What caused New York to become the biggest US port 6/2/18
I chose to read on this subject because in the movie "12 years a Slave" he mentions that he worked on the Erie Canal, the book on Uriah Levi the first Jewish Commodore in the US navy mentions it. In England we had a family holiday on the Oxford Canal on a long boat which is a home on the water.
Philadelphia was the most important port at the time and New York only became important in 1824
When I studied South Africa history you discover that in South Africa, soon after you leave the coast has the escarpment with the result that there are no navigable rivers into the country and it could not develop until the invention of the train.
Begun in 1817 and completed in 1825, the Erie Canal stretches 363 miles across upstate New York from Buffalo on Lake Erie to Albany on the Hudson River.
The writer is an economist.
While the American Revolution was on in 1777 Governeur Morris in the retreating revolutionary army was discussing the need for a canal to Lake Erie. At this stage Philadelphia was one of the most important eastern ports. The Mohawk River ran into the Hudson River into the Hudson Bay. If the British had spent a tenth of what it cost them in their war campaign they could have built this canal. A British surveyor general in 1724 had proclaimed the economic and military value of such a project. The concept of using locks was designed in 1485 by Leonardo di Vinci for the Bereguardo River in Italy from Milan to Pavia. Milan in the past was a canalled city like Amsterdam.
In France you had the Canal du Midi -Languedoc opened 1681 which by 1789 was 144 miles long but the Erie was to be 2 and a half times this. This canal through France meant that good could travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean without going via the straits of Gibraltar and the problem of the Barbary Pirates
Agriculture beyond the Appalachian mountains was far better than on the Eastern side.
Between Birmingham, Alabama in the south and the St. Lawrence River in the north the only path through the mountains was the Mohawk River Valley between the Appellation mountains in the south and the Adirondacks mountains in the north, nature had worn a gap in this down in the Ice Age
To get through you had to take pack horses or the river and then places with rapids you needed to do portage around the rapids and waterfalls, which locals along the root offered their labour to help. There was always the worry that the western settlers might break with the USA.
As early as 1788 the Bridgewater canal in England ran from Wolsey to Manchester which ran over aqueducts and through coal mines reducing the cost of coal.
1793 the Western Inland Lock company was floated but could not raise enough money; they did build some canal and this made it cheaper to travel. They built between the Hudson River and Lake Ontario
Jefferson had a pet canal project. Potomac Company was building a canal in 1808 but he felt that the New York Canal was too grandiose and would never be completed.
1791-1794 The Whiskey Rebellion- because farmers could not easily get their grains to market they could easily turn it into whiskey now it was easy to transport but the government put a tax on it.
In those days in America you never had trained engineers and the most capable people were surveyors’ in fact because there were always land disputes both lawyers and judges were very much aware of what was involved in surveying. As a result of the canal an engineering school was opened.
The NY mayor De Witt Clinton supported by his opposition saw political advantages in pushing for this bipartisan project.
Jesse Hawley wrote an article in the press realizing the canal had to be completely artificial, using rivers as a source of water, going up a river was difficult.
A commission was set up and $15 000 was allocated to start and that it should be publicly funded under state control to avoid private interests. Under President Maddison money could not be raised as the treasury was in deficit from the 1812 war.
Local farmers were also pushing for the canal, and New Yorkers realized the commercial possibilities of it and lobbied.
De Witt Clinton had been a congressman, had stood for the presidency but lost to Madison, had been mayor of NY.
1816 A new canal commission under De Witt Clinton was formed. That year Clinton was elected NY governor by a landslide and the canal was a major issue that the public wanted as they had run a big campaign about this, when they could not get Federal funds. Now you had Vice President Tomkins who said that the state should use money on ammunition and fortification to be ready for the next war against England. Chancellor James Kent announced that if we must have a war, or have a canal, I am in favour of a canal; the canal was approved by a margin one vote. The Holland Land Company owned west of Rochester and they were interested in financing the canal to Lake Erie. Putting the canal through to lake Ontario would give access to Canada and not US territory.
2 Building
They chose to start building in the wilderness from the town of Rome as this the easiest place to build and would be a third of the canal on an easy straight and quickest and cheapest to build. It had to have a towpath 10 feet wide for horses or mules to walk. Broadhead surveyed the section from Rome to Hudson then handed in his report and spent over a year in England at his own expense travelling British waterways and returned with a new knowledge of cement use and the newest surveying equipment. White made cement locally and got a patent on it but that was taken from him as it was discovered in the course of his work. He sued and settled for $10 thousand.
