Unleash the American System — The Erie Canal: America’s Renaissance Project

This article is the first of a series, which will appear under the unifying title of “Unleash the American System.”  These articles will document the historical evidence of how Manufacturing, Technology, Engineering and Science have been embedded in both the American Republic and American Culture from the beginning.  This is the story of true American Progress, a dynamic now being revived under President Donald Trump after decades of economic decay and decline.  In future installments, we shall look at the Presidencies of George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy, and we shall explore the great contributions those individuals made to the betterment of America. 

In 1367 a meeting was held among the city elders of Florence, Italy.  At that meeting a decision was made to finish construction of the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral, a project that had been abandoned after the arrival of the Black Death in 1348.  The city fathers announced a competition for applicants to submit architectural design plans to finish the Cathedral.  The winning application, by a man named Neri di Fiorvanti, was revolutionary.  He proposed to eliminate all of the original Gothic designs and to construct a massive un-buttressed Dome.  The most shocking thing about this proposal is that at the time it was adopted, no such Dome existed anywhere in the world, and no one, including, Neri, knew how to build it.  Thus a Great Challenge was issued to the citizens of Florence.  The completion of the Dome would require new discoveries, and the creativity of yet unborn generations would be the resource to make this possible.  This would finally be achieved in 1456 under the direction of Filippo Brunelleschi.

This story of Renaissance Florence is the proper way to understand the Erie Canal.  It was first proposed by founding father Gouverneur Morris in 1777, at a meeting with Army officers after the abandonment of Fort Ticonderoga and during the retreat before Burgoyne’s Army—i.e., during the fight for freedom.    Later that year Morris wrote a letter, wherein he announced his vision for a canal from Albany to Lake Erie:

“‘As yet, we only crawl along the outer shell of our country. The interior excels the part we inhabit in soil, in climate, in everything. The proudest empire in Europe is but a bubble compared to what America will be, must be, in the  course of two centuries, perhaps of one.”

Like Brunelleschi’s Dome, nothing like what Morris proposed had ever been built before in European and Mediterranean history—not by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks or Romans, nor the modern nations of Europe, and not even by the various Central Asian, South Asian and Islamic Empires.  Only the ancient Grand Canal of China could be compared with Morris’ vision, but the existence and history of that great project was little more than a myth for most Europeans and Americans in 1777.

There were canals in Europe, most notably the Languedoc Canal in France, built in 1681, but the proposed  Erie Canal would be 2 ½ times longer and built over much more treacherous terrain.  None of the English canals even came close to what Morris proposed.  The Bridgewater Canal (41 miles), the Manchester Canal (36 miles) and the Birmingham Canal (29 miles) were all only about 10 percent of the projected length of the Erie Canal.  

Morris’ proposed Erie Canal bore another striking resemblance to Neri’s proposed Florentine Dome.  No one in America had the slightest idea how to build it.  The Canal was to travel across New York State for 363 miles.  The elevation of the canal would drop 568 feet between Lake Erie and the Hudson River, but in some areas it would climb to an elevation 100 feet higher than Lake Erie.  It would cross deep and wide gorges, cross rivers and cut through deep swamplands.   Eighty-three locks would have to be built to overcome these differences in height.  Additionally, numerous elevated aqueducts would have to be built to go over rivers, swamps and gorges.  Many of the locks would have to be dug out of solid rock. 

No one in America knew how to do any of this.  In 1800 there was not a single engineer in America with experience in building canals; in fact there was not a single American with professional training as a construction engineer.  Not one.  When the Erie Canal Commission was formed in 1810, they selected as the Chief Engineers two New York lawyers, Benjamin Wright and James Geddes, neither of whom had ever built anything.  Their only previous experience had been a little bit of surveying work they had done in connection with legal work.   Later, the Commission added two more “engineers”:  Charles Broadhead, a judge, and Nathan S. Roberts, a school teacher.  None of these four “engineers” had ever even seen a canal.

In essence, the Erie Canal Project became America’s first school of engineering.  They learned as they went along.  This included many new inventions, new tools, new construction methods and newly acquired skills.  One obstacle after another was met and overcome.  

From an Idea to a Project

Gouverneur Morris resided in Europe from 1789 to 1798.  When he returned to America, he turned his attention immediately to the construction of the Canal.  In 1800 he submitted a detailed plan to the N.Y. State Legislature to build a canal from “the Hudson River to Lake Erie.”  In 1801 Morris conducted a personal tour which took him to both Lakes Ontario and Erie.  In 1802 and 1803 he held extended discussions with  Simeon De Witt, the Surveyor General of New York State, arguing for a Lake Erie route.  Initially highly skeptical, De Witt was won over, and years later he would write “The merit of first starting the idea of a direct canal between Lake Erie and the Hudson River unquestionably belongs to Gouverneur Morris.” 

