An Historical Journey Through the Erie Canal

When I was in fifth grade, we had to memorize and sing the song "Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal." That was the full extent of our knowledge of the Canal; there was no geographical understanding of where the Erie Canal was, nor was there any discussion of what a canal did and why it was important to our history!! What a shame because as I learned many years later, the Erie Canal was central to the westward expansion of our nation and is also central to our understanding of 19th Century progress and capitalism. This means the Erie Canal is really an important topic to teach in our classrooms. So, let's begin with a geographic understanding of the canal by thinking about what we read in Chapter 6 of Americana and then reading the above map.

• Before the Canal was built - began in 1817 and finished in 1825 - what were the major geographical obstacles to any east/west transportation by land or by water?
• Why does Srinivasan believe that it was esential for the new nation to remedy the inaccessibility between the east and west?
• Who financed the Canal?
• Who do you think built the Canal?
• How might we predict that financing the Canal is an example of our course theme that capitalism and corporations are the foundational elements of our economic system?
• How might we predict that building the Canal is an example of our course theme that progress is not always progressive?

Let's begin our understanding with a brief historical overview in this video.

• Why do we persist in using songs/stories/poems in our classrooms that have no relatiionship with historical reality? Other examples?
• Why was a "deeply skeptical public" reluctant to finance and build the canal?
• Do you find the historian's comparison a useful one for your classroom - that the impact of the Internet on 21st Century culture is similar to how the Canal influenced our culture in the 19th Century? Might this comparison be a good hook?

Our goals for today are as follows:

1. To understand the chronology of early canals, focusing on the Erie Canal.
2. To discuss 11 of the teachable topics about the Erie Canal.
3. To talk about the historiography related to the scholarship on the Erie Canal.
4. To discuss teaching resources about the Erie Canal.

Goal #1: To understand the chronology of early canals, focusing on the Erie Canal.

1524 The Florentine navigator Giovanni da Verrazano discovered the Hudson River.

1609 Henry Hudson explored the river that bears his name - the Hudson River - in the hopes of finding the Northwest Passage - the legendary waterway that many Europeans believed would carry a ship all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. They passed by the island we know today as Manhattan and sailed up the river. After 150 miles, they had not reached the Pacific and instead, got as far as what would later become Albany, New York. There, they turned around.

1760 A small group of Virginians formed the Patowmack Company - a corporation devoted to building a canal that would make the Potomac River a navigable waterway.

1784 George Washington took over the Patowmack Company, renamed it the Potomac Canal Company, and began exploring how to build an east to west system of trade and commerce by transforming the Potomac River into a navigable waterway. It was to built entirely with private investors in the Company; no public money was to be used for construction.

1785 Construction began on a five lock canal on the Potomac. It took seventeen years to complete because construction was incredibly difficult, dangerous, and costly due to the river's swift currents, solid rock, and constant financial and labor problems. The upstream portion of the canal was constructed by hired hands, indentured servants, and slaves,while the remaining and most difficult portions were constructed by slaves rented from local slaveowners.

1828 - The Patowmack Company folded and turned over its assets and liabilities to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company - which abandoned the Patowmack Canal in 1830. While the Potomac Company was a financial failure, it's history was not - this capitalist enterprise pioneered lock engineering, opened trade between Virginia and Maryland, and stimulated the beginning of canal construction that helped build the growing nation's economy. It's failure, however, made it clear that private corporate investments were not enough to finance and complete any future canal systems; government financing would be required for any future endeavors.

Theme: Capitalism and corporations are the foundational elements of our economic system

1785 Christopher Colles was the first person to propose that the New York legislature approve a bill to improve the navigation of the Mohawk River Valley to facilitate trade and commerce between the east and the west. The 149-mile-long Mohawk River - named for the Mohawk Nation - was the Hudson River's largest tributary and flows into the Hudson a few miles north of Albany.  The legislature funded some preliminary research, but Colles was unable to get enough money and support to begin a canal. 

