Wedding of the waters, p.36
Wedding of the Waters, page 36
No wonder the flow of American output to Britain surged after 1846 and never again dropped to the levels prevailing before the repeal of the Corn Laws. During the buildup to the War of 1812, both Jefferson and Madison figured that Europe needed America’s food more than Americans needed luxuries from Europe, ignoring the damage the embargoes would inflict on American farmers, and the arrival of the war cast doubt over the whole diagnosis. But now, after the repeal of the Corn Laws—something neither Jefferson nor Madison could have anticipated—the swelling American exports of grain validated their viewpoint some thirty-five years after they had suggested it.
The data to support this hypothesis are impressive. During the ten years from 1836 to 1846, American merchandise exports to Britain averaged $48 million a year, with a high of $57 million in 1839. But in 1847—the first year after the repeal of the Corn Laws—Britain imported $87 million of merchandise from the United States. This was not just a temporary surge in response to the famines of the mid-1840s. From 1851 onward, there were only two years when American exports to Britain fell below $100 million, and even those were at $81 million and $92 million. It is also interesting to note that the prices on the New York Stock Exchange surged by 20 percent in 1846 and kept right on climbing for another four years.19
Although these exports include shipments of cotton from the South, much of the merchandise heading to Britain must have moved to the seacoast on the Erie Canal. From 1837 to 1845, the canal carried an average of 1.5 million tons of freight a year, with a high of 2 million in 1845. But in 1846, the year of repeal, the number moved up to 2.3 million tons and soared to just short of 3 million tons the following year. Canal tonnage continued to climb until it was running over 4 million tons in the 1850s. As we noted earlier, eastbound volume on the canal exceeded westbound volume for the first time in 1847—and the excess kept on growing. The importance of flour and grain in these shipments shows up in receipts of these commodities at Buffalo from the west from 1837 to 1860. Here, too, large upward jumps appear in 1846 and 1847 for both commodities; as we have seen, the tonnage reaching Buffalo from the west in the mid-1840s was ten times what it had been just ten years earlier.20 By 1851, flour and grain shipments reaching Buffalo from the west were up to 18 million barrels and would reach 37 million by 1860.21*
Peel, Cobden, and their supporters had it right: repeal of the Corn Laws would not lead to a shortage of food in Britain.
In 1800, Gouverneur Morris had predicted that “one-tenth of the expense born by Britain in the last campaign would enable ships to sail from London through Hudson’s river into Lake Erie.” In his mind’s eye, Morris fastened on what those British ships would be bringing to America. But the more interesting implications of his vision escaped him: the vast quantities of freight traveling on the return voyages, from Lake Erie through Hudson’s river to London.
From George Washington onward, the dream motivating the construction of the Erie Canal was the vast inland navigation possible in the United States and the significance of that transportation system to the future of a country so large and so varied. Over and over, the exhortation came to cut through the mountains to bind a great nation into unity. But one of the great by-products of the Erie Canal was to knit the United States to Europe as well. In contemporary terms, globalization became the centerpiece of the story, as it is the centerpiece of so much economic activity and social change in our own time. New York City is still a primary center of the world economy a century later. Globalization is where the Wedding of the Waters renews its vows.
| EPILOGUE |
We have traveled a long distance in this chronicle of the Erie Canal. In time, we have covered two and a half centuries, from Henry Hudson’s abortive search for the Northwest Passage in 1609 to the eve of the Civil War in 1860. Over that long span of years, we have explored the vision that inspired the canal, the tenacious convictions that overwhelmed those who opposed it, the ingenuity that built and financed it, the appalling effort of human labor that created it, the boundless pride and enthusiasm of the young nation that welcomed it, and the profound economic change at home and abroad that was shaped by it.
The virtual space from the earliest vision of the canal to the full range of its consequences does not lend itself to measurement. Our survey has engaged us in a trip of almost unimaginable dimensions, from an old world clinging to the tradition of the ages to what Michael Chevalier so eloquently described as a new world of “circulation, motion, and boiling agitation.” As the Founding Fathers created a new nation to “secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” the Erie Canal cut a waterway through the mountains to bind that nation into one and to make possible a new economic system in America that would meld forest, farm, and industry into a combination of extraordinary power.
