CHAPTER VII. The Birth Of The Steamboat
The crowds who welcomed the successive stages in the development of American transportation were much alike in essentials-they were all optimistic, self-congratulatory, irrepressible in their enthusiasm, and undaunted in their outlook. d.i.c.kens, perhaps, did not miss the truth widely when, in speaking of stage driving, he said that the cry of "Go Ahead!" in America and of "All Right!" in England were typical of the civilizations of the two countries. Right or wrong, "Go Ahead!" has always been the underlying pa.s.sion of all men interested in the development of commerce and transportation in these United States.
During the era of river improvement already described, men of imagination were fascinated with the idea of propelling boats by mechanical means. Even when Washington fared westward in 1784, he met at Bath, Virginia, one of these early experimenters, James Rumsey, who haled him forthwith to a neighboring meadow to watch a secret trial of a boat moved by means of machinery which worked setting-poles similar to the ironshod poles used by the rivermen to propel their boats upstream. "The model," wrote Washington, "and its operation upon the water, which had been made to run pretty swift, not only convinced me of what I before thought next to, if not quite impracticable, but that it might be to the greatest possible utility in inland navigation." Later he mentions the "discovery" as one of those "circ.u.mstances which have combined to render the present epoch favorable above all others for securing a large portion of the produce of the western settlements, and of the fur and peltry of the Lakes, also."
From that day forward, scarcely a week pa.s.sed without some new development in the long and difficult struggle to improve the means of navigation. Among the scores of men who engaged in this engrossing but discouraging work, there is one whom the world is coming to honor more highly than in previous years-John Fitch, of Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. As early as August, 1785, Fitch launched on a rivulet in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a boat propelled by an engine which moved an endless chain to which little paddles were attached. The next year, Fitch"s second boat, operated by twelve paddles, six on a side-an arrangement suggesting the "side-wheeler" of the future-successfully plied the Delaware off "Conjuror"s Point," as the scene of Fitch"s labors was dubbed in whimsical amus.e.m.e.nt and derision. In 1787 Rumsey, encouraged by Franklin, fashioned a boat propelled by a stream of water taken in at the prow and ejected at the stern. In 1788 Fitch"s third boat traversed the distance from Philadelphia to Burlington on numerous occasions and ran as a regular packet in 1790, covering over a thousand miles. In this model Fitch shifted the paddles from the sides to the rear, thus antic.i.p.ating in principle the modern stern-wheeler.
It was doubtless Fitch"s experiments in 1785 that led to the first plan in America to operate a land vehicle by steam. Oliver Evans, a neighbor and acquaintance of Fitch"s, pet.i.tioned the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1786 for the right of operating wagons propelled by steam on the highways of that State. This pet.i.tion was derisively rejected; but a similar one made to the Legislature of Maryland was granted on the ground that such action could hurt n.o.body. Evans in 1802 took fiery revenge on the scoffers by actually running his little five-horse-power carriage through Philadelphia. The rate of speed, however, was so slow that the idea of moving vehicles by steam was still considered useless for practical purposes. Eight years later, Evans offered to wager $3000 that, on a level road, he could make a carriage driven by steam equal the speed of the swiftest horse, but he found no response. In 1812 he a.s.serted that he was willing to wager that he could drive a steam carriage on level rails at a rate of fifteen miles an hour. Evans thus antic.i.p.ated the belief of Stephenson that steam-driven vehicles would travel best on railed tracks.