1792 New York State launched its first attempt began to transform the falls, rapids, and shallow stretches of the Mohawk River into a navigable waterway (not a canal) from Albany to New York City. The attempt was a private venture of a growing corporation - the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company.

1805 President Jefferson's Second Inaugural Address proposed spending some of the federal surplus on internal improvements, including canals.

1807 The U.S. Senate authorized the Secretary of Treasury, Albert Gallatin to prepare "a plan for the application of such means as are within the power of Congress, to the purposes of opening roads, and making canals...which as objects of public improvement, may require and serve the aid of government."

1808 In April, Gallatin submitted his report, concluding that improved transportation was an indispensable condition for increasing national income and wealth. He proposed Federal financing - $20 million dollars over ten years - to support canals from the coastal plain to the interior that would create one single great transportation system rather than relying on state funding that would result in a fragmented system.

A New York assemblyman, Joshua Forman, introduced a resolution to provide public funding for a survey to build a canal. He proposed that New York State would finance the study and the federal government would finance the canal. The legislature provided $6,000 for the study which one year later, concluded that a continuous canal across New York was both desireable and feasible.

1810 The New York Legislature appointed a Canal Commission to survey the Mohawk River Valley over which a canal could be built. The group was led by the most powerful politician in the state, DeWitt Clinton.

1811 The Commission presented its report consisting of three major findings:

• The canal should run overland from the Hudson River to Lake Erie so that it would connect the west with the east in one seamless water route.
• The canal must be a public initiative; it must be primarily funded, owned, and controlled by New York State as previous private ventures had ended in failure due to profit motives from speculators.
• The canal must be an artificial waterway over the entire 350 miles; previous efforts to make rivers navigable had failed.

To fund the Canal, the New York legislature created the Canal Fund. The Fund borrowed money by selling public bonds to private investors - wealthy individuals, overseas investors, and savings banks. The investors who held the bonds received interest payments from the Canal Fund and the Fund, in turn, paid the interest from tolls collected from the boats that used the Canal. The Fund also sought land grants from property owners along the proposed route.

At the same time, New York exercised its rights to eminent domain. This empowered the state to force persons who held private property along the canal route to sell it to the state for the public purpose of building a canal.

1812-1816 The plans called for a 363-mile canal with 83 locks and 18 aqueducts. It would be built in three sections and the funding for each section would be negotiated independently of the others. The proposed expenses were $4.9 million or $13,400 per mile. Approval to build the canal was delayed and almost lost during and after the War of 1812. Political infighting began over the proposed route and New Yorkers were skeptical; they were simply unable to visualize how such a novel, gigantic, and hugely expensive project could ever fulfill the economic promises of its supporters.

1817 Congress passed a bill to fund the New York Canal but President James Madison vetoed it. Why might Madison - a southerner and strict constuctionist of the Constitution - veto this bill?

Theme: Federal versus states' rights battles have always dominated our political landscape

If the canal was to be built, it would have to be primarily with New York State and some private funds. The first bonds were bought by small investors from New York. When the first section of the canal was opened successfully, larger investors from New York and London became involved in the financing.

1817 On July 4th, construction began on the first section of the Eric Canal. For the next several years, canal supporters had to battle state-wide political opposition which was largely related to public funding. The real financial difficulty was arranging state and private contracts for the separate portions of the canal.

• Over 3,000 laborers were employed to build the first section of the Erie Canal. In the first year, most were local people from the Mohawk River Valley. However, the labor eventually consisted almost entirely of Irish immigrants. By 1821, 9,000 people labored on the canal, many of whom were Irish. See power point presentation: Building the Erie Canal
• Private investors were instrumental in its success. They bought the originial public bonds, they funded the growth of new towns along the Canal's path, they created companies to manufacture the barges that carried goods and the luxury boats that transported people, and they encouraged the growth of the market economy along the entire route of the canal.