One of the most striking features of the whole story is how much of it was part of the early visions. From the prophecies of George Washington to the predictions of De Witt Clinton, the great prizes to be gained by cutting a waterway through the mountains were national unity and economic power. Washington understood with remarkable clarity that unity was impossible without the economic side, without “commerce.” Clinton was convinced that unity would be an inevitable consequence of economic achievement. Both understood that huge capital investments like these—no matter how financed and managed—would work only if they helped to make private markets function better. The final results were a shining tribute to both men’s keen sense of the shape of the future. That a canal would bind the United States to Europe as well as joining eastern Americans to the west was a bonus Washington and Clinton may have sensed but that neither explicitly articulated.
It is ironic, from the vantage point of the early twenty-first century, that the two efforts to achieve these objectives—Washington’s Patowmack Company and Clinton’s Ditch—were so fundamentally different in structure, concept, and ultimate operational success. Although Clinton had the great advantage of geography—Virginia was not blessed with the gorge at Little Falls, creating a natural passage through the mountains—Washington’s waterway was financed and managed as private enterprise while Clinton’s was a public improvement from start to finish.
Suppose we had to bet today on which project would turn out to be the more successful effort, geography aside: a profit-seeking venture controlled by one of the great executives and administrators of all time, or a state-financed project managed by a committee of politicians. The choice seems to be an obvious one. Thomas Jefferson had reminded George Washington in early 1784, “Nature then has declared in favor of the Potomac, and through that channel offers to pour into our lap the whole commerce of the Western world. [Moreover] public undertakings are carelessly managed, and much money spent to little purpose.”
Yet the privately owned and operated Patowmack Company ended up a financial failure and finished way behind schedule, while the committee of politicians who managed the construction of the Erie Canal would oversee their novel, complex, and gigantic project with high success, bringing it to completion on schedule, at a mind-boggling level of expenditure that came in close to original estimates, and without a single significant blunder or failure along the way. The long odds would have come out the big winner on that bet.
This striking contrast in final outcomes is all the more amazing when we recall that Washington was a trained surveyor with engineering experience. Perhaps he might have been able to carry it off if he had been able to enlist the resourcefulness, creativity, and single-minded devotion of Benjamin Wright, James Geddes, or Canvass White instead of the mercurial fraud James Rumsey. With no prior civil engineering experience, these men and their associates carried the Erie Canal up the Niagara escarpment at Lockport, maneuvered it onto a towering embankment to cross over Irondequoit Creek, spanned the Genesee River for it on an awesome aqueduct, and carved a route for it out of the solid rock between Little Falls and Schenectady—and all of those venturesome designs worked precisely as planned. We might also note that Washington ended up with a labor force of slaves, while the Erie Canal employed free men, including those who contributed anonymously to the technological achievements of construction, such as the machines to pull down enormous trees and then uproot their massive stumps.
When the construction of the canal was complete, and it was at long last time to celebrate the Wedding of the Waters, De Witt Clinton—the heroic protagonist of this story—spoke with more brevity and simplicity than with his usual flourishes. But he had the spirit of the occasion when he ended the ceremonies with these gentle words: “And may the God of Heavens and the Earth smile most propitiously on the work, and render it subservient to the best interests of the human race.” His prayer was answered.
| NOTES |
Facts of publication for frequently used sources can be found in the Bibliography.
INTRODUCTION. “Does It Not Seem Like Magic?”
1. T. L. McKenny, quoted in Lionel Wyld, Low Bridge!, p. 27, citing Madeleine Waggoner, The Long Haul West (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958), p. 113.
2. Wyld, Low Bridge!, p. 39, quoting from the diary of Lafayette’s secretary, A. Levasseur, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825.
