New York City: Emporium of the Western World 239The legislators were convinced, and in
1817 the state began construction along a
route 363 miles long, most of it across
densely forested wilderness. At the time the
longest canal in the United States ran less
than twenty-eight miles!
The construction of the Erie Canal, as it
was called, was a remarkable accomplish-
ment. The chief engineer, Benjamin Wright,
a surveyor-politician from Rome, New York,
had had almost no experience with canal
building. One of his chief associates, James
Geddes, possessed only an elementary
school education and knew virtually nothing
about surveying. Both learned rapidly by
trial and error. Fortunately, Wright proved
to be a good organizer and a fine judge of
engineering talent. He quickly spotted
young men of ability among the workers and
pushed them forward. One of his finds, Canvass
White, was sent to study British canals. White became
an expert on the design of locks; he also discovered an
American limestone that could be made into water-
proof cement, a vital product in canal construction
that had previously been imported at a substantial
price from England. Another of Wright’s protégés,
John B. Jervis, began as an axman, rose in two years
to resident engineer in charge of a section of the pro-
ject, and went on to become perhaps the outstanding
American civil engineer of his time. Workers who
learned the business digging the “Big Ditch” super-
vised the construction of dozens of canals throughout
the country in later years.
The Erie, completed in 1825, was an immediate
financial success. Together with the companion
Champlain Canal, which linked Lake Champlain and
the Hudson, it brought in over half a million dollars
in tolls in its first year. Soon its entire $7 million cost
had been recovered, and it was earning profits of
about $3 million a year. The effect of this prosperity
on New York State was enormous. Buffalo,
Rochester, Syracuse, and half a dozen lesser towns
along the canal flourished.
Erie Canal at myhistorylab.comNew York City: Emporium of the Western World
New York City had already become the largest city in
the nation, thanks chiefly to its merchants who had
established a reputation for their rapid and orderly
way of doing business. In 1818 the Black Ball Line
opened the first regularly scheduled freight and pas-
senger service between New York and England.
Previously shipments might languish in port forHeartheAudioNicolino V. Calyo’s painting, Burning of the Merchant’s Exchange(1835) in New York.
The entire block was rebuilt within a year.
Source: Museum of the City of New York.
Although canals were as old as Egypt, only
about 100 miles of them existed in the United States
as late as 1816. Construction costs aside, in a rough
and mountainous country canals presented formida-
ble engineering problems. To link the Mississippi
Valley and the Atlantic meant somehow circumvent-
ing the Appalachian Mountains. Most people
thought this impossible.
Mayor DeWitt Clinton of New York believed that
such a project was feasible in New York State. In
1810, while serving as state canal commissioner, he
traveled across central New York and convinced him-
self that it would be practicable to dig a canal from
Buffalo, on Lake Erie, to the Hudson River. The
Mohawk Valley cuts through the Appalachian chain
just north of Albany, and at no point along the route
to Buffalo does the land rise more than 570 feet
above the level of the Hudson. Marshaling a mass of
technical, financial, and commercial information and
using his political influence cannily, Clinton placed his
proposal before the New York legislature. In its
defense he was eloquent and farsighted:
As an organ of communication between the
Hudson, the Mississippi, the St. Lawrence, the
great lakes of the north and west, and their tribu-
tary rivers, [the canal] will create the greatest
inland trade ever witnessed. The most fertile and
extensive regions of America will avail themselves
of its facilities for a market. All their surplus...
will concentrate in the city of New York.... That
city will, in the course of time, become the gra-
nary of the world, the emporium of commerce,
the seat of manufactures, the focus of great mon-
eyed operations.... And before the revolution of
a century, the whole island of Manhattan, covered
with habitations and replenished with a dense
population, will constitute one vast city.