Theme: Capitalism and corporations are the foundational elements of our economic system

1820 The middle course of the canal was completed and opened on July 4th. It allowed for continuous travel over 90 flat miles from Seneca Falls at the western end to Rome and through to Utica.

1821 The 24-mile stretch from Utica to Great Falls opened. Construction began on the most difficult portion of the canal, the 86 miles from Little Falls to the Hudson River. Squeezed between steep banks rising as high as 500 feet above the river' level, the torrent of white water poured down over a broad tumble of rocks and then fell over 40 feet in less than half a mile through the canal's narrowest stretch. The village of Little Falls connected with the canal along a large aqueduct about 30 feet over the rushing water. Twenty-seven locks needed to be constructed in one 16-mile stretch between Schenectady and Troy.

1823 The final section - westward from Rochester to the terminus on Lake Erie - presented two of the greatest challenges to the canal's engineers: a 60- foot escarpment at Lockport and a section several miles long of hard rock between Lockport and Pendleton through which a deep cut would have to be made.

1824 Over 300 bridges were built across the canal between Utica and Albany to connect farms and properties that had been divided by the canal route.

1825 On October 26, the Erie Canal was officially completed and opened with a grand celebration. The completed canal stretched 363 miles from Buffalo to Albany on the Hudson River. From there, it was 150 miles down river to New York City. The work had been accomplished by thousands of workers - most of whom were Irish - who essentially hand dug a ditch 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide through 363 miles of forest and land largely unpopulated by Euro-Americans.

On November 4, the "Wedding of the Waters" occurred when the Seneca Chief arrived in Buffalo with a keg of Atlantic water. Judge Samuel Wilkeson emptied the keg into Lake Erie and in so doing, the official chronicler of the events, William L. Stone, wrote: "Europe already begins to admire, American can never forget to acknowledge, that THEY HAVE BUILT THE LONGEST CANAL IN THE WORLD IN THE LEAST TIME, WITH THE LEAST EXPERIENCE, FOR THE LEAST MONEY, AND TO THE GREATEST PUBLIC BENEFIT."

Before the Canal was built, it took 6 weeks to move goods from Albany to Buffalo. After the Canal was built, it took less than a week and it cost 1/10 of the price to move goods!

1826 New York State began the first enlargement of the Erie Canal which was completed in 1862.

1836 The New York legislature considered a plan to enlarge the Erie Canal to a70 foot width and a 7 foot depth.

At the same time the State of New York government was encouraging the development of canals it was also encouraging the development of railroads, the competing transportation system. For a short period the state government tried to protect the financial interests of the canals by prohibiting the railroads from carrying cargo, but this absurd restriction was soon lifted. In 1853 the New York Central Railroad was created by the consolidation of several smaller railroads.

The Erie Canal Enlargement program was completed in 1862. The toll charges not only paid for the construction of the canal but brought in a surplus which covered a substanial portion of the New York State budget.

1837 The entire debt for the canal was repaid.

1842 The New York Legislature passed an act that required raising funds for public projects from tax funds rather than public borrowing. This brought the Erie Canal Enlargement Program to a halt.

1845 Over a million tons of goods were carried on the canal each year. There were 4,000 boats on the canal, operated by 25,000 men, women, and children. Packet boats, which carried passengers, were largely operated by boat companies, while cargo boats tended to be family owned. A typical crew included a captain, a steersman, a cook, a deckhand, and hoggees, who drove the teams that pulled the canal boats. In addition, thousands were employed to maintain and operate the canal itself, including lock tenders, toll collectors, bridge operators, surveyors, repair crews, and bank patrollers, whose job, called the bankwatch, required a man to patrol a ten-mile stretch of canal looking for leaks and breaks in the canal bank. There were also merchants, hostellers, liverymen, and shopkeepers along the route who fed, clothed, housed, and supplied those employed on the canal.

