The Pathway of the Lakes
As one stands in imagination at the early railheads of the West--on the
Ohio River at the end of the Cumberland Road, or at Buffalo, the
terminus of the Erie Canal--the vision which Washington caught breaks
upon him and the dream of a nation made strong by trans-Alleghany routes
of commerce. Link by link the great interior is being connected with the
sea. Behind him all lines of transportation lead eastward to the cities
of the coast. Before him lies the giant valley where the Father of
Waters throws out his two splendid arms, the Ohio and the Missouri, one
reaching to the Alleghanies and the other to the Rockies. Northward, at
the end of the Erie Canal, lies the empire of the Great Lakes, inland
seas that wash the shores of a Northland having a coastline longer than
that of the Atlantic from Maine to Mexico.
Ships and conditions of navigation were much the same on the lakes as on
the ocean. It was therefore possible to imagine the rise of a coasting
trade between Illinois and Ohio as profitable as that between
Massachusetts and New York. Yet the older colonies on the Atlantic had
an outlet for trade, whereas the Great Lakes had none for craft of any
size, since their northern shores lay beyond the international boundary.
If there had been danger from Spain in the Southwest, what of the danger
of Canada's control of the St. Lawrence River and of the trade of the
Northwest through the Welland Canal which was to join Lake Ontario to
Lake Erie? But in those days the possibility of Canadian rivalry was not
treated with great seriousness, and many men failed to see that the West
was soon to contain a very large population. The editor of a newspaper
at Munroe, New York, commenting in 1827 on a proposed canal to connect
Lake Erie with the Mississippi by way of the Ohio, believed that the
rate of Western development was such that this waterway could be
expected only "some hundred of years hence." Even so gifted a man as
Henry Clay spoke of the proposed canal between Lake Michigan and Lake
Superior in 1825 as one relating to a region beyond the pale of
civilization "if not in the moon." Yet in twenty-five years Michigan,
which had numbered one thousand inhabitants in 1812, had gained two
hundredfold, and Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois had their hundreds of
thousands who were clamoring for ways and means of sending their surplus
products to market.
Early in the century representatives of the Fulton-Livingston monopoly
were at the shores of Lake Ontario to prove that their steamboats could
master the waves of the inland sea and serve commerce there as well as
in tidewater rivers. True, the luckless Ontario, built in 1817 at
Sackett's Harbor, proved unseaworthy when the waves lifted the shaft of
her paddle wheels off their bearings and caused them to demolish the
wooden covering built for their protection; but the Walk-in-the-Water,
completed at Black Rock (Buffalo) in August, 1818, plied successfully as
far as Mackinac Island until her destruction three years later. Her
engines were then inherited by the Superior of stronger build, and with
the launching of such boats as the Niagara, the Henry Clay, and the
Pioneer, the fleet builders of Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit proved
themselves not unworthy fellow-countrymen of the old seafarers of Salem
and Philadelphia.
But how were cargoes to reach these vessels from the vast regions beyond
the Great Lakes? Those thousands of settlers who poured into the
Northwest had cargoes ready to fill every manner of craft in so short a
space of time that it seems as if they must have resorted to arts of
necromancy. It was not magic, however, but perseverance that had
triumphed. The story of the creating of the main lakeward-reaching
canals is long and involved. A period of agitation and campaigning
preceded every such undertaking; and when construction was once begun,
financial woes usually brought disappointing delays. When a canal was
completed after many vicissitudes and doubts, traffic overwhelmed every
method provided to handle it: locks proved altogether too small; boats
were inadequate; wharfs became congested; blockades which occurred at
locks entailed long delay. In the end only lines and double lines of
steel rails could solve the problem of rapid and adequate
transportation, but the story of the railroad builders is told
elsewhere. ¹
¹ See The Railroad Builders, by John Moody (in The Chronicles of
America).
