200 Years on the Erie Canal

Overview

The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east–west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing the costs of transporting people and goods across the Appalachians. The Erie Canal accelerated the settlement of the Great Lakes region, the westward expansion of the United States, and the economic ascendancy of New York state. It has been called "The Nation's First Superhighway". A canal from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes was first proposed in the 1780s, but a formal survey was not conducted until 1808. The New York State Legislature authorized construction in 1817. Political opponents of the canal (referencing its lead supporter New York Governor DeWitt Clinton) denigrated the project as "Clinton's Folly" and "Clinton's Big Ditch". Nonetheless, the canal saw quick success upon opening on October 26, 1825, with toll revenue covering the state's construction debt within the first year of operation. The westward connection gave New York City a strong advantage over all other U.S. ports and brought major growth to canal cities such as Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. The construction of the Erie Canal was a landmark civil engineering achievement in the early history of the United States. When built, the 363-mile (584 km) canal was the second-longest in the world after the Grand Canal in China. Initially 40 feet (12 m) wide and 4 feet (1.2 m) deep, the canal was expanded several times, most notably from 1905 to 1918 when the "Barge Canal" was built and over half the original route was abandoned. The modern Barge Canal measures 351 miles (565 km) long, 120 feet (37 m) wide, and 12 feet (3.7 m) deep. It has 34 locks, including the Waterford Flight, the steepest locks in the United States. When leaving the canal, boats must also traverse the Black Rock Lock to reach Lake Erie or the Troy Federal Lock to reach the tidal Hudson. The overall elevation difference is about 565 feet (172 m). The Erie's peak year was 1855, when 33,000 commercial shipments took place. It continued to be competitive with railroads until about 1902, when tolls were abolished. Commercial traffic declined heavily in the latter half of the 20th century due to competition from trucking and the 1959 opening of the larger St. Lawrence Seaway. The canal's last regularly scheduled hauler, the Day Peckinpaugh, ended service in 1994. Today, the Erie Canal is mainly used by recreational watercraft. It connects the three other canals in the New York State Canal System: the Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga–Seneca. Some long-distance boaters take the Erie as part of the Great Loop. The canal has also become a tourist attraction in its own right—several parks and museums are dedicated to its history. The New York State Canalway Trail is a popular cycling path that follows the canal across the state. In 2000, Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor to protect and promote the system.

Recommended Media

Web Resources: Print

OVERVIEW: https://eriecanalway.org/learn/history-culture ERIE CANAL MUSEUM: https://eriecanalmuseum.org/ NY STATE CANAL WEBSITE: https://www.canals.ny.gov/ OVERVIEW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal OVERVIEW: https://www.history.com/articles/erie-canal HISTORICAL TIMELINE: https://eriecanalway.org/learn/history-culture/timeline BRIEF HISTORY: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/brief-history-erie-canal-180981546/ DEWITT CLINTON: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeWitt_Clinton DEWITT CLINTON: https://www.britannica.com/biography/DeWitt-Clinton-American-politician BENJAMIN WRIGHT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Wright_(civil_engineer) BENJAMIN WRIGHT: https://www.asce.org/about-civil-engineering/history-and-heritage/notable-civil-engineers/benjamin-wright ABOLITION: https://nyheritage.org/exhibits/two-hundred-years-erie-canal/abolitionism# ABOLITION: https://eriecanalmuseum.org/exploring-abolition-along-the-empire-state-trail/ ABOLITION: https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/the-erie-canal-and-the-network-to-freedom.htm