1847 Work on the Erie Canal Enlargement resumed.

1862 The "Enlarged Erie" was completed; it was 70 feet wide and 7 feet deep and could handle boats carrying 240 tons. Most of the original single locks were replaced with double locks to enable traffic to pass in both directions simultaneously. Most of the existing traces of the Old Erie Canal are from the Enlarged Erie era.

1882 Tolls were abolished on the canal which was serving over 20 million people a year and $121 million in revenues had been collected since it opened.

1895 New York State began the second enlargement of the canal with plans to deepen it to a minimum depth of nine feet.

1903   New York State began the third enlargement of the Erie Canal through passage of the Barge Canal Act which amalgamated the Erie, Champlain, Oswego, Cayuga, and Seneca canals into the New York State Barge Canal System. The state also passed a bond issue of $101 million ($1 billion in current dollars) to finance the enlargement.

1918 The Barge Canal System was completed; it was12 to 14 feet deep, 120 to 200 feet wide, and 363 miles long, from Albany to Buffalo. Fifty-seven locks  were built to handle barges carrying up to 3,000 tons of cargo, with lifts of 6 to 40 feet. This project took 13 years, double the time of the original canal, and cost 15 times more than the original cost of construction - even though the technology was far superior than it was over 85 years earlier. This is the Erie Canal which today is utilized largely by recreational boats rather than cargo-carrying barges.

1966 New York created a state park along the old canal route. Today, Old Erie Canal State Historic Park preserves the historic resources of the enlarged Erie Canal.

1994 The last commercial ship was retired from operation on the Erie Canal. For the next 14 years,the canal was mainly used by recreational watercraft

2008 The canal opened to commercial traffic during a short period of each year, usually between late May and early October.

