The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1862
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The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1862
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Overview
Rediscover the Gems of Antiquity in The Artificial River
Woven from a rich tapestry of research, The Artificial River is more than just a historical account of the Erie Canal—it encapsulates a pivotal era in United States history, especially the monumental strides in engineering, commerce, and socio-cultural shifts between the War of 1812 and the Civil War.
Join Carol Sheriff as she vividly paints the human endeavor behind the making of the Erie Canal—an artificial river that irrevocably changed landscapes and lives.
This skillfully crafted narrative opens the door to the past, inviting you on a fascinating journey through time. The Artificial River immerses you in the lives of ordinary yet extraordinary individuals—farmers, businessmen, tourists, and government officials—who stood at the forefront of this significant transformation.
The Erie Canal wasn’t just a waterway–it was a lifeline that laid the foundation for the capitalist democracy we know today. The Artificial River is a cleverly bound chronicle of American commerce and the spirit of public good—one that’s sure to captivate history enthusiasts and casual readers alike.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429952484 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 06/12/1997 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Sales rank: | 233,977 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Carol Sheriff, a native of Bethesda, Maryland, received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her Ph.D. from Yale University. She is assistant professor of history at the College of William and Mary. She lives in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Read an Excerpt
The Artificial River
The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress 1817-1862
By Carol Sheriff
Hill and Wang
Copyright © 1996 Carol SheriffAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-5248-4
CHAPTER 1
Visions of Progress
ON JULY 4, 1817, at daybreak, cannons boomed as a crowd assembled near Rome, New York, to watch the digging of the first spadeful of Erie Canal dirt. The honor fell to Judge John Richardson, who had been awarded the first contract to build a section of the waterway. Richardson addressed the gathering, proclaiming, "By this great highway unborn millions will easily transport their surplus productions to the shores of the Atlantic, procure their supplies, and hold a useful and profitable intercourse with all the marine nations of the world." He then drove his spade into the ground, and — according to the Utica Gazette — "was followed by the citizens, and his own laborers, each vieing with the other in this demonstration of joy of which all partook on that interesting occasion." Amid an enthusiastic and popular celebration of the nation's Revolutionary heritage, the state of New York had begun construction on what was to be one of the longest artificial waterways in the world.
Events leading up to that sunrise ceremony began hundreds of millions of years earlier, with a series of continental collisions giving rise to the Adirondack and Appalachian mountains. By producing intimidating obstacles to human migration, those natural barriers — together covering an area between what are today southern Canada and northern Alabama — checked the westward expansion of the vast majority of Euro-American settlers in the original colonies, and in the newly formed states, of North America. Those who did venture beyond the Atlantic basin took advantage of several gaps left by the prehistoric collisions. In the northern colonies, the only such break was the one through which the Mohawk River flowed easterly from central New York to the Hudson River, which in turn ran southward into the Atlantic Ocean. While Dutch and British colonists took up farming along the Mohawk and other natural rivers and lakes of central New York, they, too, found their westward migration restrained once they reached Lake Oneida, near the head of the Mohawk. From that point, more than 150 miles east of Lake Erie, no major waterway permitted easy access through the western interior. Until shortly before Judge Richardson broke ground on the canal that would extend 363 miles between Lake Erie and the Hudson, residents of the region had no reason to believe that such a waterway would ever exist in their lifetimes.
But some western New Yorkers dreamed it might. The desire for a canal running the width of upstate New York emerged in the early eighteenth century and reveals something about the aspirations and values of settlers in the region. If eighteenth-century inhabitants generally dismissed such an artificial waterway as mere fantasy, an undertaking beyond the realm of human accomplishment, they did project more realistic, shorter channels. For them, the topography of upstate New York was evidence not of the shifting crust of the earth but of the Hand of Providence. God, they reasoned, would not have created breaks in mountain chains or riverbeds unless Man (to use the contemporary term) was destined to finish the work. Yet canals of any length required great investments of labor and capital, and the Dutch and the English governments had not seriously considered devoting such resources to develop their New York colonies, even though they had both undertaken extensive transportation projects in their own countries. Still, local interest in canals suggests that at least some settlers on the New York frontier shared an interest in commercial exchange and modernization. As early as the seventeenth century, Iroquois and Dutch traders had made use of the region's natural waterways to exchange furs and guns. In more recent times, European settlers had been attracted to the region's river valleys precisely because of the connection to markets they provided.