3. See Jeremy Atack and Peter Passell, A New Economic View of American History from Colonial Times to 1940, p. 166.
4. Douglass North. The Economic Growth of the United States, p. 253, Table E-Internet.
5. Blake McKelvey, Rochester and the Erie Canal, p. 18.
6. Don C. Sowers, The Financial History of New York State, p. 98.
7. David Hosack, Memoir of De Witt Clinton, appendix, note O. The passage is from a long letter to a friend in Hamburg, Germany.
CHAPTER 1. Smooth Sailing
1. Charles Hadfield, World Canals, p. 37.
2. John Phillips, A General History of Inland Navigation, p. 572.
3. For an extended description of flash locks, associated techniques, and later developments, see Hadfield, World Canals, pp. 30–37.
4. Ibid. pp. 16 and 417.
5. Most of the material for the Grand Canal comes from ibid., pp. 19–23.
6. Available at www.chinapage.com/canal.html.
7. The most interesting discussion I found on the subject of Leonardo’s work in this area appears in an obscure and now defunct English journal featuring book reviews, The Quarterly Review 73 (1844), no. 146, especially pp. 293–97, where the author, Francis Egerton, cites works by writers named Frisi and Fumigalli. I found my copy of this journal at a small English bookseller as the result of a search on the Internet.
8. Rideau Waterway Co-ordinating Association. See www.rideaufriends.com/ lockworks/ lock-evolution.html.
9. Most of the material on the Canal du Midi comes from Odile de Roquette-Buisson and Christian Sarramon’s The Canal du Midi, which is essentially a picture book with a large number of excellent photographs and contemporary diagrams of the canal’s entire route, but also has first-rate commentary; the Quarterly Review, op. cit., p. 299; and Hadfield, World Canals, pp. 42–45.
10. Quoted in Hugh Malet, The Canal Duke, p. 31.
11. Roquette-Buisson and Sarramon, Canal du Midi, pp. 10–11, reproduces a magnificent map of 1726, with full details of the route and vivid drawings of the main structures along the way.
12. Hadfield, World Canals, pp. 42–43.
13. Most of the material on the Bridgewater Canal is from Malet, Canal Duke; Harold Bode, James Brindley; Hadfield, World Canals, pp. 57ff; and Jim Shead’s magnificent site on the Internet, http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/ jim.shead/index.htm or http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/ jim.shead/Bridgewater-Canal.html#BRDG, but the Quarterly Review, pp. 301–20, is truly delectable reading.
14. Malet, Canal Duke, p. 85.
15. Ibid., p. 88.
16. Elkanah Watson, Men and Times of the Revolution…, p. 164.
17. Ibid., p. 94.
CHAPTER 2. Hudson’s Wrong Turn
1. William Miller, The Geological History of New York State, p. 21.
2. Milton Klein, The Empire State, p. 178.
3. Ibid., p. 146.
4. David Hosack, Memoir of De Witt Clinton, appendix, note N; all subsequent Colden quotations are taken from this source.
5. Ibid., note Q, quoting from Christopher Colles’s report of his trip west in 1785.
6. For an extended description of Moore’s efforts, see John Rutherford, Facts and Observations in Relation to the Origin and Completion of the Erie Canal.
7. Ibid., p. 54.
8. Rutherford, Facts and Observations.
9. Mary Riggs Diefendorf, The Historic Mohawk.
10. C. E. Bennett, Many Mohawk Moons, p. 320.
11. “Some Historical Context,” available at www.nysm.nysed.gov/ research_collections/research/ history/neck/context.html.
12. Diefendorf, Historic Mohawk.
13. “Contemptible”: Klein, Empire State, p. 259; Parkman: www.Britannica.com, article on Iroquois Confederation.
14. David Yarrow, “The Great Law of Peace: New World Roots of American Democracy,” September 1987, available at www.kahonwes.com/ iroquois/document.html.
15. I am grateful to Richard Sylla for this information.
16. www.nativetech.org.