Ohio and Illinois caught the canal fever even before the Erie Canal was
completed, and the Ohio Canal and the Illinois-Michigan Canal saw
preliminary surveying done in 1822 and 1824 respectively. Ohio
particularly had cause to seek a northern outlet to Eastern markets by
way of Lake Erie. The valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami rivers
were producing wheat in large quantities as early as 1802, when Ohio was
admitted to the Union. Flour which brought $3.50 a barrel in Cincinnati
was worth $8 in New York. There were difficulties in the way of
transportation. Sometimes ice prevented produce and merchandise from
descending the Ohio to Cincinnati. At other times merchants of that city
had as many as a hundred thousand barrels awaiting a rise in the river
which would make it possible for boats to go over the falls at
Louisville. As these conditions involved a delay which often seemed
intolerable, the project to build canals to Lake Erie met with generous
acclaim. A northward route, though it might be blocked by ice for a few
months each winter, had an additional value in the eyes of numerous
merchants whose wheat, sent in bulk to New Orleans, had soured either in
the long delay at Louisville or in the semi-tropical heat of the
Southern port.
The Ohio Legislature in 1822 authorized the survey of all possible
routes for canals which would give Ohio an outlet for its produce on
Lake Erie. The three wheat zones which have been mentioned were favored
in the proposed construction of two canals which, together, should
satisfy the need of increased transportation: the Ohio Canal to connect
Portsmouth on the Ohio River with Cleveland on Lake Erie and to traverse
the richest parts of the Scioto and Muskingum valleys, and to the west
the Miami Canal to pierce the fruitful Miami and Maumee valleys and join
Cincinnati with Toledo. De Witt Clinton, the presiding genius of the
Erie Canal, was invited to Ohio to play godfather to these northward
arteries which should ultimately swell the profits of the commission
merchants of New York City, and amid the cheers of thousands he lifted
the first spadefuls of earth in each undertaking.
The Ohio Canal, which was opened in 1833, had a marked effect upon the
commerce of Lake Erie. Before that date the largest amount of wheat
obtained from Cleveland by a Buffalo firm had been a thousand bushels;
but in the first year of its operation the Ohio Canal brought to the
village of Cleveland over a quarter of a million bushels of wheat, fifty
thousand barrels of flour, and over a million pounds of butter and lard.
In return, the markets of the world sent into Ohio by canal in this same
year thirty thousand barrels of salt and above five million pounds of
general merchandise.
Ever since the time when the Erie Canal was begun, Canadian statesmen
had been alive to the strong bid New York was making for the trade of
the Great Lakes. Their answer to the Erie Canal was the Welland Canal,
built between 1824 and 1832 and connecting Lake Erie with Lake Ontario
by a series of twenty-seven locks with a drop of three hundred feet in
twenty-six miles. This undertaking prepared the way for the subsequent
opening of the St. Lawrence canal system (183 miles) and of the Rideau
system by way of the Ottawa River (246 miles). There was thus provided
an ocean outlet to the north, although it was not until 1856 that an
American vessel reached London by way of the St. Lawrence.
With the Hudson and the St. Lawrence in the East thus competing for the
trade of the Great Lakes, it is not surprising that the call of the
Mississippi for improved highways was presently heard. From the period
of the War of 1812 onward the position of the Mississippi River in
relation to Lake Michigan was often referred to as holding possibilities
of great importance in the development of Western commerce. Already the
old portage-path links between the Fox and Wisconsin and the Chicago and
Illinois rivers had been worn deep by the fur traders of many
generations, and with the dawning of the new era enthusiasts of Illinois
were pointing out the strategic position of the latter route for a great
trade between Lake Michigan and the Gulf of Mexico. Thus the wave of
enthusiasm for canal construction that had swept New York and Ohio now
reached Indiana and Illinois. Indian ownership of land in the latter
State for a moment seemed to block the promotion of the proposed
Illinois and Michigan Canal, but a handsome grant of a quarter of a
million acres by the Federal Government in 1827 came as a signal
recognition of the growing importance of the Northwest; and an
appropriation for the lighting and improving of the harbor of the little
village of Chicago was hailed by ardent promoters as sure proof that the
wedding of Lake Michigan and the Mississippi was but a matter of months.
