Pilots of the Republic: The Romance of the Pioneer Promoter in the Middle West

by Archer Butler Hulbert

"With that vote the bill became a law."

It is difficult for us to-day to realize what a tremendous undertaking it was to try to throw this great "Ditch" of Clinton's across those hundreds of miles of forest and swamp which, for so many generations, had been known as the "Long House of the Iroquois." As you fly through that beautiful territory watered by the Mohawk, Seneca, and Onondaga rivers to-day, it is hardly possible to re-create, with any measure of truth, the old-time appearance of the land. It was well into the nineteenth century before a good road was ever built in Central New York; indeed, during the years while the Erie Canal was being built, the necessary materials for the building, and provisions for the builders, were transported thither in the winter season because at that time only was it accessible by any known means of transportation. Think what it meant, then, to dig a great trench through the heavily wooded region where even the road-builders had not had the temerity to go. It was the forest growth that held back the road-maker; the tangled forest, the heavily wooded overgrowth that bound the heavy trees inextricably together. The canal-builder had all that the road-maker found to combat with above the ground,—the tangled mesh of bush, vine, and tree,—but he had also what was far more difficult to attack and conquer, namely, the tremendous labyrinth of roots that lay beneath the ground. Thus, his task was double that of the road-maker; and look as far as you will through our early history, you will not find an enterprise launched on this continent by any man or any set of men that will compare in daring with the promotion of this great work of interior improvement to which New York now set herself.

For there was no hesitating. Within a very few days of the passing of the act creating the Erie Canal you could have seen surveyors and chainmen pushing out into the shadowy forest-land, driving five lines of stakes across New York toward the setting sun. These men, like those who sent them, were ridiculed everywhere they went by some of the people; but still the ringing blows grew fainter and fainter as those five lines of stakes crept on up the Mohawk, along the Seneca, through poisonous swamps, on the banks of running rivers, around the shores of the still-lying lakes. Those who ridiculed prophesied that next we would be building a bridge across the Atlantic, and then a tunnel to China beneath the Pacific; but the sneers and ridicule of that portion of the people that will be fools all the time could not stop those earnest stake-drivers or the small army of men, mostly Americans, who came in and worked with pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow.

The two outer lines of stakes were sixty feet apart; this indicated the space from which the forest was to be cleared. Two lines of stakes within these, measuring forty feet apart, represented the exact width of the proposed canal; and the remaining single line of stakes located its mathematical centre. The whole distance of the canal from Albany to Buffalo was divided into three sections, and these sections were subdivided into very small portions, which were let to contractors. The first contract was signed June 27, 1817, and work was begun at historic Rome, New York, on the following Fourth of July, with appropriate ceremony. After a short address by one of the commissioners, Samuel Young, and amid a burst of artillery, Judge Richardson, the first contractor, threw out the first spadeful of earth.

To present-day readers acquainted with so many wonderful feats of engineering of modern days, the history of the building of this canal must seem commonplace; the marvellous thing about it, after all, was its conception and the campaign of education which brought about its realization. One of the romantic phases of the story, that will forever be of interest to those of us who can never know a primeval forest, was the experience of the engineering corps crashing their way through the New York forests, where the surveyors' stakes could hardly be seen in the dense gloom. Machinery unknown in America at the time was called upon to perform this arduous labor of grubbing and clearing this sixty-foot aisle. One machine, working on the principle of an endless screw connected with a cable, a wheel, and a crank, enabled a single man to haul down a tree of the largest size without any cutting. The machine being located at a distance of one hundred feet from the foot of the tree, the cable was attached to the trunk fifty or sixty feet from the ground, a crank was turned, the screw revolved, and the tree was soon prostrated, as the force which could be exerted by this principle was irresistible.

A machine for hauling out stumps was constructed and operated as follows:

"Two strong wheels, sixteen feet in diameter, are made and connected together by a round axle-tree, twenty inches thick and thirty feet long; between these wheels, and with its spokes inseparably framed into their axle-tree, another wheel is placed, fourteen feet in diameter, round the rim of which a rope is several times passed, with one end fastened through the rim, and with the other end loose, but in such a condition as to produce a revolution of the wheel whenever it is pulled. This apparatus is so moved as to have the stump, on which it is intended to operate, midway between the largest wheels, and nearly under the axle-tree; and these wheels are so braced as to remain steady. A very strong chain is hooked, one end to the body of the stump, or its principal root, and the other to the axle-tree. The power of horses or oxen is then applied to the loose end of the rope above mentioned, and as they draw, rotary motion is communicated, through the smallest wheel, to the axle-tree, on which, as the chain hooked to the stump winds up, the stump itself is gradually disengaged from the earth in which it grew. After this disengagement is complete, the braces are taken from the large wheels, which then afford the means of removing that stump out of the way, as well as of transporting the apparatus where it may be made to bear on another."

An implement devised for the underground work demanded on the Erie Canal was a peculiar plough having a very heavy blade by which the roots of the trees were cut; two yoke of oxen could draw this plough through any mesh of roots none of which exceeded two inches in diameter.

The middle section of the canal, from Rome to Lockport, was completed in 1819, twenty-seven miles being navigable in that year. By 1823 the canal was opened from Rochester to Schenectady. Water was admitted into the canal between Schenectady and Albany in October of that year; and by September, 1824, the line was completed from Lockport to Black Rock Harbor on Lake Erie.

In evidence of what the promoters of the Erie Canal expected that highway would be to the Central West we find this interesting fact: Ohio, and even Kentucky, were called upon officially to aid in raising the funds for its building. Indeed, the commissioners in 1817 went so far as to utter a threat against the States lying on each side of New York in case they should not be willing to contribute to the building of this commercial route, which was to be for their common benefit; this consisted in a threat to charge high duties on articles transported to and from those States and the Territories of the United States. It would seem as though New York never expected to be compelled to finance, unassisted, the great work of improvement which she began in 1817. Agents went canvassing for her both in Vermont on the east and in Ohio on the west for the purpose of raising contributions to the canal fund. Agents also were sent to the national Government at Washington, and it was believed that national aid could perhaps be secured from the sale of the public lands in Michigan, very much in the same way as the old National Road was paid for in part by the sale of lands in Ohio a decade before. Though assurances of interest and sympathy were forthcoming from the Government and from all the interested States, there is no evidence at hand to show that New York was aided to the extent of a single penny from any extraneous source. To this fact, we shall see in another chapter, may be charged the opposition of New York delegates in Congress to many government-aid propositions that came up in the era of internal improvements.