2017 Erie Canal was 200 years old.

Goal #2: To discuss eleven of the most teachable topics about the Erie Canal

1. The Erie Canal joined eastern and western Americans at the same time that it bound the U.S. with Europe.
   • It was the first great bridge between huge supplies of midwestern American grain and the huge demand for food from Europe.
2. The Erie Canal was built and operated by amateurs as there were no experts in the country who understood how canals were constructed or how they worked.
   • Jack Kelly, author of Heaven’s Ditch: God, Gold, and Murder on the Erie Canal, tells us that “There were no engineers in the country, no school that taught engineering." The four chief builders of the Canal had only been surveyors and had no engineering experience.
   • There were no physical or economic precedents in the U.S. for a canal of this magnitude. The European models did not apply as the intricate English canal network and the Canal du Midi which connected southern France with the Atlantic were located in areas where economic activity was already established, where population densities were high, where distances between towns was short, and where the shape of the land to be crossed was fairly level and free of mountainous terrain.
   • Kids and horses - not mules - originally pulled the boats along the Canal. “A significant proportion of the early workforce was made up of children, particularly boys who helped drive the horses that pulled the canal boats, and girls who worked in the boat cabins,” says Carol Sheriff in The Artificial River.
3. The Erie Canal emphasized the regional split and eventual divide in the nation between north and south and in so doing, exacerbated the tensions between slave and non-slave holding states.
   • The canal encouraged Americans to think about things in terms of north and south rather than east and west.
   • Kelly argues that the Canal allowed new settlers from New England, New York and Europe to bring their abolitionist views to the newly established Midwest states. “The New Englanders and Europeans beginning to stream across the canal were opposed to slavery, and it set up this confrontation,” Kelly says. “Southerners became more hardened and Northerners more adamant.” Kelly adds that the transformation of the Midwest into America’s breadbasket by the new settlers also “reduced the dependence of the industrial North on the agriculturally dominant South.”
4. The Erie Canal made New York City the nation's largest city, its financial capital, and its biggest and most prosperous port of entry.
   • The city’s population quadrupled between 1820 and 1850.
   • Prior to the construction, of the Canal, ports at New Orleans, Philadelphia and Baltimore outranked New York. The Canal gave New York City access to the Midwest which helped establish it as the nation's busiest and mot profitable port.
   • As the gateway to the Midwest, New York City became America’s commercial capital. And the financing of the canal’s construction also allowed New York to surpass Philadelphia as the country’s preeminent banking center.
5. The Erie Canal helped shape the history of Mormonism.
   • Joseph Smith claimed to have been visited by the angel Moroni in the early 1820s, near what’s now Palmyra, N.Y. which was located along the Canal route. The Smith family had moved from Vermont to Palmyra in hopes that they could benefit from the prosperity generated by the Erie Canal.
   • Kelly argues that the Canal became a 19th-century “information superhighway” that aided the spread of the new religion.
6. The Erie Canal enabled the migration of thousands immigrants and emigrants who moved westward in search of a better life.
   • Before the Canal was built, most of our population lived between the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Appalachian Mountains to the west. The Canal provided a direct water route to the Midwest, thus triggering large-scale immigration and emigration to the sparsely populated frontiers of western New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois.
   • What is the difference between immigration and emigration?
7. The Erie Canal encouraged new construction of over 3,000 miles of canals across the U.S.
   • These canals offered farmers and industrialists a safe, reliable, and cost-effective route to deliver their goods beyond the Mississippi.
   • However, almost as soon as they were built, many became obsolete at the railroads came in as a faster way to transport both goods and people
8. The Erie Canal transformed the American economy.
   • The Canal provided a national economic boost by allowing the transport of goods at one-tenth the previous cost in less than half the previous time
   • Kelly tells us that it also introduced and made possible the consumer economy: “Manufactured goods had been pretty much unknown on the frontier until transportation costs became cheaper. Farmers could grow wheat in western New York, sell it and have cash to buy furniture and clothing shipped up the canal that they otherwise would have made at home."
9. The Erie Canal's political squabbling during its planning stages is an example of our course theme that federal and states' rights battles have always dominated our political landscape.
   • The initial hope of the Canal builders was that the federal government would finance or help with the predicted $7 million building costs. At first, both President Jefferson and his treasury secretary, Albert Gallitin, thought that building the Canal would help the entire nation prosper and thus, argued that federal funds could be spent. However, the Canal was to built entirely in New York - and they could neither rationalize or justify federal funds that many Americans believed would only benefit one state.
   • Thus, the Canal builders were forced to rely exclusively on funding from New York City and related entrepreneurial funding from investors who bought and built up the land and cities that were constructed along the route of the Erie Canal.
10. The Erie Canal's financing and building is an example of how capiitalism and corporations formed the basis of our economic system.
    • While the Canal was built almost entirely with public funding, private and corporate funding were an integral part of its completion and success.
    • Despite the fact that many New Yorkers felt more comfortable relying upon private investment to finance the canal, it was too big a project to be solely financed by private entrepreneurs.
    • The many political squabbles that accompanied its public financing and construction centered around the fear that such a large, hugely expensive project could not be publicly financed and managed. But public financing and management of the Canal was a key to its success.
11. The Erie Canal's consequences for those who constructed it and those who lived along its pathway is an example of our course theme that progress is not always progressive.
    • The Erie Canal represents everything that is progressive. It stimulated the growth of the American economy by transporting goods from east to west and it encouraged the establishment of towns and cities along its route which, in turn, improved real wages and living standards, encouraged rapid growth in manufacturing, and brought about improved labor productivity. A perfect example of this spirit of progressivism - and American exceptionalism - can be found in this poem:

      “Yet it is not that wealth now enriches the scene

      Where treasures of Art and of Nature convene;

      It is not that this Union our coffers may fill: Oh! No!

      It is something more exquisite still.

      ‘Tis that Genius had triumphed and Science prevailed

      Where prejudice flouted and envy assailed

      It is that the Vassals of Europe may see

      The Progress of Mind in a Land that is free.”