All the difficulties encountered by the advocates of earlier works of
this character, in the valleys of the Potomac, the Susquehanna, and the
Mohawk, were the portion of these dogged promoters of Illinois. Here, as
elsewhere, there were rival routes and methods of construction,
opposition of jealous sections not immediately benefited, estimates
which had to be reconsidered and augmented, and so on. The land grants
pledged to pay the bonds were at first of small value, and their advance
in price depended on the success of the canal itself, which could not be
built--unless the State underwrote the whole enterprise--if the lands
were not worth the bonds. Thus the argument ran in a circle, and no one
could foresee the splendid traffic and receipts from tolls that would
result from the completed canal.
The commissioners in charge of the project performed one interesting
service in these early days by putting Chicago on the map; but the two
terminals, Ottawa on the Illinois and Chicago on Lake Michigan--both
plotted in 1830--were very largely figures of speech at that time. The
day of miracles was at hand, however, for the little town of one hundred
people at the foot of Lake Michigan. The purchase of the lands of the
Potawatomies, the Black Hawk War in 1832, which brought steamboats to
Chicago for the first time, and the decision of Illinois in 1836 to
pledge her good name in favor of the Illinois and Michigan Canal made
Chicago a city of four thousand people by the panic year of 1837. So
absorbed were these Chicago folk in the building of their canal and in
wresting from their lake firm foothold for a city (reclaiming four
hundred feet of lake bed in two years) that the panic affected their
town less than it did many a rival. Although the canal enterprise came
to an ominous pause in 1842, after the expenditure of five millions, the
pledge of the State stood the enterprise in good stead. Local
financiers, together with New York and Boston promoters, advanced about
a quarter of a million, while French and English bankers, notably Baring
Brothers, contributed about three-quarters of a million. With this
assistance the work was carried to a successful ending. On April 10,
1848, the first boat passed over the ninety-mile route from Chicago to
Ottawa, and the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Basin were united by
this Erie Canal of the West. Though its days of greatest value were soon
over, no one can exaggerate the importance of this waterway in the
growth and prosperity of Chicago between 1848 and 1860. By 1857 Chicago
was sending north and south annually by boat over twenty million bushels
of wheat and corn.
The awakening of the lands behind Lake Erie, Lake Huron, and Lake
Michigan brought forth innumerable demands for roads, canals, and
railways to the ports of Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Milwaukee,
and Chicago. There were actually hundreds of these enterprises
undertaken. The development of the land behind Lake Superior was
particularly spectacular and important, not only because of its general
effect on the industrial world but also because out of it came the St.
Mary's River Ship Canal. Nowhere in the zone of the Great Lakes has any
region produced such unexpected changes in American industrial and
commercial life as did the region of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota
contributory to Lake Superior. If, as the story goes, Benjamin Franklin
said, when he drew at Paris the international boundary line through Lake
Superior, that this was his greatest service to America, he did not
exaggerate. The line running north of Isle Royale and thence to the Lake
of the Woods gave the United States the lion's share of that great
inland seaboard and the inestimably rich deposits of copper and iron
that have revolutionized American industry.