After 1800, two other individuals emerged as major backers for the project:  Jonas Platt, a Federalist Congressman from the area around Utica, and Jesse Hawley, a bankrupt flour merchant, who authored a series of 14 widely-read essays under the pen-name Hercules, polemicizing for a canal to Lake Erie.   Initially, with Morris, Platt and others, the Erie project was seen as a Federalist proposal, but by 1809 Morris and Platt had drawn New York Mayor De Witt Clinton into the fight.  Others were soon recruited, among whom several would later perform vital roles.  These included Stephen Van Rensselaer, Canvass White (who developed the hydraulic cement used to build the locks), Thomas Eddy (the Director of the Lock Navigation Company) and the young John Jervis who began as an assistant surveyor and ended up as Chief Superintendent of the Eastern Division of the Canal.  Again, not an engineer in the bunch.

In 1810 De Witt Clinton convinced the  Legislature to create the Erie Canal Commission.  The first Chairman of the Commission was Gouverneur Morris, and he would be succeeded in 1813 by Clinton.  The first action of the Commission was to deploy a team to explore potential routes for the projected Canal.  Departing from Albany in June, the team included  Gouverneur Morris, Stephen Van Rensselaer, Simeon De Witt, De Witt Clinton and Thomas Eddy.   For three months, the Commissioners traveled by small boats, carriages, stages and on horseback all the way from Albany to Buffalo. . . and back.  Most of the trip proceeded through what was then wilderness.  It was an extremely arduous journey, over very rugged terrain.   

On March 2, 1811 Gouverneur Morris appeared before the State Senate to read the report of the Canal Commissioners.  In his testimony he ruled out completely a canal to Lake Ontario and insisted on a route to Lake Erie.  He urged the legislators to act, saying:

“When the records of history shall have been obliterated, and the tongue of tradition have converted the shadowy remembrance  of ancient events into childish tales of miracle, this national work shall remain.  It shall bear testimony to the genius, the learning, the industry and intelligence of the present age.”

The legislature responded by authorizing the Commissioners “to make application on behalf of New York State to Congress to cooperate or aid in the undertaking of building the canal,” and “to employ surveyors and engineers” to devise a plan for the Canal’s construction. 

On April 8, Robert Fulton, who had recently initiated steamboat service between Albany and New York City, was added to the Canal Commission, lending more political weight to the project.  Morris, Clinton and Fulton launched an all-out campaign, crisscrossing the state and speaking at many public events.  Simultaneous with this, under the pen-name Atticus, Clinton issued a series of pro-Canal letters which appeared in the New York Evening Post.  Then, in January 1812, Gouverneur Morris and De Witt Clinton traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with members of Congress and President Madison for the purpose of securing federal backing of the Canal Project.  Madison turned them down flat, stating that federal financing for “internal improvements” was unconstitutional.  This rebuff was a major contributing factor that led  Clinton to challenge Madison in the 1812  Presidential election.

With the outbreak of the War of 1812, Madison’s stooge Governor Tompkins acted to kill the Canal, as all the financial resources of the state were directed into the war mobilization.   In April, 1814, Tompkins convinced the state legislature to repeal the Canal Act and strip the Canal Commissioners of all of their power. By the autumn of 1814 the Canal Project was dead.

The fight to resurrect the Canal Project began in 1815/1816, and the honor for that effort lies almost entirely with De Witt Clinton.  Clinton began a tour of the state, speaking in numerous towns and cities.  His topic everywhere was the urgent need to build the Canal.  This culminated in a mass meeting in Manhattan on December 3^rd, where Clinton’s speech was published and reprinted in thousands of copies that circulated throughout the state.  Gouverneur Morris died on November 6, 1816, and henceforth it would be Clinton who would spearhead the fight.

In 1816 a bill to authorize funds for the construction of the Canal was introduced in the legislature by Peter Augustus Jay, the son of John Jay and lifelong friend of James Fenimore Cooper.  Tompkins and Democratic-Republican party boss Martin Van Buren blocked it, but this led to another initiative by Clinton.  Together with Thomas Eddy, Clinton founded the Bank for Savings in the City of New York.  By the end of the year the bank had deposits of over $150,000, of which more than $40,000 was invested in canal stock. By 1821 the bank held over half a million dollars in canal stock, comprising nearly 30 percent of all outstanding canal loans.

