_Gouverneur Morris's Day-dream of the Coming Blessings of
Liberty.--He predicts Artificial Channels from the Lakes to
the Hudson.--The Sight of the Caledonian Canal enables him to
foresee Wealth for the Interior of America.--Seeing Ships on
Lake Erie, he predicts that Ocean Vessels will soon sail on
the Lakes.--Inland Navigation a Great Factor in this Country's
Development.--Many Rivers not made Navigable for Lack of
Engineering Skill.--President Jefferson recommends that the
Surplus in the Treasury be used for Internal Improvements.--Jesse
Hawley writes Articles in Behalf of an Erie Canal.--A Bill in
the New York Legislature for the Same Object.--Hindrances to the
Execution of the Project.--Names of Some Notable Friends of the
Undertaking.--Erie Canal Bill passed by the New York Legislature,
1817.--Lack of Good Roads necessitates Transportation of Materials
for the Canal in Winter only.--Other Difficulties.--Clearing
away the Timber and laying out the Track from Albany to
Buffalo.--Imported Machinery used for uprooting Trees and
Stumps.--Neighboring States urged to Contribute.--Cost and Profits
both Greater than Estimated.--Rejoicings at the Opening of the
Canal.--The Success of this Canal leads to other Enterprises._
MORRIS AND CLINTON: FATHERS OF THE ERIE CANAL
[Illustration]
AS we survey the early period of the nation's history, there appear a
number of famous conventions of notables which will ever live in the
memory of thoughtful Americans. There are, however, a number of such
gatherings that are not familiar to many, and it is at one of these
that any story of the far-famed Erie Canal must begin.
In the year 1777 General Schuyler's army was at Fort Edward, New
York, during its slow and sullen retreat before Burgoyne's advancing
redcoats. Gouverneur Morris was sent to the army at Fort Edward, and on
a certain evening, amid a company of army officers, that brilliant man
told a day-dream before the flickering camp-fire. The dream concerned
the future of America when once the foreign yoke should be thrown
off. In language consonant with the fascinating nature of his theme
the speaker described in some detail what would be the result on the
minds and hearts of men when liberty for all had been secured, and the
inspiring advance in arts and letters, in agriculture and commerce,
that would come. He was a dreamer, but his dream became a realization
and the wonder of young America. A comrade that night heard his words.
"He announced," wrote that person, Governor Morgan Lewis, then
Quartermaster-General, "in language highly poetic, and to which I
cannot do justice, that at no very distant day the waters of the great
Western inland seas would, by the aid of man, break through their
barriers and mingle with those of the Hudson. I recollect asking him
how they were to break through these barriers. To which he replied,
that numerous streams passed them through natural channels, and that
artificial ones might be conducted by the same routes."
A number of eminent authorities, such as James Geddes, Simeon de Witt,
and Elkanah Watson, all leave evidence that the idea of a canal from
Lake Erie to the Hudson was first brought to men's attention by the
man who told his vision to those sleepy Revolutionary officers at Fort
Edward.
In his diary of a journey in Scotland in 1795 Morris thus exclaims at
the sight of the Caledonian Canal, "When I see this, my mind opens to
a view of wealth for the interior of America, which hitherto I had
rather conjectured than seen." Six years later he wrote to a friend,
after seeing ships on Lake Erie: "Hundreds of large ships will, at no
distant period, bound on the billows of these inland seas.... Shall I
lead your astonishment up to the verge of incredulity? I will. Know
then that one-tenth of the expense borne by Great Britain in the last
campaign would enable ships to sail from London through Hudson's River
into Lake Erie." Simeon de Witt said in 1822: "The merit of first
starting the idea of a direct communication by water between Lake Erie
and Hudson's River unquestionably belongs to Mr. Gouverneur Morris. The
first suggestion I had of it was from him. In 1803 I accidentally met
with him at Schenectady. We put up for the night at the same inn and
passed the evening together. He then mentioned the project of 'tapping
Lake Erie,' as he expressed it himself, and leading its water in an
artificial river, directly across the country to Hudson's River." James
Geddes first heard of the early canal idea from Mr. Morris in 1804.
"The idea," he said, "of saving so much lockage by not descending to
Lake Ontario made a very lively impression on my mind."
