Wedding of the waters, p.38
Wedding of the Waters, page 38
37. Ronald Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 121, citing Rochester Gazette, October 10, 1820.
38. Walter Werner and Steven Smith, Wall Street, pp. 180–81, provide a full listing of all bonds issued for the canal from June 1817 to July 1825—a total of forty-two separate issues.
39. Miller, Enterprise of a Free People, p. 89. I have drawn heavily on Miller’s description of the Bank for Savings.
40. Ibid., p. 90.
41. De Witt Clinton, The Canal Policy of the State of New York, p. 48.
42. Charles Glidden Haines, Considerations on the Great Western Canal from the Hudson to Lake Erie, p. 38.
43. Miller, Enterprise of a Free People, pp. 95–97.
44. Don C. Sowers, The Financial History of New York State, appendix IV, p. 336.
45. Miller, Enterprise of a Free People, p. 101, furnishes ample detail on these developments in a long footnote.
46. Ibid., p. 102.
47. Sowers, Financial History, appendix IV, p. 336.
48. See Evan Cornog, The Birth of Empire, p. 161.
49. Clinton, Canal Policy, p. 50.
50. Ibid.
CHAPTER 13. Rude Invective
1. Jabez Hammond, The History of the Political Parties in the State of New-York, vol. 1, pp. 458–62, has an excellent appraisal of Clinton’s egotistical manners.
2. See ibid., pp. 325 and 332.
3. www.multied.com/elections/1800.html.
4. Quoted in Evan Cornog, The Birth of Empire, p. 119.
5. Quoted in Stanley Fischer, “Globalization and Its Challenges,” American Economic Review, May 2003, p. 1.
6. Gustavus Myers, The History of Tammany Hall, p. 1.
7. Ibid., p. 5.
8. Ibid., p. 10.
9. Henry Adams, History of the United States of America…, p. 143.
10. Dixon Ryan Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York, p. 57, citing W. A. Duer, Reminiscences of an Old Yorker (New York: Printed for W. L. Andrews, 1867), p. 24.
11. Adams, History, p. 143.
12. Myers, Tammany Hall, p. vii.
13. Ibid., p. 20.
14. Quoted in Dorothie Bobbé, De Witt Clinton, p. 84.
15. Hammond, Political Parties, vol. 1, p. 186.
16. Joanne Freeman, Affairs of Honor. I recommend this book for an extended and interesting discussion of these tendencies.
17. For an extended and exciting description of this duel, see Bobbé, De Witt Clinton, pp. 89–92.
18. Ibid., p. 223, probably quoting Adams’s History.
19. Hammond, Political Parties, vol. 1, pp. 461–62.
20. Personal correspondence, cited in Ronald Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 105.
21. Quoted in Milton Klein, The Empire State, p. 300.
22. Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 108. The ally was Gideon Granger.
23. Ibid., p. 103, quoting Clinton’s address to the legislature in January 1820.
24. Ibid., p. 497.
25. Ibid., p. 108, quoting a letter from Clinton to Young.
26. See Hammond, Political Parties, vol. 1, p. 454.
27. Quoted in Cornog, Birth of Empire, pp. 148–49.
28. Hammond, Political Parties, vol. 1, p. 517.
29. Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 113, quoting the issue of February 15, 1820.
30. Cornog, Birth of Empire, pp. 139–42, has a lively account of this election campaign.
31. Quoted in Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 115.
32. Cornog, Birth of Empire, p. 147, quoting a letter to Henry Post.
33. Noble E. Whitford, History of the Canal System of the State of New York, p. 32, citing Assembly Journal, 1820, p. 671.
34. Quoted in Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 117.
35. Hammond, Political Parties, vol. 2, p. 89.
36. Cited in Bobbé, De Witt Clinton, p. 246.
37. www.lcweb.loc.gov, document 605 of the Thomas Jefferson Papers.
38. Cornog, Birth of Empire, p. 143.
39. Ibid., p. 146.
40. Hammond, Political Parties, vol. 2, p. 101; also cited in Cornog, Birth of Empire, p. 146.
CHAPTER 14. Unwearied Zeal
1. Noble E. Whitford, History of the Canal System of the State of New York, ch. 24, citing George Geddes, “The Erie Canal,” in Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, pp. 291–93.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., citing Introduction to Public Documents Relating to New York Canals, p. xiii.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 33.