Of course, as many historians would be quick to point out, trade alone does not make for a commercial society organized around the ideal of progress. They would agree that farmers sought ways to unload agricultural "surpluses," but the very term "surplus," these scholars argue, suggests that the average farmer did not intentionally produce for trade, and certainly not for a market beyond the local community. And when farmers did exchange goods and services with neighbors, these transactions rarely involved cash — not because cash was in short supply, but rather because they saw no use for assigning monetary values. Instead, they calculated value in terms of social worth, and simply kept accounts of what they owed and were owed. A farmer, for example, might work for two days in his neighbor's cornfield in exchange for five chickens, since that was what it would take to feed his family during the time he spent away from his own farm duties. Or he might simply hold the neighbor accountable for two days' labor at some later time. These farmers sought, not to accumulate wealth, but to secure a "competency" that would allow their families to live a comfortable and independent existence in a community limited in geographic reach. Historians have found ample evidence suggesting that such a moral economy endured in some parts of the country into the nineteenth century. Whether New Yorkers of the colonial period tended to see themselves as peasants seeking a competence, businessmen pursuing profits, or consumers yearning for luxuries, their interest in canals suggests that at least some had aspirations to engage in broader market exchange.
Certainly by the turn of the nineteenth century, families emigrating to New York — whether from New England or from the Old World — saw access to markets as a prerequisite for settlement. To meet this demand, private land developers, such as the Dutch-owned Holland Land Company, invested heavily in roads connecting interior lands to commercial entrepôts. Access to markets made the land much more valuable, and by the time work began on the Erie Canal, upstate New York had a system of turnpikes and roads linking remote farming areas to natural waterways, over which settlers sent their produce to distant markets. Beginning in 1792, the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company and the Northern Inland Lock Navigation Company tried to turn a profit by improving some of the waterways themselves. Drawing on the financial resources of stockholders, many of whom would become the strongest advocates of the Erie Canal, the Western Company built canals, dams, and locks along the Mohawk River. These efforts aimed to establish more reliable commercial links among inland New York and the entrepôt of Albany on the Hudson, from which goods could go on to the Atlantic port of New York City. Although the company failed to make a profit because of the scheme's technological limitations and financial miscalculations, its goal nonetheless suggests that, as early as the 1790s, investors believed that farmers wanted an improved means of transporting their goods to an international port.
Settlers in upstate New York already took part in a system of economic relationships that revolved around the long-distance trade of goods and services for specie or credit. Some farmers hoped to use these market relationships to gain no more than economic independence and physical comfort — to sell the fruits of their labor in exchange for things they did not make or grow themselves. Mary Ann Archbald, who emigrated from Scotland in 1807 with her husband and children, held such aspirations. Three years after arriving in the United States, the Archbalds sold their initial tract of land and bought a farm directly along the banks of the Mohawk River to gain easier access to the New York market. The Archbalds had considered moving to Ohio, but worried that the new territory was "at a great distance from markets ..." If the Archbalds hoped only to trade goods and services within a local community, the distance to "markets" would not have been an issue; instead they might have worried about isolation from neighbors. The Archbalds sold their cloth and wheat in New York City while also growing rye, corn, barley, peas, oats, and potatoes. Mary Ann Archbald manufactured the cloth herself from the wool shorn from the family's seventy sheep. The size of the flock alone suggests that the Archbalds produced for the market and did not merely find themselves with an unplanned "surplus" of goods. Yet Mary Ann Archbald spoke of her quest for "independence" — that is, her dream of owning their farm outright, of being free from indebtedness, and thus free from the control and whims of a creditor. Indeed, in 1828 Archbald would be able to boast, "There was also a considerable debt on the farm which [her son Jamie] had been paying as he earned it & expect to have it all cleared off this fall ... now, as being out of debt is, in my estimation, being rich I trust that I will in my nixt [letter] be able to tell you positively that I am rich." For Archbald, wealth came in the form of independence.
Personal motivations, though, often defy generalization. Other settlers had more entrepreneurial goals; they concentrated on reducing their production costs while selling their goods as dearly as the market allowed. In 1808, Mary Ann Archbald tried to offer a sweeping picture of her new home to the acquaintances she left behind. "We are a nation of traders in spite of all Mr. Jefferson can say or do," Archbald wrote. "[M]oney money is every thing ..." Coming in the midst of the Jeffersonian embargo on international goods, Archbald's comment makes clear that not only were upstate New Yorkers engaging in trade; they were engaging in long-distance trade. Moreover, many of these settlers aimed not just to secure independence but rather to earn money and to profit from their connections to a larger commercial world. By cutting off legal trade with European nations, the embargoes had the unintended effect of raising the prices of those American goods that nonetheless reached European ports. Those New Yorkers who continued to trade abroad expected a large sum of "money" in return. While Jefferson hoped to keep the new country free from the entanglements of European war, some citizens apparently cared less about possible enmeshments and more about their personal profit.
It is not clear what distinguished independence-minded settlers from their profit-oriented neighbors. In fact, Mary Ann Archbald did not even have to look beyond her own home to witness entrepreneurialism. Her two sons tried their luck at mercantile ventures, activities she criticized as "speculation." That the Archbald children and their mother held different ideas about economic gain suggests that settlers' generational or gender backgrounds played into their attitudes toward market exchange. Mary Ann immigrated to the United States with her husband to establish an independent livelihood. Her sons, though, grew up in a "nation of traders" and eagerly looked forward to earning a living through the buying and selling of other people's goods. They bought lumber and wheat from western farmers and tried to sell it at a profit to other merchants in the eastern cities of Albany and New York.