From earliest days rumors of deposits of bright copper in the land
behind Lake Superior had been reported by Indians to fur traders who in
turn had passed the story on to fur company agents and thus to the
outside world. As a result of her "Toledo War"--as her boundary dispute
was called--Michigan had reluctantly accepted the northern peninsula
lying between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan in lieu of the strip of
Ohio territory which she believed to be hers. If Michigan felt that she
had lost by this compromise, her state geologist, Douglass Houghton,
soon found a splendid jewel in the toad's head of defeat, for the report
of his survey of 1840 confirmed the story of the existence of large
copper deposits, and the first rush to El Dorado followed. Amid the
usual chaos, conflict, and failure incident to such stampedes, order and
system at last triumphed and the richest copper mines of the New World
were uncovered. Then came the unexpected finding of the mammoth iron-ore
beds by William A. Burt, inventor of the solar compass. The circumstance
of this discovery is of such national importance that a contemporary
description by a member of Burt's party which was surveying a line near
Marquette, Michigan, is worth quoting:
I shall never forget the excitement of the old gentleman when viewing
the changes of the variation. He kept changing his position to take
observations, all the time saying "How would they survey this country
without my compass" and "What could be done here without my compass." At
length the compassman called for us all to "come and see a variation
which will beat them all." As we looked at the instrument, to our
astonishment, the north end of the needle was traversing a few degrees
to the south west. Mr. Burt called out "Boys, look around and see what
you can find." We all left the line, some going to the east, some going
to the west, and all of us returned with specimens of iron ore.
But it was not enough that this Aladdin's Land in the Northwest should
revolutionize the copper and steel industry of the world, for as soon as
the soil took to its bosom an enterprising race of agriculturists it
bade fair to play as equally important a part in the grain industry.
Copper and iron no less came out of the blue of this cold northern
region than did the mighty crops of Minnesota wheat, corn, and oats. In
the decade preceding the Civil War the export of wheat from Lake
Superior rose from fourteen hundred bushels to three and a quarter
millions of bushels, while in 1859 nearly seven million bushels of corn
and oats were sent out to the world.
The commerce of Lake Superior could not await the building of a canal
around the foaming rapids of the St. Mary's River, its one outlet to the
lower lakes. In the decade following the discovery of copper and iron
more than a dozen ships, one even of as much as five hundred tons, were
hauled bodily across the portage between Lake Huron and Lake Superior.
The last link of navigation in the Great Lake system, however, was made
possible in 1852 by a grant by Congress of 750,000 acres of Michigan
land. Although only a mile in length, the work proved to be of unusual
difficulty since the pathway for the canal had to be blasted throughout
practically its whole length out of solid rock. It was completed in
1855, and the princely empire "in the moon" was in a position to make
its terms with the coal fields of Pennsylvania and to usher in the iron
age of transportation and construction.
It is only in the light of this awakening of the lands around the Great
Lakes that one can see plainly the task which fell to the lot of the
successors of the frail Walk-in-the-Water and sturdier Superior of the
early twenties. For the first fifteen years the steamboat found its
mission in carrying the thousands of emigrants pouring into the
Northwest, a heterogeneous multitude which made the Lake Erie boats
seem, to one traveler at least, filled with "men, women and children,
beds, cradles, kettles, and frying pans." These craft were built after
the pattern of the Walk-in-the-Water--side-wheelers with a steering
wheel at the stern. No cabins or staterooms on deck were provided; and
amid such freight as the thriving young towns provided were to be found
the twenty or thirty cords of wood which the engines required as fuel.
The second period of steamboating began with the opening of the Ohio
Canal and the Welland Canal about 1834 and extended another fifteen
years to the middle of the century, when it underwent a transformation
owing to the great development of Chicago, the completion of the
Illinois and Michigan and St. Mary's canals, and the new railways. This
second period was marked by the building of such steamers as the
Michigan, the Great Western, and the Illinois. These were the first
boats with an upper cabin and were looked upon with marked suspicion by
those best acquainted with the severe storms upon the Great Lakes. The
Michigan, of 475 tons, built by Oliver Newberry at Detroit in 1833, is
said to have been the first ship of this type. These boats proved their
seaworthiness and caused a revolution in the construction of lake craft.
Later in this period freight transportation saw an equally radical
advance with the building of the first propellers. The sloop-rigged
Vandalia, built by Sylvester Doolittle at Oswego on Lake Ontario in
1841-42, was the first of the propeller type and was soon followed by
the Hercules, the Samson, and the Detroit.
