America would be at risk.” It was essential to build canals to unify the new nation.
Enter DeWitt Clinton, one of the political giants of the day, called by Thomas Jefferson “the greatest man in America.” * Clinton, after narrowly losing the 1812 presidential election to the Republican Party candidate, James Madison, had served as mayor of New York City and was now the governor of New York. Known as “the Father of the Erie Canal,” he used his considerable clout to get the state legislature in 1816 to proceed with the canal construction. He did so by addressing head-on George Washington’s “touch of a feather” issue:
However serious the fears which have been entertained of a dismemberment of the Union by collisions between the north and the south … the most imminent danger lies in another direction. [A] line of separation may be eventually drawn between the Atlantic and the western states, unless they are cemented by a common, an ever acting and powerful interest. One channel, supplying the wants [and] increasing the wealth … of each great section of the empire, will form an imperishable cement of connection, and an indissoluble bond of union.
A magnificent achievement
The physical obstacles to executing this vision were formidable. Between the Hudson River and Lake Erie was a rise of almost six hundred feet, requiring eighty-three locks to be filled with water to enable the barges to float up and down from one level to the other. One of the locks is almost as high as Niagara Falls. To cut through the rock, considerable blasting was necessary. But no matter the obstacles, the project got done and became such an economic success that it recouped its cost in nine years. Freight rates dropped more than 95 percent from one hundred dollars to four dollars resulting in an explosion of trade (the volume of wheat trading, for instance, skyrocketed 275-fold in twelve years). The state of New York became known as the Empire State, and New York City quickly eclipsed the larger cities of Boston and Philadelphia to become the dominant city it is today. Thanks to the canal, thousands of immigrant farmers traveled west to settle and develop the rich farmlands of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
Connecting the Great Lakes with the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean may be a feat worthy of Rameses II, but as always, Osymandias beckons. Nothing lasts forever. As boats grew in size, the canal had to be made bigger. Designed for boats with a capacity of thirty tons, the canal went through two major renovations, completed in 1862 and 1918, to accommodateboats carrying 250 tons. In the process, parts of the canal were abandoned and the expanded canal rerouted to rivers and other canals to make a larger system of 525 miles, now renamed the Barge Canal.
With the emergence of railroads and trucks, the heyday of the canal was over, and the New York State Barge Canal eventually ceased commercial freight operations in 1994. Today, defaulting back to its original name, the canal and its towpath are used for small boats and bicycles to promote tourism. The U.S. Department of Transportation has a National Scenic Byways Program to “help recognize, preserve and enhance” 126 selected roads of particular historic, cultural, or recreational value, but the Erie Canal apparently is not one of them. A search of the program’s website ( www.byways.org ) yields no mention of the Erie Canal, just part of the canal now called the Mohawk Towpath Scenic Byway (though the Mohawk Indians had nothing to do with building it).
As for DeWitt Clinton, the ten-time mayor of New York who made the Erie Canal possible, his backers planned on a large memorial to be built in front of New York’s City Hall. The memorial was never built, and today’s bloggers ask the inane question whether he was possibly related to a later Clinton named Bill.
The Crime of the Century, Committed in the Name of God
1857 A group of religous fanatics pulled out their guns
Enter DeWitt Clinton, one of the political giants of the day, called by Thomas Jefferson “the greatest man in America.” * Clinton, after narrowly losing the 1812 presidential election to the Republican Party candidate, James Madison, had served as mayor of New York City and was now the governor of New York. Known as “the Father of the Erie Canal,” he used his considerable clout to get the state legislature in 1816 to proceed with the canal construction. He did so by addressing head-on George Washington’s “touch of a feather” issue:
However serious the fears which have been entertained of a dismemberment of the Union by collisions between the north and the south … the most imminent danger lies in another direction. [A] line of separation may be eventually drawn between the Atlantic and the western states, unless they are cemented by a common, an ever acting and powerful interest. One channel, supplying the wants [and] increasing the wealth … of each great section of the empire, will form an imperishable cement of connection, and an indissoluble bond of union.
A magnificent achievement
The physical obstacles to executing this vision were formidable. Between the Hudson River and Lake Erie was a rise of almost six hundred feet, requiring eighty-three locks to be filled with water to enable the barges to float up and down from one level to the other. One of the locks is almost as high as Niagara Falls. To cut through the rock, considerable blasting was necessary. But no matter the obstacles, the project got done and became such an economic success that it recouped its cost in nine years. Freight rates dropped more than 95 percent from one hundred dollars to four dollars resulting in an explosion of trade (the volume of wheat trading, for instance, skyrocketed 275-fold in twelve years). The state of New York became known as the Empire State, and New York City quickly eclipsed the larger cities of Boston and Philadelphia to become the dominant city it is today. Thanks to the canal, thousands of immigrant farmers traveled west to settle and develop the rich farmlands of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
Connecting the Great Lakes with the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean may be a feat worthy of Rameses II, but as always, Osymandias beckons. Nothing lasts forever. As boats grew in size, the canal had to be made bigger. Designed for boats with a capacity of thirty tons, the canal went through two major renovations, completed in 1862 and 1918, to accommodateboats carrying 250 tons. In the process, parts of the canal were abandoned and the expanded canal rerouted to rivers and other canals to make a larger system of 525 miles, now renamed the Barge Canal.
With the emergence of railroads and trucks, the heyday of the canal was over, and the New York State Barge Canal eventually ceased commercial freight operations in 1994. Today, defaulting back to its original name, the canal and its towpath are used for small boats and bicycles to promote tourism. The U.S. Department of Transportation has a National Scenic Byways Program to “help recognize, preserve and enhance” 126 selected roads of particular historic, cultural, or recreational value, but the Erie Canal apparently is not one of them. A search of the program’s website ( www.byways.org ) yields no mention of the Erie Canal, just part of the canal now called the Mohawk Towpath Scenic Byway (though the Mohawk Indians had nothing to do with building it).
As for DeWitt Clinton, the ten-time mayor of New York who made the Erie Canal possible, his backers planned on a large memorial to be built in front of New York’s City Hall. The memorial was never built, and today’s bloggers ask the inane question whether he was possibly related to a later Clinton named Bill.
The Crime of the Century, Committed in the Name of God
1857 A group of religous fanatics pulled out their guns
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