      …from “The Meeting of the Waters of Hudson and Erie” by Samuel Woodworth, 1825 and sung at the Grand Canal Celebration

    • But just like almost every law that was passed, internal improvements that were made, and movements through the continent, the building of the Erie Canal also had a less progressive, less positive side. It used cheap labor that expoited the workers - especially indentured servants who often considered themselves economic slaves and Irish immigrants who could find no work in the cities. It churned up the soil, ate away at mountains, and tamed roaring rivers and waterfalls without regard to environmental damage. It forced thousands of American Indians to leave their ancestral homes and move westward. It used eminent domain to force persons living along the proposed Canal route to sell their private property to New York State for the greater public good.

    

Goal #3: To talk about the historiography related to the scholarship on the Erie Canal.

See the power point presentation: Erie Canal Historians

Goal #4: To discuss selected teaching resources about the Erie Canal

• 175th Anniversary of the Canal provides an excellent technological understanding of how the canal was originally built, as well as information on its various enlargements.  Click on the left hand margin to learn more about each technological and engineering aspect of building the canal.  To learn about the recollections of early travelers on the canal, go to “Recollections and Reflections."
• Celebrate 200 provides historical information about the Canal as well as a view of how the Bicentennial will be celebrated from 2017-2025.
• Digging Clinton’s Ditch is a complete, historically accurate site with great information, especially in regard to the politics required to complete the Erie Canal.
• Erie Canal Tour takes a journal through music, art, and photographs through the building of the Canal and its effect on state, regional, and international transportation.
• Five Years on the Erie Canal: An Account of Some of the Most Striking Scenes and Incidents, by Dea M. Eaton, 1845 is a first-hand account, available in its entirety via Google Books, of a minister’s experiences traveling on the Erie Canal.
• Marco Paul’s Travels on the Erie Canal by Jacob Abbott 1852 A fictional account of a 12-year-old boy and his journey on the Erie canal (part of a series, entitled: Marco Paul's Adventures in the Pursuit of Knowledge).
• Nathanial Hawthorne, “The Canal Boat” is a short story originally published in the New-England Magazine, No. 8, December, 1835.
• New York State Archives contains 65 short lesson plans designed around primary documents - broadsides, posters, photographs, and maps - dealing with the Erie Canal.
• The Eric Canal Website has a five-minute movie showing how the Eric Canal worked in 1957.
• The Erie Canal Website contains a huge array of resources – images, maps, resources – as well as a tour through the canal.  You can follow four west to east legs through historical and modern photographs, prints, and postcards
• Videos:
  • The Pilot House: Erie Canal at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LePSecHFkIQ (just under 5 minutes) is narrated by a student who cruises through the Canal and explains both its historical significance and its contemporary importance. Highly recommend.
  • 200 Years on the Erie Canal at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLfGSXuHu5g (just under 8 minutes) provides and excellent visual understanding of the battle to build the canal, the song that made it famous, and its historical significance.
  • What is the Erie Canal at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJpQDTVv7w4 (10 minutes) is a terrific historical narrative of the domestic and international importance of the Canal.
  • The Erie Canal - the Nation's First Super Highway at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMz7eCj732w (3 minutes, 30 seconds) is a brief monotone narrative of the Canal's history.
  • Erie: the Canal that made America at http://www.pbs.org/program/erie-canal-made-america/ (one hour) is an outstanding and comprehensive movie that describes the economic, cultural, and political impact of the Erie Canal upon the growth of the United States. The video can only be streamed if you have a PBSNC Passport account, but the website has some information on the canal and the video.
  • The Erie Canal at http://havefunwithhistory.com/movies/erie.html (5 minutes) contains basic historical information about the Canal.
  • The Canal Diggers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcDJ5hmTkpo (4 minutes) is a great montage of woodcuts, photos, and paintings of those men who worked on the Erie and Ohio canal systems.