In early 1817, at Clinton’s urging, both houses of Congress passed a bill for  national funding for the construction of the Canal, using funds from the newly re-chartered National Bank.  Madison vetoed it.  Clinton then took the next step, announcing his candidacy for Governor of New York.  Over the fierce opposition of Tompkins and Van Buren, he won the election and was inaugurated on July 1, 1817.  Three days later construction began on the Erie Canal at Rome, New York.  

Building the Canal

Gouverneur Morris—and initially Jesse Hawley—had proposed a canal of free-flowing “inclined slopes,” a type of canal that Morris had witnessed in Europe.  Given the reality of the upstate terrain, however, this concept was jettisoned.  Also quickly abandoned was the idea of using existing rivers as part of the Canal.  This would be a man-made Canal, utilizing locks and aqueducts throughout its 363 mile route.

In mid-1817, Clinton persuaded the state legislature to authorize loans of  $7 million for canal construction.  This was almost blocked, but the deciding vote was cast by James Kent, a former protégé of Alexander Hamilton and one-time participant in Elihu Hubbard Smith's and Charles Brockden Brown's New York City “Friendly Club.”  The route that was chosen ran alongside the Mohawk River from Troy to Utica and then diverged, going west across the state.  The channel was to be forty feet wide at the surface, and twenty-eight feet at the bottom; the water in the channel would be four feet deep.  The Canal was projected to be completed by 1827, and Benjamin Wright was appointed Chief Engineer.

Space prohibits a full description of the monumental challenges that confronted the Canal builders.  Tens of thousands of trees had to be felled.  Solid rock had to be dug through.  Swamplands had to be crossed.  Rivers had to be crossed.  Near vertical cliffs had to be overcome.  Along with these tribulations, an unexpected foe almost killed the project.  Swarms of malaria-bearing mosquitos attacked the workers throughout the summer months, and in one particularly hazardous location known as the Montezuma Marshes work stopped completely and there was talk about giving up the whole project.  Hundreds died and thousands abandoned the work camps.  Again, human initiative saved the day, as one of the work-crew’s physicians devised a method to extract quinine from a type of tree bark, saving many lives.  Eventually, an aqueduct 1,300 feet long was built over the marsh.

Who were the workers who built the Canal?  Overwhelmingly they were very young men, including many boys.  During the course of the project, more than 50,000 took part.  At least a third of them were recently arrived immigrants, particularly from Ireland.  Recruiters were sent to New York City, to meet the immigrant boats as they docked.  The recruiters told the men, as they stepped off the ship, “We’re digging a canal upstate.  Would you like a job?,” offering wages of 80 cents a day, more than triple what they had been earning in Ireland.  Thousands signed up on the spot and by the next day they were headed north.  

The Project was divided into three sections, Eastern, Central and Western.  The Central portion—from Little Falls to Syracuse—was built first because it was largely over level ground with far fewer obstacles.  The Eastern and Western sections were far more challenging.  Much of the Western section was through dense wilderness, and major rivers and gorges had to be crossed.  Even more daunting, at both the Western terminus (Buffalo/Lockport) and the Eastern Terminus (Albany/Schenectady) precipitous drops in elevation would require the construction of massive lock-works.  Nothing like what was needed existed anywhere in the world.  For example, 53 locks had to be constructed in the hundred-mile stretch between Albany and Schenectady.   At the western terminus the project directors faced the biggest challenge of all—how to get the canal up the steep rock face at Lockport.

The aqueducts were also truly amazing works.  32 of them were built.  Three of the aqueducts were architectural marvels. The one below Schenectady—1,188 feet long, contained 26 six stone piers.  The one at Rochester was the longest stone-arch bridge in the world when built:  it was 802 feet long and had 11 Roman arches which soared high above the turbulent Genesee River.  The aqueduct at Little Falls was 744 feet long and spanned the river with three huge stone arches thirty feet high. 

A dizzying array of new tools, new techniques and new inventions were introduced to build the Canal.  These included the aforementioned invention of a new type of hydraulic cement, new machines to speedily uproot trees, new types of explosives, new types of shovels, wheelbarrows, plows, cutting tools and many other implements.  Perhaps most revolutionary was the dual lock system at Lockport, with a series of two locks, in opposite directions, traversing, step-by step, a near vertical cliff-side.  

By October 1823 the eastern section of the Canal was complete and joined to middle section, with through traffic from Albany to Syracuse, about 280 miles.  

It was at this moment of near-triumph that the project was nearly sabotaged.  In 1823 the Democratic-Republican Party dumped Clinton as their nominee for Governor and replaced him with Joseph Yates, a Van Buren stooge.  In early 1824 both Clinton and Rensselaer were fired from the Canal Commission.  