[Illustration: GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
_Promoter of the Erie Canal_]
Looking back over the colonial history of America it is very
interesting to note the part that was played in our country's
development by inland navigation. Practically all the commerce of the
colonies was moved in canoes, sloops, and schooners; the large number
of Atlantic seaboard rivers were the roads of the colonies, and there
were no other roads. In Pennsylvania and Georgia a few highways were
in existence; in the province of New York there were only twelve miles
of land carriage. Villages, churches, and courthouses in Maryland and
Virginia were almost always placed on the shore of the rivers, for
it was only by boat that the people could easily go to meeting or to
court. Indeed the capital of the country, Washington, was located upon
the Potomac River, partly for the reason that its founders believed
that the Potomac was to be the great commercial highway of the eastern
half of the continent.
As roads were the arteries of trade and travel it was natural for
our forefathers to hold the opinion that to increase the commerce
of the country it was necessary only to increase the number of
navigable miles of the rivers. The story of the struggle to improve
the navigation of the two rivers, Mohawk and Hudson, upon which the
attention of our earliest engineers centred, occupies other pages of
this volume; and it is for us to note here the fact merely in passing
that, beginning with 1786, strenuous efforts were made to render these
waterways, and a large number of less important rivers, navigable. The
efforts failed of success, the reason being that engineering skill was
not of a grade high enough to master the problem. And consequently,
when the nineteenth century dawned, we may say with fair regard to
truth that the campaigns that had been waging in a number of the States
for the betterment of America's navigation by means of improved rivers
had failed and were discarded.
Then it was that public attention was turned to the subject of making
artificial water channels, or canals. Generations before this, the
great Forth and Clyde Canal in Scotland had been completed by Smeaton;
the Royal Canal in Ireland was finished in 1792; the Schuylkill and
Susquehanna Canal in Pennsylvania had been surveyed in 1762, and a few
miles of it had been dug in 1794; the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal,
though surveyed as early as 1764, was not begun until 1804.
It was natural, therefore, that the idea of a canal between the Hudson
and Lake Erie should have presented itself forcibly to New Yorkers at
this time, and all the latent possibilities were aroused to activity in
1807 by the recommendation made by President Jefferson in his message
to Congress in October, that the surplus money in the Treasury of
the United States be used for undertaking a large number of internal
improvements. Whether or not Jefferson's recommendation or some other
preliminary proposal of this kind may have inspired it, a New Yorker
named Jesse Hawley was now preparing a series of articles advocating a
canal between the Hudson and the Lakes. Before these articles, to which
the name of "Hercules" was signed, were ready to appear in print,
Mr. Hawley changed his place of residence to Pittsburg, and, oddly
enough, it was in "The Commonwealth," a Pittsburg paper, that the first
published broadside in behalf of an Erie canal appeared; this was on
the fourteenth day of January, 1807. This series of articles, as a
whole, appeared in "The Genesee Messenger," of Canandaigua, weekly from
October, 1807, to March, 1808. The author had studied the problem with
great earnestness, though the Mohawk River was to be used as a part of
the system. In February of the following year the idea gained added
impetus and circulation by a bill offered in the New York Legislature;
its author was Joshua Forman, a member from Onondaga County, and it
read as follows:
"Whereas the President of the United States by his message
to Congress, delivered at their meeting in October last, did
recommend that the surplus money in the treasury, over and above
such sums as could be applied to the extinguishment of the
national debt, be appropriated to the great national objects of
opening canals and making turnpike roads; And whereas the State of
New York, holding the first commercial rank in the United
States, possesses within herself the best route of communication
between the Atlantic and Western waters, by means of a canal
between the tide-waters of the Hudson River and Lake Erie, through
which the wealth and trade of that large portion of the United
States bordering on the upper lakes would for ever flow to our
great commercial emporium; And whereas the Legislatures of several
of our sister States have made great exertions to secure to their
own States the trade of that wide-extended country west of the
Alleghanies to those of this State; And whereas it is highly
important that these advantages should as speedily as possible
be improved, both to preserve and increase the commerce and
national importance of this State: Resolved (if the honourable
the Senate concur herein), that a joint committee be appointed to
take into consideration the propriety of exploring, and causing
an accurate survey to be made of, the most eligible and direct
route for a canal to open a communication between the tide-waters
of the Hudson River and Lake Erie; to the end that Congress may
be enabled to appropriate such sums as may be necessary to the
accomplishment of that great national object."