Many of the engineers here moved over to designing railways which were the undoing of many canals. The canal became the first US school for engineers.
Workers were local farmers in the slack season, freed slaves and native Americans. Irish immigrants arrived from 1818 and made up a quarter of the workers followed by other European immigrants earning 3 times what they could get in Europe. Techniques of pulling out trees and stumps were mastered. Feeder canals also had to be built to make sure there was enough water where there was a down slope; these also could be used for transport.
By 1819 the piece from Rome to Utica was filled and you could travel the 15 miles at the speed of 4 miles an hour, considered a sensational speed. Clinton’s critics said - 2 years for 15 miles it will never get finished. This stretch immediately started being use for western migration and local farmers as well as the towpath being used as a road. From 1820 the toll for use of 90 miles of flat canal on this was 2cents/ ton /mile. Very quickly other sections were added as the separate contractors completed their section Swamps and malaria slowed things down. They had to put down pillars and wooden walls to keep the mud from oozing up. 18 Aqueducts were built.
3 Clintons Triumph
1819 $3 million in gold that the Federal Government didn't have had to be paid to France for bonds that came due on the Louisiana purchase of 1803The USA at this time had $60 million in paper notes being circulated but not much gold. This caused a curtailment of federal funds and depression followed.
This was a boon for the canal as wealthy investors including John Jacob Astor were now easy to come by, and 9000 unemployed flocked to work as labourers. The town of Syracuse had a population of 250 in 1820 but 22000 by 1830.
At the Niagara escarpment they now had to cut away a rock surface and build a flight of locks like a giant staircase for a 6 story building, each lock could lift 12 feet instead of 8 feet 4 inches ,and you had a double set of locks. One going up and one going down. When drill bits kept breaking they devised ways of tempering /hardening steel. The canal was completed at Lockport in 1825. . From Buffalo to Lockport a gentle slope flowed 25 miles without locks as there was plenty of water from lake Erie.
The canal was 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide with a 10 foot tow path. The canal even enabled oysters caught on the coast to be transported inland. The canal took the Great Awakening - an evangelical movement that later called for abolition from 1792
In 1823 Clinton didn’t stand for the NY legislature and his opposition got in. Bucktails of Tammany Hall removed Clinton as Canal Commissioner,(same corrupt organization that La Guardia had to deal with in 1930s) because the public saw the high cost and were turning against it, but at this stage toll on the incomplete canal were so great that people who called it Clintons ditch realized it was a good investment. Leading Citizens had his power restored. FIAT JUSTICA
At this time suffrage was extended to all white males over 21 and so Clinton won by a majority. Clinton was offered the post of Secretary of State by John Quincy Adams but turned it down to complete the canal.
3 Weight locks were built at Troy, Utica and Syracuse to determine the toll. Oct. 1825 canal complete.
Towns bypassed lost business where people had done hauling along the road.
This canal started a migration of farmers to over the Appellation Mountains to richer lands and farm property on the East Coast dropped in value.
Travel on the Erie.
Albany to Buffalo would now take 6 days instead of 32. Immigrants moved west while goods moved east. By 1837 the whole debt had been paid by tolls. By this time NY was the busiest port in the States.
The locks were 15 feet wide and boats weighed 50 ton. Passenger boats usually had 3 horses and had a greater right of way than cargo and they also travelled through the night. They were all full to capacity. Nathanial Hawthorn as did Charles Dickens wrote about this type of travel. Maximum speed was supposed to be 4mph so as not to damage the canal. The canal froze in the winter months.
People from the nearby farms took jobs on the canal and later moved into industry. James Garfield started as a hogee on his uncle’s boat, later went back to school and ended up a 20th President.
Industries that developed along the canal - Syracuse had a salt factory that could now ship out salt. Gloverville made buckskin gloves, rug making, paper mills, wool mills, plaster factory, brewery distillery, Remington rifles. The used water power but also could get their goods to market. Remington gun factory and Kodak were along the canal.
1831 the first NY railway ran between Albany and Schenectady and the train was called the De Wit Clinton.
Outbreak of Cholera in 1832 brought trade and travel to an almost halt. By 1828 every lake was connected to New York when the waterway was connected to Oswego on Lake Ontario.
Canal Craze.
