Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation

by Peter L. Bernstein

Overview

New York Times Bestseller

The epic account of how one narrow ribbon of water forever changed the course of American history.

The history of the Erie Canal is a riveting story of American ingenuity. A great project that Thomas Jefferson judged to be “little short of madness,” and that others compared with going to the moon, soon turned into one of the most successful and influential public investments in American history.

In Wedding of the Waters, best-selling author Peter L. Bernstein recounts the canal’s creation within the larger tableau of a youthful America in the first quarter-century of the 1800s. Leaders of the fledgling nation had quickly recognized that the Appalachian mountain range was a formidable obstacle to uniting the Atlantic states with the vast lands of the west. A pathway for commerce as well as travel was critical to the security and expansion of the Revolution’s unprecedented achievement. Gripped by the same fever that had driven explorers such as Hudson and Champlain, a motley assortment of politicians, surveyors, and would-be engineers set out to build a complex structure of a type few of them had ever actually seen, let alone built or operated: a manmade waterway cut through the mountains to traverse the 363 miles between Lake Erie and the Hudson River. By linking the seas to the interior and the interior to the seas, these pioneers ultimately connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. Bernstein examines the social ramifications, political squabbles, and economic risks and returns of this mammoth project. He goes on to demonstrate how the canal’s creation helped bind the western settlers in the new lands to their fellow Americans in the original colonies, knitted the sinews of the American industrial revolution, and even influenced profound economic change in Europe.

Featuring a rich cast of characters that includes political visionaries like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin van Buren; the canal’s most powerful champions, Governor DeWitt Clinton and Gouverneur Morris; and a huge platoon of Irish and American diggers, Wedding of the Waters reveals that the twenty-first-century themes of urbanization, economic growth, and globalization can all be traced to the first great macroengineering venture of American history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393340204
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/16/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	475,638
File size:	819 KB

About the Author

Peter L. Bernstein (1919—2009), was an American economist and financial historian. Bernstein's ten books include the worldwide bestseller Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. He also wrote countless articles in professional journals such as Harvard Business Review, Financial Analysts Journal and, in the popular press, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Worth magazine and Bloomberg.

Editorial Reviews

A great deal has been written about the canal but relatively little in recent years, so Wedding of the Waters is a valuable history lesson for people -- i.e., most of us -- who have forgotten about the canal or never knew about it in the first place. Bernstein, an economist who has written a number of books that attempt with considerable success to address complex subjects for a general readership, gives the story of the canal's conception and construction all the drama it deserves, and -- as is suggested by the quotation above -- puts it into larger perspective. Almost certainly it is no exaggeration to say that the United States wouldn't be what it is today had it not been for the Erie Canal; it was the Interstate Highway System of the 19th century, and its impact was comparable if not even greater.
— The Washington Post

Jonathan Yardley

In the early eighteen-hundreds, the wild idea began to circulate of a man-made waterway that would connect Lake Erie to the Hudson River. At the time, canals were an exciting technology. George Washington was fascinated by them, and spent his last years attempting to tame the Potomac. But geography favored New York, where the Mohawk River Valley offered a natural cut in the mountains. Bernstein’s lively account covers the political debates that surrounded the canal’s financing and choice of route, and also the tenacity of the local workers who completed the project. The inauguration, in 1825, of the Erie Canal sparked a cultural revolution as interior cities became port towns. The number of patents increased, suggesting an intellectual awakening, but there were also fears that mobility could lead to moral decline, and one paper denounced the canal as “the Big Ditch of Iniquity.”<

The New Yorker

First proposed in 1808 and completed 17 years later, the Erie Canal was the first great feat of macroengineering undertaken by the infant American republic. As economic consultant Bernstein (Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk) shows in his eloquent account, the canal-stretching 363 miles from the Hudson River to Lake Erie-reshaped not only the economic landscape of the eastern seaboard but the political and social landscape as well. Bernstein vividly relates the political battles fought over the high-priced project and the work of surveyors, engineers and laborers. The canal was in particular an economic engine for New York, bringing down the cost of shipping goods between Buffalo and Manhattan by a whopping 90%. This in turn inspired the development of farms throughout the Great Lakes area and the Upper Midwest. At the same time, prices for farm commodities in Manhattan and other eastern cities dropped steadily, facilitating the growth of industrial workforces and a dramatic shift in the urban-to-rural ratio toward the cities. Bernstein does a first-rate job of examining the social, political and economic impact of the canal both as a construction project and as a viable path linking the Atlantic seaboard with the American interior. 20 b&w illus. not seen by PW. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