For a number of years the great project was held in abeyance by a
series of unforeseen events. First among these was the War of 1812,
during which the State of New York was the frontier and saw a number
of the most important campaigns. Then, too, the inherent difficulties
of the project--the vast amount of ground necessarily to be covered,
the low plane of engineering science at that day, the immeasurable
difficulties of gaining access to the interior of a heavily wooded
country, the low ebb of the financial condition of the State--all
combined to strengthen the opposition to the canal. But its friends
grew in number and steadily grew in power. First among them was
Governor Clinton, who was so closely allied with the great undertaking
that its enemies frequently called it "Clinton's Ditch"; Gouverneur
Morris, Fulton, and Livingston (who were just now succeeding in their
steamboat enterprise), Simeon de Witt, Thomas Eddy, General Philip
Schuyler, Chancellor Kent, and Judges Yates and Platt are remembered
as the most influential promoters of America's first great work of
internal improvement.
Strangely enough, one of the most serious hindrances to the beginning
of the work proved in the end to be the great argument in its favor,
and that was the War of 1812. The act which gave birth to the canal
was passed by the New York Legislature April 15, 1817, and then went
before the Council of Revision. "The ordeal this bill met with in the
Council of Revision," writes M. S. Hawley in his valuable pamphlet,[3]
"came near being fatal to it; it could not have received a two-thirds
vote after a veto. The Council was composed of Lieutenant-Governor
John Taylor,--acting Governor, as President of the Council,--Chief
Justice Thompson, Chancellor Kent, and Judges Yates and Platt. Acting
Governor Taylor was openly opposed to the whole scheme. The Chief
Justice was also opposed to this bill. Chancellor Kent was in favor of
the canal, but feared it was too early for the State to undertake this
gigantic work. Judges Yates and Platt were in favor of the bill; but
it was likely to be lost by the casting vote of the acting Governor.
Vice-President Tompkins (recently the Governor) entered the room at
this stage of the proceedings, and, in an informal way, joined in
conversation upon the subject before the Council, and in opposition
to this bill. He said: 'The late peace with Great Britain was a mere
truce, and we will undoubtedly soon have a renewed war with that
country; and instead of wasting the credit and resources of the State
in this chimerical project, we ought to employ all our revenue and
credit in preparing for war.'
"'Do you think so, sir?' said Chancellor Kent.
"'Yes, sir,' replied the Vice-President; 'England will never forgive us
for our victories, and, my word for it, we shall have another war with
her within two years.'
"The Chancellor, then rising from his seat, with great animation
declared,
"'If we must have war ... I am in favor of the canal, and I vote for
the bill.'
"With that vote the bill became a law."
It is difficult for us to-day to realize what a tremendous undertaking
it was to try to throw this great "Ditch" of Clinton's across those
hundreds of miles of forest and swamp which, for so many generations,
had been known as the "Long House of the Iroquois." As you fly through
that beautiful territory watered by the Mohawk, Seneca, and Onondaga
rivers to-day, it is hardly possible to re-create, with any measure
of truth, the old-time appearance of the land. It was well into the
nineteenth century before a good road was ever built in Central New
York; indeed, during the years while the Erie Canal was being built,
the necessary materials for the building, and provisions for the
builders, were transported thither in the winter season because at that
time only was it accessible by any known means of transportation. Think
what it meant, then, to dig a great trench through the heavily wooded
region where even the road-builders had not had the temerity to go.
It was the forest growth that held back the road-maker; the tangled
forest, the heavily wooded overgrowth that bound the heavy trees
inextricably together. The canal-builder had all that the road-maker
found to combat with above the ground,--the tangled mesh of bush, vine,
and tree,--but he had also what was far more difficult to attack and
conquer, namely, the tremendous labyrinth of roots that lay beneath
the ground. Thus, his task was double that of the road-maker; and
look as far as you will through our early history, you will not find
an enterprise launched on this continent by any man or any set of men
that will compare in daring with the promotion of this great work of
interior improvement to which New York now set herself.