6. Ronald Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 99, citing Assembly Journal, p. 671.
7. Anonymous, “Notes on a Tour Through the Western Part of the State of New York” (originally in the magazine Ariel, 1829–1830), in Warren Tryon, A Mirror for Americans, vol. 1, pp. 104–13.
8. Ibid., p. 112.
9. A superb photograph of the station appears in Debbie Stack and Ronald Marquisee, Cruising America’s Waterways: The Erie Canal, p. 766.
10. Sibyl Tatum, quoted in Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River, p. 61.
11. Tryon, Mirror for Americans, vol. 1, p. 111.
12. Quoted in Dorothie Bobbé, De Witt Clinton, p. 245.
13. See Whitford, History of the Canal System, ch. 24, and Lionel Wyld, Low Bridge!, p. 49.
14. Tryon, Mirror for Americans, vol. 1, p. 106.
15. See Andy Olenick and Richard Reisem, Erie Canal Legacy, p. 24.
16. Ralph Andrist, The Erie Canal, p. 41.
17. From Freneau’s 1822 poem “Oh, The Great Western Canal of the State of New York.”
18. Blake McKelvey, Rochester and the Erie Canal, pp. 5–7, has a lively and extensive description of these developments.
19. Quoted in Wyld, Low Bridge!, p. 39.
20. John Howison, “A Tour from Rochester to Utica, 1820,” in Upstate Travels, ed. Roger Haydon, p. 137.
21. See Wyld, Low Bridge!, p. 43.
22. See Francis Kimball, New York—The Canal State, p. 11.
23. William Chazenof, Joseph Ellicott and the Holland Land Company, p. 96, citing an account by Margaret Louise Plunkett called “The Upstate Cities and Villages,” which he found in Alexander Flick, ed., History of the State of New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933–1937), vol. 8, p. 56.
24. McKelvey, Rochester and the Erie Canal, p. 7.
25. Patricia Anderson, The Course of Empire, p. 20, citing Nathan Parker Willis, American Scenery (London: George Virtue, 1840), p. 129.
26. Ibid., p. 36, citing Cole’s Diary.
27. Quoted in Bobbé, De Witt Clinton, p. 253.
28. See Olenick and Reisem, Erie Canal Legacy, p. 16.
29. For a more extended description, see David Hosack, Memoir of De Witt Clinton, appendix, note CC by William Stone.
30. Cadwallader Colden, Memoir at the Celebration….
31. See Evan Cornog, The Birth of Empire, pp. 143–44.
32. See Shaw, Erie Water West, pp. 166–68, for an excellent description of the growing tension in Clinton’s position.
CHAPTER 15. A Noble Work
1. Noble E. Whitford, History of the Canal System of the State of New York, p. 39.
2. Quoted in Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River, p. 31. The merchant’s name was Ira Blossom.
3. Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, ch. 32.
4. I have drawn heavily here on the excellent description in Andy Olenick and Richard Reisem, Erie Canal Legacy, pp. 195–96.
5. See Ronald Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 133.
6. Sheriff, Artificial River, p. 35.
7. Roger Haydon, ed., Upstate Travels, pp. 211–12, citing Henry Tudor, Narrative of a Tour in North America (London: James and Duncan, 1834), vol. 1, pp. 230–34.
8. Lionel Wyld, Low Bridge!, p. 43, citing Frederick Gerstaecker, Wild Sports in the Far West (New York: John W. Lovell, 1881).
9. David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas, pp. 529–30.
10. Ibid., p. 498.
11. Ibid., p. 250.
12. Ibid., p. 481.
13. See www.hlc.wny.org/buffalo.jpg.
14. www.middlebass.org/ lake_erie_steam_boats_1935.shtml.
15. William Chazenof, Joseph Ellicott and the Holland Land Company, p. 178, citing Peacock’s report.
16. Quoted in Dorothie Bobbé, De Witt Clinton, p. 253.
17. See Whitford, History of the Canal System, p. 51.
18. This paragraph draws heavily on Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 160.
CHAPTER 16. The Pageant of Power
1. William Campbell, The Life and Writings of De Witt Clinton, p. 363.
2. Quoted in Dorothie Bobbé, De Witt Clinton, p. 254.
3. Ibid., p. 275.
4. Ibid., pp. 255–57.
5. Quoted in Evan Cornog, The Birth of Empire, p. 147.
6. Ibid.
7. Quoted in Ronald Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 166.
8. Dixon Ryan Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York, p. 283.
9. Quoted in Jabez Hammond, The History of the Political Parties in the State of New-York, vol. 2, p. 159. Italics in original.
