroads had begun to supplant steamboats as the major transporter of both goods and passengers. A short biography of the father of steam navigation. Robert Fulton. Inventor Robert Fulton was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on November 14, 1765.