The Erie Canal stretches for 363 miles, from Albany to Buffalo. Its construction was a major event in American history: by creating a water link between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River, the Erie Canal dramatically accelerated the development of the American interior, linked the Midwest and the East together in an economic and political unit that would dominate American political life for 150 years, and made New York the greatest city in the hemisphere (and, some would say, the world). It also vastly accelerated the development of American capital markets and for the first time attracted substantial foreign capital to infrastructure projects, which would play a vital role in future industrial development. Meanwhile, all this was carried out by a New York State government in the midst of a chaotic series of changes, as rapid immigration and the arrival of universal (white) manhood suffrage made early nineteenth-century New York City the laboratory of American democracy. Bernstein is at his best when describing the engineering and technological innovations that made the canal possible, and his treatment of the financial engineering necessary to fund this enormous project is also very sound. If he is less successful at recreating the political context of the times, that is at least partly because the politics were so tumultuous. In any case, Wedding of the Waters is an important window into a vital and too often neglected period in the American past.

Foreign Affairs

Bernstein, an economist notable for his popular writing (e.g., the best-selling Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk), links technological feats and bodies of water in the spirit of storytellers David McCullough (on the Panama Canal) and Ken Burns (on the Brooklyn Bridge). With all the enthusiasm of a young scholar, Bernstein traces the story of the Erie Canal by focusing on the impact of personalities such as Scottish surveyor Cadwallader Colden, Irish mechanic Christopher Colles, and popular politician and promoter De Witt Clinton. Bernstein's theme is that the waterway was pivotal in constructing an east-west axis for the movement of goods, people, ideas, and, ultimately, economic growth and globalization. The influx of New Englanders and New Yorkers into such cities as Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Chicago led to urbanization and industrialization, which put the North squarely ahead of the South by the time of the Civil War. This predominantly descriptive text is supplemented by annotations and a bibliography, while eyewitness accounts of what canal travel was actually like add considerably to this handsome book's appeal. Recommended for general audiences. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/04.]-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Crisp, insightful history of the canal that transformed New York into the Empire State and the US into an economic powerhouse. Stretching 363 miles from Buffalo on Lake Erie to Albany on the Hudson River, the Erie Canal was the technological marvel of its age. Its celebrated opening in 1825 culminated a century of effort by dreamers, tinkerers, merchants, and politicians who sought to build an artificial waterway linking the trans-Appalachian region to the Atlantic seaboard. Bernstein (The Power of Gold, 2000, etc.) deftly lays out those efforts. In the young republic, canal-building often failed. George Washington's attempt to create one along the Potomac River, for instance, was a financial disaster, later prompting Thomas Jefferson to dismiss the idea of a canal to the west as "little short of madness." It took brilliant, hard-nosed New York governor DeWitt Clinton to push the Erie Canal through a thicket of obstacles, including lack of financial assistance by the federal government or any sister state, the War of 1812, and nine years of stalemate in the state legislature. Bernstein also pays full tribute to lesser-known managers and often-anonymous workers who improvised methods of hacking the canal's path through the wilderness. Two project engineers, Benjamin Wright and James Geddes, had been judges and surveyors before assuming their posts, but went on to eminent careers in their new field. Financing the canal proved equally novel, with New York State selling bonds to the public at large and even to foreign financial markets. Along with the canal's well-known effects on the state and national economy (e.g., reducing the trip from Albany to Buffalo from 32 days to 5), Bernstein alsohighlights its social impact and larger national implications as the Midwest became tied to the free North rather than the slaveholding South in a vast commercial network. One corner of the great American panorama enlarged to highlight its starry-eyed visionaries, political machinations, indefatigable ingenuity, and cockeyed optimism. (20 line drawings, not seen)

Kirkus Reviews

"The story behind the canal’s construction is a narrative of political intrigue, bold vision and backbreaking work. And it all comes to life in Peter L. Bernstein’s epic history of the canal."

New York Post - Terry Golway

"Mr. Bernstein has opened a rich historical vein."

Wall Street Journal - Roger Lowenstein

"A riveting account of one of the most amazing technological achievements of all time."

Philadelphia Inquirer - Thomas J. Brady

"Bernstein’s economic analysis lucidly conveys the enormous impact of the Erie Canal and explains its crucial role in bringing about the industrial emergence of the young nation."

San Francisco Chronicle - Chuck Leddy

"An excellent overview of the struggles that went into making the Erie Canal a reality."

Chicago Tribune - Josh Ozersky

"Wedding of the Waters is an important window into a vital and too often neglected period in the American past"

Foreign Affairs - Walter Russell Mead

"Mr Bernstein is at his best in showing how a colorful group of American politicians turned this dream into reality…The book provides a splendid window into early American life, which was as raucously divided then as it is now by class and taste."

The Economist

"Engrossing…the tale merits a place among the popular classics of American economic history."

Financial Times - Stephen Schurr