10. Quoted in Fox, Decline of Aristocracy, p. 290, fn. 3.
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/ upload/f/f9/ ElectoralCollege1824-Large.png.
12. Martin Van Buren, Autobiography, p. 143.
13. David Hosack, Memoir of De Witt Clinton.
14. Van Buren, Autobiography, p. 143.
15. See Gustavus Myers, The History of Tammany Hall, p. 65, and Cornog, Birth of Empire, p. 151.
16. See Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 175, citing Thurlow Weed’s Autobiography.
17. Shaw, ibid., p. 167, citing Weed in Rochester Telegraph, January 7, 1823.
18. Quoted in Fox, Decline of Aristocracy, p. 296.
19. Quoted in Myers, Tammany Hall, pp. 66–67.
20. Quoted in Cornog, Birth of Empire, p. 152.
21. Craig Hanyan and Mary L. Hanyan, DeWitt Clinton and the Rise of the People’s Men.
22. Quoted in Fox, Decline of Aristocracy, p. 283, fn. 1.
23. Van Buren, Autobiography, pp. 143–45. Italics in original.
24. www.library.thinkquest.org.
25. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression, p. 30.
CHAPTER 17. The Wedding of the Waters
1. Dorothie Bobbé, De Witt Clinton, p. 279; her source is not cited, but from David Hosack, Memoir of De Witt Clinton.
2. Ibid., p. 157.
3. Cadwallader Colden, Memoir at the Celebration….
4. Quoted in Don C. Sowers, The Financial History of New York State, p. 63, citing S. H. Sweet, History of Canals, Assembly Documents, (1863), vol. 1.
CHAPTER 18. No Charge for Births
1. See Nathan Miller, The Enterprise of a Free People, p. 115, fn. 1.
2. I have purloined the expression “artificial river” from Gouveneur Morris’s use of the term in 1803.
3. Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Canal Boat,” New-England Magazine, no. 9 (December 1835), pp. 398–409. This is the source for the next two quotations as well.
4. David Wilkie, “A Canal Journey in 1834,” in Haydon, Upstate Travels, pp. 145–49.
5. Anonymous, “A Mirror for Americans,” accessible at www.history.rochester.edu/canal/bib/1829.
6. John Howison, “A Tour from Rochester to Utica in 1820,” in Upstate Travels, ed. Roger Haydon, p. 139.
7. Ibid., p. 140.
8. Anonymous, “Notes on a Tour Through the Western Part of the State of New York” (originally in the magazine Ariel, 1829–1830), in Tryon, Mirror for Americans, vol. 1, p. 114.
9. Robert G. Albion, The Rise of New York Port, pp. 87–90.
10. Tryon, Mirror for Americans, vol. 1, p. 113.
11. Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, ch. 32.
12. Ibid.
13. Hawthorne, “Canal Boat.”
14. David Wilkie, “A Canal Journey in 1834,” in Haydon, Upstate Travels, pp. 145–49.
15. Anonymous, “A Mirror for Americans.”
16. Hawthorne, “Canal Boat.”
17. See Lionel Wyld, Low Bridge!, p. 29.
18. Ibid., citing Patrick Shirreff, Tour Through North America, and The Diary of Philip Hone.
19. Ibid., citing Diary of Philip Hone.
20. Tryon, Mirror for Americans, vol. 1, p. 113. The traveler was Thomas Woodcock.
21. Wyld, Low Bridge!, p. 69, citing Myron Adams (Samuel Hopkins Adams’s grandfather), Grandfather Stories.
22. Ibid., p. 18.
23. Data for the boat captain and team driver from Ronald Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 198, fn. 3.
24. Anonymous, “A Mirror for Americans.” The misspelling of “berth” was not at all unusual in these commentaries.
25. See Wyld, Low Bridge!, p. 19, quoting from Clifton Johnson, Highways and Byways of the Great Lakes (New York: Macmillan, 1911), p. 30.
26. See Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 428, citing Report of the Select Committee of the Assembly of 1846 upon the Investigation of Frauds…upon the Canals of the State of New York, p. 348.
27. Michael Chevalier, Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States, p. 227.
28. Trollope, Domestic Manners.
29. Hawthorne, “Canal Boat.”
30. Haydon, Upstate Travels, p. 196, citing Basil Hall, Travels in America, in the Years 1827 and 1828, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: Cadell, 1829).
31. Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River, p. 98.