Undaunted, Clinton mounted an independent campaign, under the banner of the People’s Party, and turned the 1824 Gubernatorial  race into a referendum on the Canal.  In November he was swept back into office by the voters and, once sworn in 1825, he pressed relentlessly to complete the Canal.

The difficulty of the Lockport lock system was solved by the young school teacher Nathan Roberts.  With no one to help him, and no guidance except a few books, he designed a double set of five locks one set for eastbound and another for westbound travel. This was the only place on the Erie where there were two sets of locks.  The locks were cut out of solid rock.  Lockport’s amazing system of locks was completed in June of 1825. 

On October 26, 1825 the full Canal was officially opened.  It had taken only eight years to complete (two years ahead of schedule).  363 miles long.  83 locks.  32 aqueducts.   The longest canal in the world ever built, with the exception of the Grand Canal in China.  A stupendous celebration was organized, including a flotilla of boats that traversed the entire length of the Canal (with the firing of cannon at each city along the route) and culminating in a huge festivity in New York Harbor where De Witt Clinton poured a barrel of Erie Lake water into the harbor, signifying the “joining of the waters.” 

The Impact

“My ambition is to be the De Witt Clinton of Illinois.”
— Abraham Lincoln, 1834

Following the completion of the eastern section of the Canal, in 1824 Stephen Van Rensselaer founded the Rensselaer School in Troy, just north of Albany.   Created directly out of the Erie Canal project, this was the first engineering school in the United States.  It would become the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the premier school of science and engineering, for generations to come. 

In the years following the completion of the canal, economic and population growth exploded along its route.  Between 1820 and 1860, Albany went from a population of 12,000 to 62,000, Troy from 5,000 to 39,000, Utica from 2,900 to 23,000, Rochester from 1,500 to 48,000 and Buffalo from only 2,100 to 81,000, making it the tenth largest city in the United States.  But that growth was not restricted to New York.  Cleveland, Ohio’s major lakeport on Lake Erie, went from only 606 residents in 1820 to 43,000 by 1860, and with the opening of a second canal from the Ohio River to Lake Erie in 1830, Ohio’s population exploded in growth, such that by 1860 it was the third most populous state in America.  Further west, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee and many other cities experienced exponential growth as hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, New Englanders and European immigrants poured westward through the Canal.

Utica, Syracuse, Rochester and many other cities became major manufacturing centers.  Rochester became the largest producer of wheat flour in the world.  By the late 1830s twenty-four mills would ship half a million barrels a year, all down the Erie Canal.  In addition, boat-building, iron furnaces, paper mills, woolen mills, machine shops and a plethora of other industries sprang up everywhere.

As for the young men who had built the Canal, many of the most skilled became premier engineers for the future projects of the nation, including other canals but also in the creation of railroad lines and the building of water projects, such as the Croton Aqueduct in New York, where the one-time Erie Canal surveyor John Jervis became the Chief Engineer and designer.

The Canal was quickly overwhelmed by the volume of traffic, and in 1836 the state began a twenty-six-year program of enlarging and improving the waterway.   The work proceeded fitfully due to political obstacles, but upon it completion in 1862, the Canal had been reborn as a channel 70 feet wide at the surface, 56 feet wide at the bottom, and 7 feet deep.  All of the locks were enlarged, most of them doubled to allow two-way traffic.  As a result of these improvements, steam-powered vessels could now operate unhindered on the entirety of the Canal.  

Epilogue

In 1829, an individual named William E. Stone reflected on two trips he had made across western New York State, the first in 1820 and the second in 1829 after the Canal had been in full operation for four years.  Stone’s remarks about Syracuse were typical of his amazement at the changes he found: 

“I looked about upon the village as I stept upon shore with still more astonishment than at Utica.  ‘Another enchanted city,’ I exclaimed, as I glanced upwards and around upon splendid hotels and rows of massive buildings in all directions crowded, too, with people all full of life and activity!  Nine years before, I had passed a day here among some five or six scattered tenements . . .  the whole being surrounded by a desolate, poverty-stricken, woody country, enough to make an owl weep to fly over it.”

Not only was Syracuse transformed, but the nation as a whole was irreversibly changed—from New York all the way to Chicago and even further west.  Great new industries and enterprises were created, but far more important was the settlement of this vast area by a free and industrious people, a people steeped in scientific and technological progress, a people committed to the rights of free labor—and a region that would give the nation Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, George Westinghouse and later many of the Apollo astronauts who would walk upon the moon.  This was the American Renaissance.