In the development of the steamboat almost all earlier means of propulsion, natural and artificial, were used as models by the inventors. The fins of fishes, the webbed feet of amphibious birds, the paddles of the Indian, and the poles and oars of the riverman, were all imitated by the patient inventors struggling with the problem. Rumsey"s first effort was a copy of the old setting-pole idea. Fitch"s model of 1785 had side paddle wheels operated by an endless chain. Fitch"s second and third models were practically paddle-wheel models, one having the paddles at the side and the other at the stern. Ormsbee of Connecticut made a model, in 1792, on the plan of a duck"s foot. Morey made what may be called the first real stern-wheeler in 1794. Two years later Fitch ran a veritable screw propeller on Collect Pond near New York City. Although General Benjamin Tupper of Ma.s.sachusetts had been fashioning devices of this character eight years previously, Fitch was the first to apply the idea effectively. In 1798 he evolved the strange, amphibious creation known as his "model of 1798," which has never been adequately explained. It was a steamboat on iron wheels provided with f.l.a.n.g.es, as though it was intended to be run on submerged tracks. What may have been the idea of its inventor, living out his last gloomy days in Kentucky, may never be known; but it is possible to see in this anomalous machine an antic.i.p.ation of the locomotive not approached by any other American of the time. Thus, prior to 1800 almost every type of mechanism for the propulsion of steamboats had been suggested and tried; and in 1804, Stevens"s twin-screw propeller completed the list.
It is not alone Fitch"s development of the devices of the endless chain, paddle wheel, and screw propeller and of his puzzling earth-and-water creature that gives l.u.s.ter to his name. His prophetic insight into the future national importance of the steamboat and his conception, as an inventor, of his moral obligations to the people at large were as original and striking in the science of that age as were his models.
The early years of the national life of the United States were the golden age of monopoly. Every colony, as a matter of course, had granted to certain men special privileges, and, as has already been pointed out, the questions of monopolies and combinations in restraint of trade had arisen even so early as the beginning of the eighteenth century. Interwoven inextricably with these problems was the whole problem of colonial rivalry, which in its later form developed into an insistence on state rights. Every improvement in the means of transportation, every development of natural resources, every new invention was inevitably considered from the standpoint of sectional interests and with a view to its monopolistic possibilities. This was particularly true in the case of the steamboat, because of its limitation to rivers and bays which could be specifically enumerated and defined. For instance, Washington in 1784 attests the fact that Rumsey operated his mechanical boat at Bath in secret "until he saw the effect of an application he was about to make to the a.s.sembly of this State, for a reward." The application was successful, and Rumsey was awarded a monopoly in Virginia waters for ten years.
Fitch, on the other hand, when he applied to Congress in 1785, desired merely to obtain official encouragement and intended to allow his invention to be used by all comers. Meeting only with rebuff, he realized that his only hope of organizing a company that could provide working capital lay in securing monopolistic privileges. In 1786 he accordingly applied to the individual States and secured the sole right to operate steamboats on the waterways of New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. How different would have been the story of the steamboat if Congress had accepted Fitch at his word and created a precedent against monopolistic rights on American rivers!
Fitch, in addition to the high purpose of devoting his new invention to the good of the nation without personal considerations, must be credited with perceiving at the very beginning the peculiar importance of the steamboat to the American West. His original application to Congress in 1785 opened: "The subscriber begs leave to lay at the feet of Congress, an attempt he has made to facilitate the internal Navigation of the United States, adapted especially to the Waters of the Mississippi." At another time with prophetic vision he wrote: "The Grand and Principle object must be on the Atlantick, which would soon overspread the wild forests of America with people, and make us the most oppulent Empire on Earth. Pardon me, generous public, for suggesting ideas that cannot be dijested at this day."
Foremost in exhibiting high civic and patriotic motives, Fitch was also foremost in appreciating the importance of the steamboat in the expansion of American trade. This significance was also clearly perceived by his brilliant successor, Robert Fulton. That the West and its commerce were always predominant in Fulton"s great schemes is proved by words which he addressed in 1803 to James Monroe, American Amba.s.sador to Great Britain: "You have perhaps heard of the success of my experiments for navigating boats by steam engines and you will feel the importance of establishing such boats on the Mississippi and other rivers of the United States as soon as possible." Robert Fulton had been interested in steamboats for a period not definitely known, possibly since his sojourn in Philadelphia in the days of Fitch"s early efforts. That he profited by the other inventor"s efforts at the time, however, is not suggested by any of his biographers. He subsequently went to London and gave himself up to the study and practice of engineering. There he later met James Rumsey, who came to England in 1788, and by him no doubt was informed, if he was not already aware, of the experiments and models of Rumsey and Fitch. He obtained the loan of Fitch"s plans and drawings and made his own trial of various existing devices, such as oars, paddles, duck"s feet, and Fitch"s endless chain with "resisting-boards" attached. Meanwhile Fulton was also devoting his attention to problems of ca.n.a.l construction and to the development of submarine boats and submarine explosives. He was engaged in these researches in France in 1801 when the new American minister, Robert R. Livingston, arrived, and the two men soon formed a friendship destined to have a vital and enduring influence upon the development of steam navigation on the inland waterways of America.
