Brief biographies from American history, for the fifth and sixth grades

by Edna Henry Lee Turpin

In so large a country as America, the question of methods of travel and means of transportation was of course important from the first. Water-ways were the natural and most convenient mode of communication. If you will look on a map of the colonies, you will see how the settlements clung to water-lines—ocean, lake, and river.

Before the Revolution, men went to and fro as they had done for hundreds even thousands of years. On the water they traveled by slow boats, propelled by oars or sails. On the land they journeyed on foot, or horseback, or in rude vehicles, over roads which were generally rough and bad and often dangerous.

It was so expensive to carry goods to and fro that their carriage within the limits of a state might cost more than the value of the goods. It cost, for instance, two dollars and a half a bushel to carry salt three hundred miles in the state of New York. People who moved from the eastern to the western part of the state could not afford to carry their household goods. They had to be carried by boat from New York to Albany, hauled to Schenectady, carried in boats up the Mohawk River and on a small canal to Utica, then hauled overland to Rome, and carried again in boats down a small canal and creek to Oneida Lake, thence by water to Lake Ontario.

During the early part of the nineteenth century, in three ways travel and hauling were made easier and cheaper. The simplest of these was by the extensive use of canals. A canal is a trench filled with water deep enough to carry well-laden boats. The boats are drawn by horses which travel along a path called a “tow path.” In most cases the boats are moved up and down inclines by means of what are called “locks” on the canal. It is usually cheaper to haul goods by canals than by natural streams as the locks make the water lift or lower loads on inclines.

The people of New York state became convinced that canals along and connecting their water-ways would be a good and cheap way to carry manufactured articles from New York city to the western settlements, and to convey wheat, corn, and other produce to the eastern markets. A canal was planned between Albany and Buffalo, to connect the Great Lakes with the Atlantic. But the expense of this canal would be great and many people did not believe that the traffic would repay it. The matter was made a political issue and on it DeWitt Clinton was elected governor.

It was largely through his zeal and energy that the project was carried to a successful issue, and a canal forty feet wide and three hundred and sixty-three miles long was dug. While the canal was being constructed people called it “Clinton’s Folly,” and when it was finished and successful they called it “Clinton’s Big Ditch.”

An effort was made to get the general government to help construct this canal, but the bill was vetoed. Governor Clinton secured the help of the business men of New York, and four months after the aid bill was vetoed, the canal was begun, Clinton himself throwing the first shovelful of dirt. In fact, there was dug not one canal, but two canals,—one between Lake Erie and the Hudson, and the other between the Hudson and Lake Champlain.

DE WITT CLINTON

In the summer of 1825 the western part was opened and boats went from Buffalo to New York City. As there was no telegraph to announce the news of the starting of the first canal-boat, it was carried by cannon, placed at intervals along the route. When the boat left Buffalo, the first cannon was fired; the man at the second heard the report and fired his piece; and so from one to another the news was borne to New York in two hours. Governor Clinton was on the boat which made this first trip; he carried a keg of water dipped from Lake Erie which he poured into New York Bay, as a sign that the two were united. From the first the canal was a paying investment as well as a great convenience to the people. Freight rates decreased at once to much less than their former rates. Instead of its costing the farmer of western New York $1.10 to send a bushel of his wheat to the eastern market, it cost only forty cents.