For there was no hesitating. Within a very few days of the passing
of the act creating the Erie Canal you could have seen surveyors and
chainmen pushing out into the shadowy forest-land, driving five lines
of stakes across New York toward the setting sun. These men, like those
who sent them, were ridiculed everywhere they went by some of the
people; but still the ringing blows grew fainter and fainter as those
five lines of stakes crept on up the Mohawk, along the Seneca, through
poisonous swamps, on the banks of running rivers, around the shores
of the still-lying lakes. Those who ridiculed prophesied that next we
would be building a bridge across the Atlantic, and then a tunnel to
China beneath the Pacific; but the sneers and ridicule of that portion
of the people that will be fools all the time could not stop those
earnest stake-drivers or the small army of men, mostly Americans, who
came in and worked with pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow.
The two outer lines of stakes were sixty feet apart; this indicated
the space from which the forest was to be cleared. Two lines of stakes
within these, measuring forty feet apart, represented the exact width
of the proposed canal; and the remaining single line of stakes located
its mathematical centre. The whole distance of the canal from Albany
to Buffalo was divided into three sections, and these sections were
subdivided into very small portions, which were let to contractors. The
first contract was signed June 27, 1817, and work was begun at historic
Rome, New York, on the following Fourth of July, with appropriate
ceremony. After a short address by one of the commissioners, Samuel
Young, and amid a burst of artillery, Judge Richardson, the first
contractor, threw out the first spadeful of earth.
To present-day readers acquainted with so many wonderful feats of
engineering of modern days, the history of the building of this canal
must seem commonplace; the marvellous thing about it, after all, was
its conception and the campaign of education which brought about its
realization. One of the romantic phases of the story, that will forever
be of interest to those of us who can never know a primeval forest,
was the experience of the engineering corps crashing their way through
the New York forests, where the surveyors' stakes could hardly be
seen in the dense gloom. Machinery unknown in America at the time was
called upon to perform this arduous labor of grubbing and clearing this
sixty-foot aisle. One machine, working on the principle of an endless
screw connected with a cable, a wheel, and a crank, enabled a single
man to haul down a tree of the largest size without any cutting.
The machine being located at a distance of one hundred feet from the
foot of the tree, the cable was attached to the trunk fifty or sixty
feet from the ground, a crank was turned, the screw revolved, and the
tree was soon prostrated, as the force which could be exerted by this
principle was irresistible.
A machine for hauling out stumps was constructed and operated as
follows:
"Two strong wheels, sixteen feet in diameter, are made and
connected together by a round axle-tree, twenty inches thick
and thirty feet long; between these wheels, and with its spokes
inseparably framed into their axle-tree, another wheel is placed,
fourteen feet in diameter, round the rim of which a rope is
several times passed, with one end fastened through the rim, and
with the other end loose, but in such a condition as to produce
a revolution of the wheel whenever it is pulled. This apparatus
is so moved as to have the stump, on which it is intended to
operate, midway between the largest wheels, and nearly under the
axle-tree; and these wheels are so braced as to remain steady. A
very strong chain is hooked, one end to the body of the stump, or
its principal root, and the other to the axle-tree. The power
of horses or oxen is then applied to the loose end of the rope
above mentioned, and as they draw, rotary motion is communicated,
through the smallest wheel, to the axle-tree, on which, as
the chain hooked to the stump winds up, the stump itself is
gradually disengaged from the earth in which it grew. After this
disengagement is complete, the braces are taken from the large
wheels, which then afford the means of removing that stump out of
the way, as well as of transporting the apparatus where it may be
made to bear on another."
An implement devised for the underground work demanded on the Erie
Canal was a peculiar plough having a very heavy blade by which the
roots of the trees were cut; two yoke of oxen could draw this plough
through any mesh of roots none of which exceeded two inches in diameter.
The middle section of the canal, from Rome to Lockport, was completed
in 1819, twenty-seven miles being navigable in that year. By 1823 the
canal was opened from Rochester to Schenectady. Water was admitted into
the canal between Schenectady and Albany in October of that year; and
by September, 1824, the line was completed from Lockport to Black Rock
Harbor on Lake Erie.