Livingston already had no little experience in the same field of invention as Fulton. In 1798 he had obtained, for a period of twenty years, the right to operate steamboats on all the waters of the State of New York, a monopoly which had just lapsed owing to the death of Fitch. In the same year Livingston had built a steamboat which had made three miles an hour on the Hudson. He had experimented with most of the models then in existence-upright paddles at the side, endless-chain paddles, and stern paddle wheels. Fulton was soon inspired to resume his efforts by Livingston"s account of his own experiments and of recent advances in England, where a steamboat had navigated the Thames in 1801 and a year later the famous sternwheeler Charlotte Dundas had towed boats of 140 tons" burden on the Forth and Clyde Ca.n.a.l at the rate of five miles an hour. In this same year Fulton and Livingston made successful experiments on the Seine.
It is fortunate that, in one particular, Livingston"s influence did not prevail with Fulton, for the American Minister was distinctly prejudiced against paddle wheels. Although Livingston had previously ridden as a pa.s.senger on Morey"s sternwheeler at the rate of five miles an hour, yet he had turned a deaf ear when his partner in experimentation, Nicholas J. Roosevelt, had insisted strongly on "throwing wheels over the sides." At the beginning, Fulton himself was inclined to agree with Livingston in this respect; but, probably late in 1803, he began to investigate more carefully the possibilities of the paddle wheel as used twice in America by Morey and by four or five experimenters in Europe. In 1804 an eight-mile trip which Fulton made on the Charlotte Dundas in an hour and twenty minutes established his faith in the undeniable superiority of two fundamental factors of early navigation-paddle wheels and British engines. Fulton"s splendid fame rests, and rightly so, on his perception of the fact that no mere ingenuity of design could counterbalance weakness, uncertainty, and inefficiency in the mechanism which was intended to make a steamboat run and keep running. As early as November, 1803, Fulton had written to Boulton and Watt of Birmingham that he had "not confidence in any other engines" than theirs and that he was seeking a means of getting one of those engines to America. "I cannot establish the boat without the engine," he now emphatically wrote to James Monroe, then Amba.s.sador to the Court of St. James. "The question then is shall we or shall we not have such boats."
But there were difficulties in the way. Though England forbade the exportation of engines, Fulton knew that, in numerous instances, this rule had not been enforced, and he had hopes of success. "The British Government," Fulton wrote Monroe, "must have little friendship or even civility toward America, if they refuse such a request." Before the steamboat which Fulton and Livingston proposed to build in America could be operated there was another obstacle to be surmounted. The rights of steam navigation of New York waters which Livingston had obtained on the death of Fitch in 1798 had lapsed because of his failure to run a steamboat at the rate of four miles an hour, which was one provision of the grant. In April, 1803, the grant was renewed to Livingston, Roosevelt, and Fulton jointly for another period of twenty years, and the date when the boat was to make the required four miles an hour was extended finally to 1807.
Any one who is inclined to criticize the Livingston-Roosevelt-Fulton monopoly which now came into existence should remember that the previous state grants formed a precedent of no slight moment. The whole proceeding was in perfect accord with the spirit of the times, for it was an era of speculation and monopoly ushered in by the toll-road and turnpike organizations, when probably no less than two hundred companies were formed. It was young America showing itself in an unmistakable manner-"conceived in liberty" and starting on the long road to learn that obedience to law and respect for public rights const.i.tute true liberty. Finally, it must be pointed out that Fulton, like his famous predecessor, Fitch, was impelled by motives far higher than the love of personal gain. "I consider them [steamboats] of such infinite use in America," he wrote Monroe, "that I should feel a culpable neglect toward my country if I relaxed for a moment in pursuing every necessary measure for carrying it into effect." And later, when repeating his argument, he says: "I plead this not for myself alone but for our country."
