How did you get involved with American History and specifically the Erie Canal?
I always enjoyed American history as a middle school and high school student. I wa always fascinated by how the world today was shaped by the decisions and actions of those who came before us. I found inspiration in the past as well as enjoyment in using the past to provide context for modern day decision making. However, local history never really interested me until I was approached by a local college to take a look at an unsuccessful proposal for a project they had put together on the Erie Canal. As I started to do my own reading and research on not just the construction of the Canal but the widespread impact it had on American society and especially upstate New York, I was hooked. Western New York has such an incredibly rich history and we owe nearly all of it to that waterway!
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What did it take to convince the NY state assembly to built such an ambitious project?
Great question! In the early national period, we see a great deal of controversy regarding internal improvements that reflected the larger debate over federal and state power that raged in that period. The War of 1812 can really be seen as a turning point in that debate. That conflict proved how pathetic America's transportation system was and fears arose that this nation would not divide along North v. South lines but along East v. West (with the Appalachian Mountains being the barrier). Throughout the early 1800s, private companies had been chartered to attempt to build canals and roads through the Appalachians (even George Washington was involved in one along the Potomac River). In western New York, the Mohawk River begins to cut a path towards Lake Erie but was highly unnavigable in parts. The Western Inland Lock Corporation was chartered to make physical improvements to this existing waterway to make passage to at least Syracuse possible. Their efforts met with limited success. The great problem with internal improvements was this: who would pay for it? Remember - these are capital intensive projects that carry a great deal of risk! If the transportation artery crossed state borders, it was reasonable to assume it was a federal issue. If it existed solely within a state, perhaps the state government should bear the cost. James Madison famously vetoed a bill that would have provided federal funding for the Erie Canal. Getting the bill through the NYS Legislature was no easy task. First of all, the Canal was going to be built at the expense of the NYS treasury - citizens of New York would be taxed to pay for this. While some saw the long-term potential for commercial wealth and recouping that initial investment, others saw folly - massive losses and potentially higher taxes. The route of the Canal itself was also quite contentious and subject to special interest concerns of land speculators. Land speculators stood to gain massive profits if the Canal was built through their holdings and they used their political power to try to either support or kill whatever incarnation of the Canal was proposed before the legislature. Ultimately, it was Governor DeWitt Clinton, who became the leading champion of the Canal and its political steward (though was not the first visionary for the Canal). Despite the fears of downstate residents that the Canal could have a potential economic downside (from increased competition from western markets and increased taxation), Clinton was able to champion enough votes through good old fashioned political horse-trading
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How did the NY state citizens view the Erie Canal when it was first being built?
Citizens in the central and western portion of the state certainly viewed it optimistically and held high hopes for its success. However, residents were also alarmed by the changes the Canal would bring to society. One story involves the people who were building the Canal. At a time period when Americans believed that our republican system of government depended on the ability of a man to be economically independent (think of Jefferson's love affair with the yeoman farmer - an independent land-owner capable of providing for himself could not be tyrannized), the emergence of a market economy threatened to create a permanent laboring class whose labor could be exploited for private gain- and the men digging the Erie Canal appeared to be just such a class. Anxieties regarding the fundamental economic changes that the Erie Canal would bring to New York and America helped to spawn a series of reform movements (led by the middle-class) throughout the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s. These reforms were an effort by the middle-class to impose their vision for society and their values on people who were not living up to the republican model of independence.
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Do you think the Erie Canal had an impact on the extensive amount of public works projects in the 1930s?
I think that the Erie Canal proves that government exists to do the things for which individuals or corporations cannot do on their own. Sometimes, a project can only be accomplished through the massive economic resources of state or federal governments. Other examples exist as well in American history - the transcontinental railroads, the interstate highway act, the space race, etc. I think Keynesian economics can be justified by using the Erie Canal as an example (provided government dollars are spent wisely - the Canal was clearly a productive long-term use of government funds).
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What do you believe to be the most important lasting effect of the Erie Canal?
It fundamentally transformed the American economy from a household, local (or "moral") economy to a national, market based economy and in the process fundamentally changed not only basic economic transactions but also cultural values (the rise of what we would clearly call "capitalist" values today). On a more local note, over 80% of upstate New York's population lives within 25 miles of the Canal. That's not a coincidence! The city of Buffalo became one of the greatest cities in America because of this waterway and today, as the city experiences a renaissance, I find it fascinating that we are redeveloping the city with respect to our history and are choosing to honor it and preserve it rather than destroy it.
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How would America be different without the Erie Canal?
Certainly western expansion would have occurred at a much slower rate and created tension between the eastern and western sections of the nation. Slavery was exploding across the South due to demand for new land for cotton (the south never relied on canals primarily because of a system of rivers that ran directly to the sea). Without an artery to link the Great Lakes to the east coast, western settlement would have proceeded at a snails pace and the southern states would have gained an significant advantage in Congress (due to the number of slave states). But they didn't. Instead western settlement exploded and a system of free labor expanded across the mid-west and with it, tension with slave states as we approached the 1850s. History could have gone in so many different directions! Historians don't like to speculate "what if" because doing so requires distancing yourself from hard evidence but I would bet our study of the Civil War would be fundamentally different.
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Is there other information you would like to add about the Erie Canal?
You may want to research how the Canal spawned a bonanza of canal construction in other states in the mid-west.