Success of Erie caused half a dozen states to build canals to compete , however no other canal had the advantage like Erie. Grand canal from Philadelphia to Pittsburg was completed in 1834.
Potomac canal was inaugurated by John Quincy Adams in 1828 and also joined to Baltimore but by the time it was nearing completion in 1834 the railways had arrived.
1824-1829 the Canadian built the Welland Canal joining lake Erie to lake Ontario, in 1845 you could go from Montreal to lake Ontario.
The Chesapeake and Ohio canal cost great fortunes and were already out of date but kept functioning for freight and coal. None of these other canals paid their way but they caused a lot of development and Ohio became the 3rd most populous state in the union.
By 1848 goods from New Orleans could get to New York via the rivers, lakes and canal and by now there were 4000 miles of built canals. However most were left with enormous debts even though the development of trade had been enormous in these states but left the taxpayer to foot the bill.
As early as 1825 the Erie canal could not cope with the traffic on the opened sections. Locks were doubled and a parallel canal was built, on money from the revenue earned and 250 ton boats could use it. Civil War shipping also added to its income. By 1918 large barges could be used on the enlarged canal which works today. Some places where the original canal was built was state property and highways were built over them.
By the time of the civil war in 1860 the north had become extremely industrial while the south was still agricultural so the south never had a chance all that development had taken place since the canal was built.
Until 1830 Odessa the Black Sea ports had been the source of grain for Europe now the same mostly Jewish merchants moved to America. Then America became the bread basket and economists like Adam Smith and Ricardo discussed that industrialization needed a cheap source of food to keep wages down when Robert Peel repealed the Corn Laws in 1846,and the British Industrial Revolution could take place.
Before the Erie canal Boston, Baltimore and Charleston, Philadelphia had been important ports. NY was the best natural harbour and the Stock Exchange opened there in 1825 but it was the proximity to the Erie Canal that caused the development
. In Clinton words NY became the great emporium of America.
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Timeline
1485 Leonardo di Vinci designed the first canal lock.
1610 Henry Hudson looks for north passage.
1631 to 1789 in France, Canal de Midi to Languedoc
1788 the Bridgewater canal in England ran to Manchester
1775 British troops arrive start of Battles of American Revolution
1789 President George Washington
1790 The $ dollar become the US currency
1791 Whiskey Rebellion
1792 Western Inland Lock Company given charter.
1797 President John Adams
1801 President Thomas Jefferson
1803 Louisiana Purchase
1807 Jefferson has a tax surplus to build infrastructure.
1809 President James Madison
1810 Governeur Morris and de Witt Clinton give Manhattan street and avenue numbers.
de Witt Clinton and other do a tour of the route
1812 War
1812 Oliver Perry beat British in battle of Lake Erie.
1816 de Witt Clinton appointed head of Erie Canal Commission.
1817 President James Monroe
de Witt Clinton becomes governor of New York
NY Stock Exchange constitution established
July 4th ceremony to start digging Erie Canal.
1819 3 million $ in gold needed for last payment of Louisiana Purchase
1820 Toll started being taken on canal.
1825 Vote extended to all male white men over 21
1825 President John Quincy Adams
Canal completed at Lockport. 70 ton boats
1828 Every lake connected to New York
1829 President Andrew Jackson
1830 First Locomotive Railway Liverpool to Manchester
1836 Upgrade on canal began
1837 Canal debt totally paid off.
1846 Repeal of Corn Laws in England.
New York called The Empire State
1860 American Civil War
1862 Upgrade completed for 240 ton boats
1895 Final upgrade began under Teddy Roosevelt for 1600 ton boats
The Canal by Ralph K Andrist 1964 142pg Kindle $1.99 10/2/24
Reports returned of the lands that were west of the Apalacians with the easy of growing grains and that the acorns and beechnuts in the forest grew fat hogs. This started a tide of emigration westwards. Despite difficulties the number of people moving increased.
1759 to 1761 The duke of Bridgewater commissioned a canal from his coal mines in Wolseley to Manchester.
1789 Alexander Hamilton was the first US secretary of the Treasury.
Flatboats called Durham boats carried 16 tons of cargo. The canal had to run to lake Erie as at Lake Ontario the canal would have to compete with the St Lawrence River..
The Federal Government had $6.3 million in surplus cash in 1811 but by the 1812 war it was in a $10.5 deficit.