It is now evident why the alliance of Fulton with Livingston was of such epoch-making importance, for, although it may have in some brief measure delayed Fulton"s adoption of paddle wheels, it gave him an entry to the waters of New York. Livingston and Fulton thus supplemented each other; Livingston possessed a monopoly and Fulton a correct estimate of the value of paddle wheels and, secondly, of Boulton and Watt engines. It was a rare combination destined to crown with success a long period of effort and discouragement in the history of navigation.
After considerable delay and difficulty, the two Americans obtained permission to export the necessary engine from Great Britain and shipped it to New York, whither Fulton himself proceeded to construct his steamboat. The hull was built by Charles Brown, a New York shipbuilder, and the Boulton and Watt machinery, set in masonry, was finally installed.
The voyage to Albany, against a stiff wind, occupied thirty-two hours; the return trip was made in thirty. H. Freeland, one of the spectators who stood on the banks of the Hudson when the boat made its maiden voyage in 1807, gives the following description:
"Some imagined it to be a sea-monster whilst others did not hesitate to express their belief that it was a sign of the approaching judgment. What seemed strange in the vessel was the subst.i.tution of lofty and straight smoke-pipes, rising from the deck, instead of the gracefully tapered masts... and, in place of the spars and rigging, the curious play of the walking-beam and pistons, and the slow turning and splashing of the huge and naked paddlewheels, met the astonished gaze. The dense clouds of smoke, as they rose, wave upon wave, added still more to the wonderment of the rustics.... On her return trip the curiosity she excited was scarcely less intense... fishermen became terrified, and rode homewards, and they saw nothing but destruction devastating their fishing grounds, whilst the wreaths of black vapor and rushing noise of the paddle-wheels, foaming with the stirred-up water, produced great excitement...."
With the launching of the Clermont on the Hudson a new era in American history began. How quick with life it was many of the preceding pages bear testimony. The infatuation of the public for building toll and turnpike roads was now at its height. Only a few years before, a comprehensive scheme of internal improvements had been outlined by Jefferson"s Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin. When a boy, it is said, he had lain on the floor of a surveyor"s cabin on the western slopes of the Alleghanies and had heard Washington describe to a rough crowd of Westerners his plan to unite the Great Lakes with the Potomac in one mighty chain of inland commerce. Jefferson"s Administration was now about to devote the surplus in the Treasury to the construction of national highways and ca.n.a.ls. The c.u.mberland Road, to be built across the Alleghanies by the War Department, was authorized by the president in the same year in which the Clermont made her first trip; and Jesse Hawley, at his table in a little room in a Pittsburgh boarding house, was even now penning in a series of articles, published in the Pittsburgh Commonwealth, beginning in January, 1807, the first clear challenge to the Empire State to connect the Hudson and Lake Erie by a ca.n.a.l. Thus the two next steps in the history of inland commerce in America were ready to be taken.
CHAPTER VIII. The Conquest Of The Alleghanies
The two great thoroughfares of American commerce in the first half of the nineteenth century were the c.u.mberland Road and the Erie Ca.n.a.l. The first generation of the new century witnessed the great burst of population into the West which at once gave Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin a place of national importance which they have never relinquished. So far as pathways of commerce contributed to the creation of this veritable new republic in the Middle West, the c.u.mberland Road and the Erie Ca.n.a.l, cooperating respectively with Ohio River and Lake Erie steamboats, were of the utmost importance. The national spirit, said to have arisen from the second war with England, had its clearest manifestation in the throwing of a great macadamized roadway across the Alleghanies to the Ohio River and the digging of the Erie Ca.n.a.l through the swamps and wildernesses of New York.