Still, those sons did not exclusively concern themselves with their personal gain. Jamie, who helped build the section of the Erie Canal passing in front of his mother's farm, did not make money from the venture, contrary to his expectations. Obviously disappointed, he nonetheless appreciated how his efforts would help the "general utility." While engaging in individualistic, or liberal, pursuits of wealth, Jamie also retained belief in the founding principles of the Republic: that the goals of individuals should be subordinated to the common good, or the commonwealth. It was Jamie's mixture of liberal and republican impulses, not his mother's, that would represent the nation's future.
American politicians began planning for that future before the ink had dried on the Constitution. Even as they debated the principles that should govern their unique political experiment, the new nation's leaders could not ignore the pressing problems that emerged in the years after the Revolution. The United States urgently needed to accommodate its swelling population, to pay its war debts, and to reduce its dependence on Europe. Under the first party system that emerged in the 1790s, the Founding Fathers divided into two main schools of thought about how to develop the country's economy. Federalists, with Alexander Hamilton at their helm, supported a strong central government that would help sponsor commercial expansion, industrial and urban development, and international trade. Democratic- Republicans, under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, favored placing power in the hands of the states and limiting any role the federal government might play in commercial development. Unlike the Hamiltonians, who wanted to promote manufacturing, the Jeffersonian Republicans foresaw the nation remaining predominantly agrarian. Limited manufacturing, in their view, would provide a domestic outlet for agricultural surpluses, but it should not be the mainstay of the developing economy. Whereas Hamiltonians wanted to expand over "time," Jeffersonians envisioned expansion taking place over "space" — in the language of the day.
Whichever method of economic growth they preferred, the first generation of national leaders recognized the importance of internal improvements. A system of roads and canals would allow settlers, raw materials, and finished goods to move affordably between the nation's thinly populated interior and its increasingly crowded coastal basin. Because the colonial powers had invested so little in commercial transportation routes, in 1800 shipping a ton of goods thirty miles into the interior of the United States cost as much as shipping the same goods all the way to England. Clearly, the situation needed improvement if the nation was to prosper.
The notion of "improving" the physical world did not originate with the American Revolution, but it took on new meanings in its aftermath. Americans often ranked the founding of the American Republic as an event secondary in importance only to the creation of the earth. While the physical world had been the work of God alone, the Revolution had been a divinely sanctioned endeavor to perfect the human world. However limited the visions of the Founding Fathers seem to us today, particularly in regard to human equality, in their day the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution offered adult white men unparalleled rights and responsibilities. Drawing on the fervor and ideology of their Revolution (and, in the North, borrowing from their Puritan heritage), Americans believed that they had been placed on earth to finish God's work in shaping the New World. Their destiny was to perfect the human and physical world. Where God left gaps in the Appalachian Mountains, in other words, He intended humans to create their own rivers.
Motivated by a combination of economic and ideological imperatives, politicians on both the national and state levels embraced initiatives to expand the young nation's transportation networks. The federal government concentrated on financing roads for pedestrians, stagecoaches, and livestock. Its greatest achievement came with the opening of the National Road in 1818, connecting points in Virginia and Maryland; ultimately, the road would extend to Illinois. More extensive national efforts to improve transportation routes suffered from the scruples and inclinations of some Republicans, who controlled the federal government from the so-called Revolution of 1800 (when Jefferson won the Presidency from the Federalist John Adams) until the evolution of the second party system in the 1820s (after Andrew Jackson defeated John Quincy Adams's bid for reelection). Jefferson and his successor, Madison, both subscribed to narrow constitutional interpretations of the scope of federal authority, which made them hesitate to approve any measures not specifically falling within the purview of the national government. Their critics argued that these first two presidents in the "Virginia Dynasty" became particularly scrupulous when it came to authorizing transportation improvements north of the Mason-Dixon Line. But in both the South and the North, most public works projects proceeded with the help of state rather than federal money.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Artificial River by Carol Sheriff. Copyright © 1996 Carol Sheriff. Excerpted by permission of Hill and Wang.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,INTRODUCTION - Fresh Oysters and Sour Deals,
1 - Visions of Progress,
2 - The Triumph of Art over Nature,
3 - Reducing Distance and Time,
4 - The Politics of Land and Water,
5 - The Politics of Business,
6 - The Perils of Progress,
EPILOGUE - Becoming Second Nature,
BRIEF CHRONOLOGY of state and national events linked to THE ERIE CANAL,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
NOTES,
SOURCES,
INDEX,
Notes,
Copyright Page,
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