17. Quoted in “Some Historical Context.”
18. Ibid.
CHAPTER 3. Washington’s Pivot
1. Cadwallader Colden, Memoir at the Celebration….
2. De Witt Clinton, Memorial…in Favour of a Canal Navigation.
3. Quoted in Stacy Schiff, “Vive l’Histoire,” The New York Times, February 6, 2003.
4. Quoted in James Flexner, Steamboats Come True, p. 384.
5. Quoted in ibid., p. 65.
6. David Hosack, Memoir of De Witt Clinton, appendix, note P.
7. Nathan Miller, The Enterprise of a Free People, p. 4, citing Washington’s Writings, vol. 28, p. 127.
8. Ibid., p. 66.
9. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ gmdhtml/gwmaps.html.
10. Rhoda Blumberg, What’s the Deal?, p. 725.
11. Charles Hadfield, World Canals, p. 274.
12. Cynthia Owen Philip, Robert Fulton, p. 11.
13. Ibid., p. 67.
14. Ibid., p. 69. See also Ronald Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 12.
15. Quoted in World Regional Geography, “Technology, the Patowmack Canal, and National Unity,” www.geog.okstate.edu.
16. John Marshall’s recollections as contributed to Hosack, Memoir.
17. In 1791, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton would define the metallic content of the dollar in terms of both gold and silver, setting up an implicit fixed rate of exchange between the dollar and the pound sterling.
18. Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, p. 21.
19. Blumberg, What’s the Deal? For more detail, see http://nps.gov/thst/mtver.htm.
20. http://nps.gov.thst.mtver.htm.
21. Quoted in Flexner, Steamboats Come True, p. 87.
22. Quoted in Blumberg, What’s the Deal?, p. 744.
23. Quoted in Flexner, Steamboats Come True, p. 88.
24. Ibid.
25. Quoted in ibid., p. 98.
26. Blumberg, What’s the Deal?, p. 730.
CHAPTER 4. Canal Maniacs
1. David Hosack, Memoir of De Witt Clinton, appendix, note Q.
2. Charles Merguerian, Hofstra University, lecture on history and geology of the New York City aqueduct system, 2000, available at www.dukelabs.com/ NYC%20Water%20Supply/ NYCWaterSupply.htm.
3. This quotation and everything in the next three paragraphs is from Hosack, Memoir.
4. Ronald Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 13.
5. Quoted in Noble E. Whitford, History of the Canal System of the State of New York.
6. Quoted in Hosack, Memoir.
7. Elkanah Watson, History of the Rise, Progress and Existing Condition…, p. 175.
8. Quoted in Hosack, Memoir, appendix, note S.
9. Watson, History of the Rise, p. 164.
10. Ibid., pp. 243–46.
11. Ibid., p. 60.
12. Ibid., p. 7.
13. Ibid., p. 269.
14. Ibid., p. 271.
15. Ibid., p. 272. Italics in original.
16. Ibid., p. 274. Italics in original.
17. Ibid., pp. 15–16.
18. Ibid., p. 286.
CHAPTER 5. “A Canal to the Moon”
1. Elkanah Watson, The Expedition, p. 95.
2. From the national census of 1820. See Ronald Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 5.
3. See Watson, Expedition, pp. 19–50.
4. Ibid., pp. 57–58.
5. Ibid., p. 100.
6. Ibid., p. 19.
7. Ibid., p. 22.
8. Timothy Dwight, Travels in New-England and New-York, vol. 4, p. 124.
9. Nathan Miller, The Enterprise of a Free People, p. 23, citing Report of the Canal Commission, January 31, 1818.
10. Ibid., p. 26.
11. By far the most complete and rewarding early history of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company is found in Philip Lord Jr., The Navigators, which also contains a wealth of well reproduced contemporary maps, accounts, and diagrams of the entire route from Albany to Oneida Lake.
12. Letter of March 14, 1792, from Philip Schuyler to Elkanah Watson, in Watson, History of the Rise, Progress and Existing Condition…, p. 318.
13. Miller, Enterprise of a Free People, p. 12.
14. The New York State Museum in Albany has a fascinating facsimile edition of the detailed survey in 1792 by the Western Company, led by Philip Schuyler, of the Mohawk River from Schenectady to Wood Creek.
15. Quoted in Evan Cornog, The Birth of Empire, p. 106.
16. Quoted in Shaw, Erie Water West, pp. 18–19.
17. Ibid., p. 19.