Both of these pathways were essentially the fruition of the doctrine to which Washington gave wide circulation in his letter to Harrison in 1784, wherein he pictured the vision of a vast Republic united by commercial chains. Both were essentially Western enterprises. The highway was built to fulfil the promise which the Government had made in 1802 to use a portion of the money accruing from the sale of public lands in Ohio in order to connect that young State with Atlantic waters. It was proposed to build the ca.n.a.l, according to one early plan, with funds to be obtained by the sale of land in Michigan. So firmly did the promoters believe in the national importance of this project that subscriptions, according to another plan, were to be solicited as far afield as Vermont in the North and Kentucky in the Southwest. All that Washington had hoped for, and all that Aaron Burr is supposed to have been hopeless of, were epitomized in these great works of internal improvement. They bespoke cooperation of the highest existing types of loyalty, optimism, financial skill, and engineering ability.
Yet, on the other hand, the contrasts between these undertakings were great. The two enterprises, one the work of the nation and the other that of a single State, were practically contemporaneous and were therefore constantly inviting comparison. The c.u.mberland Road was, for its day, a gigantic government undertaking involving problems of finance, civil engineering, eminent domain, state rights, local favoritism, and political machination. Its purpose was n.o.ble and its successful construction a credit to the nation; but the paternalism to which it gave rise and the conflicts which it precipitated in Congress over questions of const.i.tutionality were remembered soberly for a century. The Erie Ca.n.a.l, after its projectors had failed to obtain national aid, became the undertaking of one commonwealth conducted, amid countless doubts and jeers, to a conclusion unbelievably successful. As a result many States, foregoing Federal aid, attempted to duplicate the successful feat of New York. In this respect the northern ca.n.a.l resembled the Lancaster Turnpike and tempted scores of States and corporations to expenditures which were unwise in circ.u.mstances less favorable than those of the fruitful and strategic Empire State.
In the conception of both the roadway and the ca.n.a.l, it should be noted, the old idea of making use of navigable rivers still persisted. The act foreshadowing the c.u.mberland Road, pa.s.sed in 1802, called for "making public roads leading from the navigable waters emptying into the Atlantic, to the Ohio, to said State Ohio and through the same"; and Hawley"s original plan was to build the Erie Ca.n.a.l from Utica to Buffalo using the Mohawk from Utica to the Hudson.
Historic c.u.mberland, in Maryland, was chosen by Congress as the eastern terminus of the great highway which should bind Ohio to the Old Thirteen. Commissioners were appointed in 1806 to choose the best route by which the great highway could reach the Ohio River between Steubenville, Ohio and the mouth of Grave Creek; but difficulties of navigation in the neighborhood of the Three Sister Islands near Charlestown, or Wellsburg, West Virginia, led to the choice of Wheeling, farther down, as a temporary western terminus.
The route selected was an excellent compromise between the long standing rival claims of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to the trade of the West. If Baltimore and Alexandria were to be better served than Philadelphia, the advantage was slight; and Pennsylvania gained compensation, ere the State gave the National Government permission to build the road within its limits, by dictating that it should pa.s.s through Uniontown and Washington. In this way Pennsylvania obtained, without cost, unrivaled advantages for a portion of the State which might otherwise have been long neglected.
The building of the road, however satisfactory in the main, was not undertaken without arousing many sectional and personal hopes and prejudices and jealousies, of which the echoes still linger in local legends today. Land-owners, mine-owners, factory-owners, innkeepers and countless townsmen and villagers anxiously watched the course of the road and were bitterly disappointed if the new sixty-four-foot thoroughfare did not pa.s.s immediately through their property. On the other hand, promoters of toll and turnpike companies, who had promising schemes and long lists of shareholders, were far from eager to have their property taken for a national road. No one believed that, if it proved successful, it would be the only work of its kind, and everywhere men looked for the construction of government highways out of the overflowing wealth of the treasury within the next few years.