In evidence of what the promoters of the Erie Canal expected that
highway would be to the Central West we find this interesting fact:
Ohio, and even Kentucky, were called upon officially to aid in raising
the funds for its building. Indeed, the commissioners in 1817 went
so far as to utter a threat against the States lying on each side
of New York in case they should not be willing to contribute to the
building of this commercial route, which was to be for their common
benefit; this consisted in a threat to charge high duties on articles
transported to and from those States and the Territories of the United
States. It would seem as though New York never expected to be compelled
to finance, unassisted, the great work of improvement which she began
in 1817. Agents went canvassing for her both in Vermont on the east
and in Ohio on the west for the purpose of raising contributions to
the canal fund. Agents also were sent to the national Government at
Washington, and it was believed that national aid could perhaps be
secured from the sale of the public lands in Michigan, very much in
the same way as the old National Road was paid for in part by the
sale of lands in Ohio a decade before. Though assurances of interest
and sympathy were forthcoming from the Government and from all the
interested States, there is no evidence at hand to show that New York
was aided to the extent of a single penny from any extraneous source.
To this fact, we shall see in another chapter, may be charged the
opposition of New York delegates in Congress to many government-aid
propositions that came up in the era of internal improvements.
As is usually the case, the expense of this great work exceeded all
the scheduled estimates; but, as has seldom if ever been the case
with works of this character, the receipts from the tolls on the Erie
Canal also exceeded all estimates. In only eight years following the
completion of the canal the receipts from it exceeded all estimates by
nearly two and one-quarter millions of dollars, whereas the total cost
of the canal, including the amount required for completion and payment
of all claims at the close of the year 1824, was only $7,700,000.
Indeed, the success of the canal was so great that it was hardly
completed before plans for an enlargement were necessary.
Yet on its completion a great celebration was held, which probably
was the most picturesque pageant ever seen on this continent to that
time. For many days previous to the completion of the work, committees
in all the cities and villages throughout the route of the canal were
preparing to do honor to Governor Clinton as he should make a triumphal
tour from end to end in the first boat that made the journey. Looking
back through the years, the scene presented of the Governor of that
State sailing in a little flotilla of canal boats from Buffalo to
Albany, the violent rejoicing of political friends along the route,
the demonstrations and orations by the score, the transparencies,
illuminations, and jollifications, stand without a parallel in the
early history of our country. At the moment when Clinton's boats
weighed anchor at Buffalo, a burst of artillery sent the message
eastward; cannon located along the route took up the message, and
in comparatively few moments it was passed across the State to the
metropolis. When Clinton reached New York, the canal boats having
been towed down the Hudson, a spectacular ceremony was performed
off Sandy Hook, where a keg of Lake Erie water was poured into the
sea in commemoration of the wedding of the ocean and the lakes. The
procession in New York City was the greatest, it is said, that had
ever formed in America up to that time. The illuminations were in
harmony with the whole scale of the celebration, as was true of the
grand ball in Lafayette Amphitheatre in Laurens Street; here, in order
to secure necessary floor space, a circus building on one side and a
riding-school on the other were temporarily united to make the largest
ballroom in America.
[Illustration: DE WITT CLINTON
_Friend of the Erie Canal Project_]
The Erie Canal was of tremendous national importance in more ways
than it is possible to trace. The hopes and dreams of its promoters
were based on such sound principles, and the work they planned was so
well executed, that the success of their adventure gave inspiration
to hundreds of other enterprises throughout the length and breadth of
the country. That was the Erie Canal's great mission. It is hardly
necessary to say that the State of New York reaped a great benefit from
the successful prosecution of the work. But it was not New York alone
that benefited; for the Erie Canal was the one great early school of
civil engineers in the United States, and in all parts of the country,
from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at Baltimore to the Portland Canal
at far-away Louisville, Kentucky, the men who engineered New York's
great canal found valuable work to do.
It is most remarkable that now, at the beginning of another century,
the people of New York should be planning a new Erie Canal; and perhaps
the most significant fact in connection with the one-thousand-ton
barge canal now projected is the fact that wherever rivers are
available, as for instance the Mohawk, these are to be taken advantage
of, showing that modern engineering science approves the early theory
entertained by Washington and Morris of the canalization of rivers.
The old Erie Canal cost upwards of eight millions, which was deemed
an immense sum at that day. It is difficult always to measure by
any monetary standard the great changes that the passing years have
brought; but the new canal now to be built is to cost one hundred
and one millions, which is in our time a comparatively moderate sum.
The influence of the building of the old canal spread throughout the
nation, and scores of canals were projected in the different States;
it seems now that the influence of the promotion of the new Erie Canal
will likewise be felt throughout the country. New York again leads the
way.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] "The Origin of the Erie Canal."