32. Whitney Cross, The Burned-Over District, pp. 85 and 86, provides interesting maps showing the decline in home-manufactured textiles in New York between 1825 and 1845.
33. See Sheriff, Artificial River, pp. 138–39.
34. Ibid., p. 142.
35. See ibid., p. 147, fn. 15, citing Sailor’s Magazine.
36. See Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 221, fn. 8.
37. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 54 (“The Town Ho’s Story”).
38. Sheriff, Artificial River, p. 143.
39. I borrow this expression from the explanation provided by Cross, Burned-Over District, p. 3.
40. See ibid., p. 80.
41. Sheriff, Artificial River, p. 121.
42. See Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom, pp. 206–7, for an interesting analysis of these developments.
43. See Milton Klein, The Empire State, pp. 342–43.
44. See Cross, Burned-Over District, pp. 113–25, for an exhaustive account of this episode. See also James Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
45. Elkanah Watson, History of the Rise, Progress and Existing Condition…, p. 22.
CHAPTER 19. The Prodigious Artery
1. Blake McKelvey, Rochester and the Erie Canal, p. 18.
2. See ibid.
3. Don C. Sowers, The Financial History of New York State, p. 98.
4. See Dorothie Bobbé, De Witt Clinton, p. 297.
5. See www.history.rochester.edu/ canal/bib/nys1961/ historyc.htm, and also Noble Whitford’s History of the Canal System of the State of New York.
6. Cited by Jabez Hammond, The History of the Political Parties in the State of New-York, vol. 1, as a “rallying cry,” p. 327.
7. Michael Chevalier, Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States, pp. 74 and 299.
8. Ibid., p. 130. Italics in original.
9. Ibid., pp. 282–83.
10. Ibid., p. 97.
11. Nathan Miller, The Enterprise of a Free People, pp. 198–99.
12. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, vol. 1, tables A-57 to A-72, p. 12.
13. Milton Klein, The Empire State, p. 289. For a further interesting contemporary analysis of the impact of the Erie Canal on the population, agriculture, and economic growth of New York State, see Alexander Trotter, Observations on the Financial Position and Credit…, pp. 84–86.
14. See Klein, Empire State, pp. 289–90.
15. Quoted in Ronald Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 277.
16. See http://xroads.virginia.edu/ ~HYPER/DETOC/TOUR/ bufftxt.html.
17. Trotter, Observations, p. 85, and Sowers, Financial History, pp. 332–33.
18. Klein, Empire State, p. 315.
19. Douglass North, The Economic Growth of the United States, table L-IX, p. 257. Here, the west includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin, California, Nevada, and Oregon.
20. A stimulating account of this transformation (with many interesting citations to other works) appears in Algie Martin Simons, Social Forces in American History.
21. See Shaw, Erie Water West, pp. 264–65.
22. Ibid., p. 413, quoting Azariah C. Flagg papers.
23. Elkanah Watson, History of the Rise, Progress and Existing Condition…, pp. 15–16.
24. For an extended and often fascinating account of the canal as a force for economic development, see Miller, Enterprise of a Free People, chs. 7–12.
25. For more detail on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, see http://nps.gov/ilmi/.
26. Evan Cornog, The Birth of Empire, p. 162.
27. See Shaw, Erie Water West, p. 261.
28. See Jeremy Atack and Peter Passell, A New Economic View of American History from Colonial Times to 1940, p. 13.
29. North, Economic Growth, table E-IX, p. 253.
30. Francis Lieber quoted in Henry Steele Commager, America in Perspective, p. 33.
31. Quoted in North, Economic Growth, p. 173.
32. Kenneth Sokoloff, Inventive Activity in Early Industrial America, p. 14.
33. Ibid., p. 17.
34. Ibid., p. 10.
35. Quoted in Miller, Enterprise of a Free People, p. 138.
36. See Klein, Empire State, p. 314, where he quotes (but does not cite) the agricultural historian David Ellis.
37. Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroad, p. 350, n. 30.
38. Dixon Ryan Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York, ch. 10.
39. Klein, Empire State, p. 318, citing federal and state census data.
40. See Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Visible Hand, pp. 14–26.
41. Quoted in Blake McKelvey, A Panoramic History of Rochester and Monroe County, New York, p. 54.
42. Robert G. Albion, The Rise of New York Port, p. 89.
43. Quoted in Mark Kurlansky, Salt, p. 248.
44. In addition to using a variety of material found on the Internet, I have drawn on Andy Olenick and Richard Reisem, Erie Canal Legacy, in these sketches of Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo.