In April, 1811, the first contracts were let for building the first ten miles of the road from its eastern terminus and were completed in 18191. More contracts were let in 1812, 1813, and 1815. Even in those days of war when the drain on the national treasury was excessive, over a quarter of a million dollars was appropriated for the construction of the road. Onward it crawled, through the beautiful c.u.mberland gateway of the Potomac, to Big Savage and Little Savage Mountains, to Little Pine Run (the first "Western" water), to Red Hill (later called "Shades of Death" because of the gloomy forest growth), to high-flung Negro Mountain at an elevation of 2325 feet, and thence on to the Youghiogheny, historic Great Meadows, Braddock"s Grave, Laurel Hill, Uniontown, and Brownsville, where it crossed the Monongahela. Thence, on almost a straight line, it sped by way of Washington to Wheeling. Its average cost was upwards of thirteen thousand dollars a mile from the Potomac to the Ohio. The road was used in 1817, and in another year the mail coaches of the United States were running from Washington to Wheeling, West Virginia. Within five years one of the five commission houses doing business at Wheeling is said to have handled over a thousand wagons carrying freight of nearly two tons each. The c.u.mberland Road at once leaped into a position of leadership, both in volume of commerce and in popularity, and held its own for two famous decades. The pulse of the nation beat to the steady throb of trade along its highway. Maryland at once stretched out her eager arms, along stone roads, through Frederick and Hagerstown to c.u.mberland, and thus formed a single route from the Ohio to Baltimore. Great stagecoach and freight lines were soon established, each patronizing its own stage house or wagon stand in the thriving towns along the road. The primitive box stage gave way to the oval or football type with curved top and bottom, and this was displaced in turn by the more practical Concord coach of national fame. The names of the important stagecoach companies were quite as well known, a century ago, as those of our great railways today. Chief among them were the National, Good Intent, June Bug, and Pioneer lines. The coaches, drawn by four and sometimes six horses, were usually painted in brilliant colors and were named after eminent statesmen. The drivers of these gay chariots were characters quite as famous locally as the personages whose names were borne by the coaches. Westover and his record of forty-five minutes for the twenty miles between Uniontown and Brownsville, and "Red" Bunting, with his drive of a hundred and thirty-one miles in twelve hours with the declaration of war against Mexico, will be long famous on the curving stretches of the c.u.mberland Road.
Although the freight and express traffic of those days lacked the picturesqueness of the pa.s.senger coaches, nothing ill.u.s.trates so conclusively what the great road meant to an awakening West as the long lines of heavy Conestogas and rattling express wagons which raced at "unprecedented" speed across hill and vale. Searight, the local historian of the road, describes these large, broad-wheeled wagons covered with white canvas as
"visible all the day long, at every point, making the highway look more like a leading avenue of a great city than a road through rural districts.... I have staid over night with William Cheets on n.i.g.g.e.r [Negro] Mountain when there were about thirty six-horse teams in the wagon yard, a hundred Kentucky mules in an adjoining lot, a thousand hogs in their enclosures, and as many fat cattle in adjoining fields. The music made by this large number of hogs eating corn on a frosty night I shall never forget. After supper and attention to the teams, the wagoners would gather in the bar-room and listen to the music on the violin furnished by one of their fellows, have a Virginia hoe-down, sing songs, tell anecdotes, and hear the experiences of drivers and drovers from all points of the road, and, when it was all over, unroll their beds, lay them down on the floor before the bar-room fire side by side, and sleep with their feet near the blaze as soundly as under the parental roof."
Meanwhile New York, the other great rival for Western trade, was intent on its own darling project, the Erie Ca.n.a.l. In 1808, three years before the building of the c.u.mberland Road, Joshua Forman offered a bill in favor of the ca.n.a.l in the Legislature of New York. In plain but dignified language this doc.u.ment stated that New York possessed "the best route of communication between the Atlantic and western waters," and that it held "the first commercial rank in the United States." The bill also noted that, while "several of our sister States" were seeking to secure "the trade of that wide extended country," their natural advantages were "vastly inferior." Six hundred dollars was the amount appropriated for a brief survey, and Congress was asked to vote aid for the construction of the "Buffalo-Utica Ca.n.a.l." The matter was widely talked about but action was delayed. Doubt as to the best route to be pursued caused some discussion. If the western terminus were to be located on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Oswego, as some advocated, would produce not make its way to Montreal instead of to New York? In 1810 a new committee was appointed and, though their report favored the paralleling of the course of the Mohawk and Oswego rivers, their engineer, James Geddes, gave strength to the party which believed a direct ca.n.a.l would best serve the interests of the State. It is worth noting that Livingston and Fulton were added to the committee in 1811.