The canal would be build in 3 sections 165 miles from Lake Erie to the Seneca River,72 miles from Seneca to Rome and 126 miles downwards from Rome to Albany. It would be 40 feet wide and 6 feet deep, with a towpath 10 feet wide. This canal acted as the first US school of engineering.
Initially many of the workers were farmers in the slack season, some Native American and freed slaves.
1818 the first wave of Irish labourers arrived and made up a quarter of the workforce. Other European families began arriving. Wages were good and good food was organized. The rate for progress improved steadily once the skills improved. There were also feed canals to bring water to the canal and these opened up trade with farms further away. Canal worked were excepted from military service.
1819 the first section opened from Rome to Uttica of only 15 miles that was slow but after that the pace quickened. The toll was 2 cents per ton per mile of but half that for farming supplies and equipment, no toll levied on passengers
The middle section presented no obstacles except the crossing of the Montezuma Marshes. Where a farmers land was split the state promised a bridge. In Rochester dozens of mills were set up and it became known as the nations Flour city. 5000 Irishmen worked in section and they had a " jigger boss" who went dispensing whiskey.
People who had been convinced that the canal would never be completed or pay it way changed their minds.
1822 180 miles was completed by now. Financial reports citing toll collection proved that travelers were using the canal parts now available.
1824 Voting was now extended to all white males not just property owners.
The canal barges took emigrants west both New Englander and Europeans as well as good like bolts of cloth guns, needles , knives, farming equipment. From the wests boats carried potatoes , apples' , cider wheat milled flour, live turkeys, lumber, furs. Along the canal grocery stores , grogshops and livery stables opened. Rates were based on distance , weight and type of freight. Luxury items paid the highest and bricks, clay and manure paid the least.
Migrants talked about land prices in Illinois , Indiana or Ohio and how many bushels of corn grew on the fertile prairies.
Packet boats used 3 horses instead of 2, travelled day and night and always had the right of way each carrying between 30 to 50 people. Families with livestock , household goods usually travelled on line boats. Timber rafts could be several hundred meters long and went through the locks in sections.
1845 There were 4000 boats on the Erie and 25,000 working including lock tenders and maintenance workers. This also attracted gamblers , thieves, fortune tellers and entertainers.
Captains paid men drivers about $12 a month and boys $10 to $7 and they were easier to cheat. Missionary societies tried to help as many as 5000boy hoggees Many of them were orphans Men and women were abandoning farms to work in factories, textile mills.
Syracuse was a city where springs of briny water came out of the earth and extensive slat factories were set up even before the canal arrived, it became the greatest salt producer of the nation when it could ship the salt to markets. Stump Town shipped fine buck skin gloves to far away markets and changed its name to Gloversville. Amsterdam set up rug looms and became a national carpet manufacture.
1840 Little Falls had 4 iron furnace industries, 3 paper mills a woolen mill,2 plaster factories,. A fulling mill for cloth a trip hammer, a brewery, distillery and window sash factory.
Rochester became a Flour milling centre with 11mills and produced canal boats. Nearly half the boats of the Erie were made and controlled by these boat yards.
1932 cholera epidemic killed 3000 and this was carried to all the surrounding areas and almost completely stopped the canal traffic in spread to New Orleans where 10,000 people died.
1935 Big Ditch of iniquity, so the Erie Canal Temperance Society formed.
Canal Fever
Some modest water way were made to help farmers get produce to market, but the enormous success of the Erie and the enormous progress that took place in New York created a canal fever and lots of investment it was considered the engineering marvel of the day and you had trained engineers now to do it.
1820 to 1850 was the great Canal
1826 Pennsylvania Canal finished in 1834 and became known as the Grand Canal. but had an elevation of 2600feet.
1928 to Oswego on Lake Erie completed.
The Potomac Canal started from Baltimore.
1832 the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal through the Cumberland Gap was finished. Most of of these fell into disuse other continued being used to carry coal. These canals caused development and Ohio became one of the most populous states before the canal era ended.
Delaware and Hudson canal whose main business was anthracite coal.
Wabash Canal this also brought people into Indiana and was important in the development of the west and getting people to the frontier. These were all financial failure sand many foreign investors lost money as much as $60 million which was a frightening amount at the time.
Chicago canal joined Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and the Mississippi.
1931 People were clamoring for railways. Tolls did not even cover expenditure for maintenance.
1882 The Erie Canal abolished all tolls by which time it had taken the cost many times over.
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