One very great handicap in lake commerce up to this time had been the
lack of harbors. Detroit alone of the lake ports was distinctly favored
in this respect. The harbors of Buffalo, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and
Chicago were improved slowly, but it was not until the great Chicago
convention of 1846 that the nation's attention was focused on the needs
of Western rivers and harbors, and there dawned a new era of lighthouses
and buoys, breakwaters and piers, and dredged channels. Another handicap
to the volume of business which the lake boats handled in the period
just previous to the Civil War was the inadequacy of the feeders, the
roads, riverways, and canals. The Erie Canal was declared too small
almost before the cries of its virulent opponents had died away, and the
enlargement of its locks was soon undertaken. The same thing proved true
of the Ohio and Illinois canals. The failure of the Welland Canal was
similarly a very serious handicap. Although its locks were enlarged in
1841, it was found by 1850 that despite the improvements it could not
admit more than about one-third of the grain-carrying boats, while only
one in four of the new propellers could enter its locks.
As late as the middle forties men did not in the least grasp the
commercial situation which now confronted the Northwest nor could they
foresee that the land behind the Great Lakes was about to deluge the
country with an output of produce and manufactures of which the roads,
canals, ships, wharfs, or warehouses in existence could handle not a
tenth part. They did not yet understand that this trade was to become
national. It was well on in the forties before the Galena lead mines,
for instance, were given up as the terminal of the Illinois Central
Railroad and the main line was directed to Chicago. The middle of the
century was reached before the Lake Shore was considered at Cleveland or
Chicago as important commercially as the neighboring portage paths which
by the Ordinance of 1787 had been created "common highways forever
free." The idea of joining Buffalo, Cleveland, and Chicago with the
interior--an idea as old as the Indian trails thither--still dominated
men's minds even in the early part of the railroad epoch. Chicago
desired to be connected with Cairo, the ice-free port on the
Mississippi; and Cleveland was eager to be joined to Columbus and
Cincinnati. The enthusiastic railway promoters of Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois drew splendid plans for uniting all parts of those States by
railway lines; but the strategic position of the cities on the
continental alignment from New York to the Pacific by way of South Pass
never came within their horizon. The ten million dollar Illinois scheme
did not even contemplate a railway running eastward from Chicago. But
the future of the commerce of the Great Lakes depended absolutely upon
this development. There was no hope of any canals being able to handle
the traffic of the mighty empire which was now awake and fully conscious
of its power. The solution lay in joining the cities to each other and
to the Atlantic world markets by iron rails running east and west.
This railroad expansion is what makes the last decade before the Civil
War such a remarkable series of years in the West. In the half decade,
1850-55, the Baltimore and Ohio and Pennsylvania railways reached the
Ohio River; the links of the present Lake Shore system between Buffalo
and Chicago by way of Cleveland and Toledo were constructed; and the
Pennsylvania line was put through from Pittsburgh to Chicago. The place
of the lake country on the continental alignment and the imperial
situation of Chicago, and later of Omaha, came to be realized. The new
view transformed men's conceptions of every port on the Great Lakes in
the chain from Buffalo to Chicago. At a dozen southern ports on Ontario,
Erie, Huron, and Michigan, commerce now touched the swiftest and most
economical means of transcontinental traffic. This development
culminated in the miracle we call Chicago. In 1847 not a line of rail
entered the town; its population then numbered about twenty-five
thousand and its property valuation approximated seven millions. Ten
years later four thousand miles of railway connected with all four
points of the compass a city of nearly one hundred thousand people, and
property valuation had increased five hundred per cent. The growth of
Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit during this period was also phenomenal.
When the crisis of 1861 came, the service performed by the
Walk-in-the-Water and her successors was seen in its true light. The
Great Lakes as avenues of migration had played a providential part in
filling a northern empire with a proud and loyal race; from farm and
factory regiment on regiment marched forth to fight for unity; from
fields without number produce to sustain a nation on trial poured forth
in abundance; enormous quantities of iron were at hand for the casting
of cannon and cannon balls; and, finally, pathways of water and steel
were in readiness in the nick of time to carry these resources where
they would count tremendously in the four long years of conflict.