The hopes of outside aid from Congress and adjacent States met with disappointment. In vain did the advocates of the ca.n.a.l in 1812 plead that its construction would promote "a free and general intercourse between different parts of the United States, tend to the aggrandizement and prosperity of the country, and consolidate and strengthen the Union." The plan to have the Government subsidize the ca.n.a.l by vesting in the State of New York four million acres of Michigan land brought out a protest from the West which is notable not so much because it records the opposition of this section as because it ill.u.s.trates the shortsightedness of most of the arguments raised against the New York enterprise. The purpose of the ca.n.a.l, the detractors a.s.serted, was to build up New York City to the detriment of Montreal, and the navigation of Lake Ontario, whose beauty they touchingly described, was to be abandoned for a "narrow, winding obstructed ca.n.a.l... for an expense which arithmetic dares not approach." It was, in their minds, unquestionably a selfish object, and they believed that "both correct science, and the dictates of patriotism and philanthropy [should] lead to the adoption of more liberal principles." It was a shortsighted object, "predicated on the eternal adhesion of the Canadas to England." It would never give satisfaction since trade would always ignore artificial and seek natural routes. The attempting of such comparatively useless projects would discourage worthy schemes, relax the bonds of Union, and depress the national character. But though these Westerners thus misjudged the possibilities of the Erie Ca.n.a.l, we must doff our hats to them for their foresight in suggesting that, instead of aiding the Erie Ca.n.a.l, the nation ought to build ca.n.a.ls at Niagara Falls and Panama!
The War of 1812 suspended all talk of the ca.n.a.l, but the subject was again brought up by Judge Platt in the autumn of 1816. With alacrity strong men came to the aid of the measure. De Witt Clinton"s Memorial of 1816 addressed to the State Legislature may well rank with Washington"s letter to Harrison in the doc.u.mentary history of American commercial development. It sums up the geographical position of New York with reference to the Great Lakes and the Atlantic, her relationship to the West and to Canada, the feasibility of the proposed route from an engineering standpoint, the timeliness of the moment for such a work of improvement, the value that the ca.n.a.l would give to the state lands of the interior, and the trade that it would bring to the towns along its pathway.
The Erie Ca.n.a.l was born in the Act of April 14, 1817, but the decision of the Council of Revision, which held the power of veto, was in doubt. An anecdote related by Judge Platt tends to prove that fear of another war with England was the straw that broke the camel"s back of opposition. Acting-Governor Taylor, Chief Justice Thompson, Chancellor Kent, Judge Yates, and Judge Platt composed the Council. The two first named were open opponents of the measure; Kent, Yates, and Platt were warm advocates of the project, but one of them doubted if the time was ripe to undertake it.
Taylor opposed the ca.n.a.l on the ground that the late treaty with England was a mere truce and that the resources of the State should be husbanded against renewed war.
"Do you think so, Sir?" Chancellor Kent is said to have asked the Governor.
"Yes, Sir," was the reported reply. "England will never forgive us for our victories, and, my word for it, we shall have another war with her within two years."
The Chancellor rose to his feet with determination and sealed the fate of the great enterprise in a word.
"If we must have war," he exclaimed, "I am in favor of the ca.n.a.l and I cast my vote for this bill."
On July 4, 1817, work was formally inaugurated at Rome with simple ceremonies. Thus the year 1817 was marked by three great undertakings: the navigation of the Mississippi River upstream and down by steamboats, the opening of the national road across the Alleghany Mountains, and the beginning of the Erie Ca.n.a.l. No single year in the early history of the United States witnessed three such important events in the material progress of the country.