Web Resources: Video

DeWitt Clinton

DeWitt Clinton (born March 2, 1769, Little Britain, N.Y. [U.S.]—died Feb. 11, 1828, Albany, N.Y., U.S.) was an American political leader who promulgated the idea of the Erie Canal, which connects the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. DeWitt Clinton was the nephew of Governor George Clinton of New York. A Republican (Jeffersonian) attorney, he served as state senator (1798–1802, 1806–11), U.S. senator (1802–03), mayor of New York City (1803–15 except for two annual terms), and lieutenant governor (1811–13). As mayor of New York City, he advocated free and widespread public education, promoted legislation that removed voting restrictions against Roman Catholics, and established various public-welfare institutions in the city. He was an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1812, being defeated by James Madison. In 1811 Clinton introduced a bill into the New York Senate to appoint a commission to explore suggested routes for a canal across New York state to link the Northeast coastal trade with the Great Lakes via Lake Erie. He and Gouverneur Morris, chairman of the commission, were sent to Washington, D.C., to seek federal aid for the project but were unsuccessful. After the War of 1812 ended (1814), the canal idea was revived, and Clinton went to the state capital at Albany, urging acceptance of a detailed canal plan. After much persuasion, the legislature agreed to finance the canal as a state project (April 1816) and appointed Clinton to the commission. Elected governor at this opportune time and serving almost continuously (1817–23, 1825–28) until his death, he was in an advantageous position to oversee the entire project. As bitter opposition to his administration developed under Martin Van Buren and Tammany Hall, Clinton refused to run for a third term in 1822. But his dismissal as canal commissioner in 1824 caused such indignation statewide that he was swept into the governorship the next year and served until his death. With the opening of the Erie Canal on Oct. 25, 1825, Clinton assured the 19th-century development of New York City as the major port of trade with the Midwest. Clinton was also profoundly interested in the arts and the natural sciences, and he published an excellent summary of the state of scientific knowledge in the United States in a work entitled An Introductory Discourse (1814).

Benjamin Wright

Benjamin Wright (born October 10, 1770, Wethersfield, Connecticut [U.S.]—died August 24, 1842, New York, New York) was an American engineer who directed the construction of the Erie Canal. Because he trained so many engineers on that project, Wright has been called the “father of American engineering.” He was trained as a surveyor in his youth, and, after his family moved to the vicinity of Rome, New York, in 1789, Wright surveyed about 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares) for farmers in Oneida and Oswego counties. He was elected county judge in 1813 and to several terms in the state legislature. In 1791 and 1803 Wright helped survey canals in western New York. In 1811 Wright was hired by the New York State Canal Commission to determine a route between Rome (on the Mohawk River) and Waterford (on the Hudson River) for the Erie Canal. Construction began in 1817 and ended in 1825; as chief engineer, Wright himself directed work on the canal’s middle division and on the especially difficult eastern division. While working on the Erie, Wright also served as consulting engineer to the Farmington Canal in Connecticut, the Blackstone Canal in Rhode Island, and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Wright resigned from the Erie Canal project in 1827 and served as chief engineer of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal from 1828 to 1831 and of the St. Lawrence Canal in 1833. He was consulting engineer to several other canals, including the Welland and the Delaware and Hudson. In the 1830s Wright made land surveys for the New York and Erie Railroad, the Harlem Railroad, and for railroads in Virginia, Illinois, and Cuba.
DeWitt Clinton
Benjamin Wright
The Canal & Abolition

Abolition and the Erie Canal

Upstate New York was a center of abolition activity during the canal era and anti-slavery ideas spread from port to port. The Canal was completed in 1825, and two years later, New York state officially abolished slavery. Many freedom seekers followed the canal path on their way to Canada and others settled in towns and cities along the Canal. Some of the great leaders of the movement lived a short distance from the Erie Canal, including Stephen and Harriet Myers in Albany, Harriet Tubman in Oswego, Jermain Loguen in Syracuse, William Wells Brown in Buffalo, and Frederick Douglass, who published his abolitionist newspaper, The North Star in Rochester, New York. Activists organized anti-slavery societies throughout New York, and in October 1835, the first convention of the New York Anti-Slavery Society took place in Utica, not far from the Erie Canal. Several prominent figures in New York’s abolitionist movement had businesses that were tied to the success of the Erie Canal, including Lyman Spalding of Lockport, Isaac and Amy Post of Rochester, and Gerrit Smith of Utica and New York City.