The Erie Canal, named by its opposition Clinton’s Ditch, after De Witt Clinton, Governor of New York, was a key factor in the population and development of the Great Lakes states. The canal made it possible for prosperity and culture to flow from east to west and from west to east.
After the federal government refused to become involved in funding the construction of a 350-mile ditch, calling it nonsense, the state of New York took on the project under the leadership of De Witt Clinton. The Erie Canal was to make a waterway from the American West to New York and beyond by connecting Lake Erie to the Atlantic, which turned out to be another brilliant idea that helps make America the largest and most prosperous nation in the world. .
Even George Washington spoke of the importance of such a passage in 1784, stating: “Western settlers stand as if on a pivot. The touch of a feather would change them any way…would smooth the way and make the way easier for them.” , and then we shall see what influx of articles will be poured upon us; how astonishingly our exports will be increased by them, and how amply we shall be compensated for whatever trouble and expense we may find in achieving it.”
building the canal
New York understood that they must take immediate action or risk losing trade with the Mississippi and Susquehanna rivers. Excavation began in Rome, New York on July 4, 1817, a task that would not be completed until October 2, 1825.
The site was chosen because it was part of what was then known as the “Long Level”, a stretch of many kilometers of level ground where work would be comparatively easy. The canal was built with a new invention of underwater cement, by hired bands of Native Americans, Irish, Welsh and other immigrants. Gradually a channel four feet deep, twenty-eight feet wide at the bottom, and forty feet wide at the top crossed the three hundred and fifty mile width of New York State, overcoming a land elevation problem of seven hundred feet with eighty-one blocks.
The burrowers made their way through thick forests, rocky wastelands, and swamps. When the canal was completed, it was opened to limited use along the way until its completion on October 2, 1825. The canal was so successful that New York State recouped its $7 million construction investment during the first decade of its use.
channel results
Immediately, raw products from rural New York began moving through canal waters to cities where machines, operated via water power, could turn them into factory-made products. Towns became cities. Rochester and Buffalo, which had about a thousand citizens in 1820, in 1840 had twenty thousand each. Frontier settlements that had been scattered by log houses assumed the dignity of ports on a water-filled canal, and the cabins were replaced by wooden houses.
More important than the cheap shipping of goods along the waterway was the movement of people, causing the western states to fill up. An 1825 guidebook reported that five hundred people a day were heading west. Ohio, 17th in population among states, quickly moved to 3rd, and Indiana went from 20th to 10th in population in the same time period. As for the western cities, five years after the opening of the canal, Cleveland had increased its population by more than 400 percent and Detroit by more than 300 percent.
The cost of freight was drastically reduced, but most important was the way the Erie Canal changed people’s lives. It opened up the flow of trade and narrowed the gap between rich and poor. There were very rigid differences in the United States between the aristocrats and the common people. As the latter became more prosperous, because of the canal, they disappeared and true democracy gained more ground.
Real estate and personal properties increased in value along the canal. The colonnaded “Greek Revival” houses advanced architecture. Living standards rose as the canal made more Americans prosperous.
The Erie Canal brought money and, in its wake, a quieter, more cultured life. Many of the westbound passengers brought with them insights into life that they had gleaned from observations on their voyage. Thus the canal left its mark on the life of the United States as a nation, an impression that Americans realize today has had a lasting and ennobling effect.