What days the ancient "Long House of the Iroquois" now saw! The engineers of the c.u.mberland Road, now nearing the Ohio River, had enjoyed the advantage of many precedents and examples; but the Commissioners of the Erie Ca.n.a.l had been able to study only such crude examples of ca.n.a.l-building as America then afforded. Never on any continent had such an inaccessible region been pierced by such a highway. The total length of the whole network of ca.n.a.ls in Great Britain did not equal that of the waterway which the New Yorkers now undertook to build. The lack of roads, materials, vehicles, methods of drilling and efficient business systems was overcome by sheer patience and perseverance in experiment. The frozen winter roads saved the day by making it possible to acc.u.mulate a proper supply of provisions and materials. As tools of construction, the plough and sc.r.a.per with their greater capacity for work soon supplanted the shovel and the wheelbarrow, which had been the chief implements for such construction in Europe. Strange new machinery born of Mother Necessity was now heard groaning in the dark swamps of New York. These giants, worked by means of a cable, wheel, and endless screw, were made to hoist green stumps bodily from the ground and, without the use of axe, to lay trees prostrate, root and branch. A new plough was fashioned with which a yoke of oxen could cut roots two inches in thickness well beneath the surface of the ground.
Handicaps of various sorts wore the patience of commissioners, engineers, and contractors. Lack of snow during one winter all but stopped the work by cutting off the source of supplies. Pioneer ailments, such as fever and ague, reaped great harvests, incapacitated more than a thousand workmen at one time and for a brief while stopped work completely.
For the most part, however, work was carried on simultaneously on all the three great links or sections into which the enterprise was divided. Local contractors were given preference by the commissioners, and three-fourths of the work was done by natives of the State. Forward up the Mohawk by Schenectady and Utica to Rome, thence bending southward to Syracuse, and from there by way of Clyde, Lyons, and Palmyra, the ca.n.a.l made its way to the giant viaduct over the Genesee River at Rochester. Keeping close to the summit level on the dividing ridge between Lake Ontario streams and the Valley of the Tonawanda, the line ran to Lockport, where a series of locks placed the ca.n.a.l on the Lake Erie level, 365 miles from and 564 feet above Albany. By June, 1823, the ca.n.a.l was completed from Rochester to Schenectady; in October boats pa.s.sed into the tidewaters of the Hudson at Albany; and in the autumn of 1825 the ca.n.a.l was formally opened by the pa.s.sage of a triumphant fleet from Lake Erie to New York Bay. Here two kegs of lake water were emptied into the Atlantic, while the Governor of the State of New York spoke these words:
"This solemnity, at this place, on the first arrival of vessels from Lake Erie, is intended to indicate and commemorate the navigable communication, which has been accomplished between our Mediterranean Seas and the Atlantic Ocean, in about eight years, to the extent of more than four hundred and twenty-five miles, by the wisdom, public spirit, and energy of the people of the State of New York; and may the G.o.d of the Heavens and the Earth smile most propitiously on this work, and render it subservient to the best interests of the human race."
Throughout these last seven years, the West was subconsciously getting ready to meet the East halfway by improving and extending her steamboat operations. Steamboats were first run on the Great Lakes by enterprising Buffalo citizens who, in 1818, secured rights from the Fulton-Livingston monopoly to build the Walk-in-the-Water, the first of the great fleet of ships that now whiten the inland seas of the United States. Regular lines of steamboats were now formed on the Ohio to connect with the c.u.mberland Road at Wheeling, although the steamboat monopoly threatened to stifle the natural development of transportation on Western rivers.
The completion of the Erie Ca.n.a.l-coupled with the new appropriation by Congress for extending the c.u.mberland Road from the Ohio River to Missouri and the beginning of the Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake and Ohio ca.n.a.ls, reveal the importance of these concluding days of the first quarter of the nineteenth century in the annals of American transportation. Never since that time have men doubted the ability of Americans to accomplish the physical domination of their continent. With the conquest of the Alleghanies and of the forests and swamps of the "Long House" by pick and plough and sc.r.a.per, and the mastery of the currents of the Mississippi by the paddle wheel, the vast plains beyond seemed smaller and the Rockies less formidable. Men now looked forward confidently, with an optimist of these days, to the time "when circulation and a.s.sociation between the Atlantic and Pacific and the Mexican Gulf shall be as free and perfect as they are at this moment in England" between the extremities of that country. The vision of a nation closely linked by wellworn paths of commerce was daily becoming clearer. What further westward progress was soon to be made remains to be seen.