Bold Endeavors: How Our Government Built America, and Why It Must Rebuild Now
256
Bold Endeavors: How Our Government Built America, and Why It Must Rebuild Now
256eBook
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Overview
Rohatyn begins with the diplomatic intrigues of the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the country; moves to the controversial construction of the Erie Canal, which opened a water route to the West; then continues to Lincoln's resolute support for the transcontinental railroad, Land Grant colleges, and the Homestead Act; documents the strategy -- and ruthless determination -- that built the Panama Canal; details the visionary and pragmatic politics that allowed FDR to bring electricity to rural America and use the Reconstruction Finance Act to help pull the country from the grip of the Depression; captures the foresight of national purpose which led to the G.I. Bill, which propelled the nation forward; and describes the creation of the interstate highway system that modernized America.
Bold Endeavors is an urgent call for present-day action in this time of grave national crisis. "The nation is falling apart -- literally," Rohatyn warns. "America's roads and bridges, schools and hospitals, airports and roadways, ports and dams, water lines and air control systems -- the country's entire infrastructure is rapidly and dangerously deteriorating."
To reverse this catastrophic degeneration and create tens of thousands of new jobs, Rohatyn offers a carefully reasoned and practical solution. Bold and imaginative political leadership must use the power and the resources of the federal government to finance the rebuilding of the nation's infrastructure.
Rohatyn's page-turning case studies are precedents for purposeful, resourceful, and tenacious leadership that is necessary to accomplish both the rebuilding of America and the country's emergence from its present financial crisis. These bold endeavors from the nation's past are instructive, a guide and an inspiration for Americans today. If the nation is to be rebuilt and its infrastructure renewed, if the country is to emerge from the present economic crisis and reclaim its position of unqualified strength and leadership in world affairs, then it must be guided by the vision, determination, and investments that originally helped create a secure and prosperous America.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781416566069 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 02/24/2009 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 259 KB |
About the Author
Felix G. Rohatyn is Special Advisor to the Chairman and CEO of the investment banking firm Lazard Freres & Co., LLC. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Previously, Rohatyn has been the managing director at Lazard, the chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation to the State of New York, and the U.S. ambassador to France. He lives in New York with his wife, Elizabeth .
Read an Excerpt
TWO
The Erie Canal
STANDING ON THE BANKS of the Mohawk River, Cadwallader Colden watched with fascination as the snaking line of birch-bark canoes made their swift way upstream toward Oneida Lake. As the Indians rhythmically plunged their paddles into the water on that afternoon in 1724, an idea began to take shape in the scientist's mind.
Colden, educated at Edinburgh University, had come to America from his native Ireland at the request of the governor of New York Province to do a geographical survey of western New York and at the same time report on relations between the French colonialists and the local Indian tribes. As he journeyed across the rugged country and observed, Colden was struck by the ingenuity the Indians used to deliver their furs to the French. Setting out from Albany, they'd carry their goods a short 16 miles overland to Schenectady and the Mohawk River; then they'd paddle their canoes upriver to Oneida Lake; until they'd finally drift, as he wrote, "with the current down the Onondoga [now the Ostwego] River to Lake Ontario." The Indians, Colden realized with admiration, had devised an easily navigable, calm water route through the Appalachian Mountains. And this shortcut sparked his thoughts.
Why not, he decided in a burst of inspiration, create a trail of waterways from the industries of the eastern seaboard to the rich wilderness of the Northwest territories? Why not connect the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean by a path of integrated rivers? Such a water route, he began to see with increasing clarity, would be a quick and economical highway that would carry people and trade back and forth between the eastern colonies and the natural bounty in the New World's frontier. It would be, he felt certain, the path that would encourage the colonies to spread westward.
It was not until nearly one hundred years later, in 1817, when the first trenches for this interconnecting waterway were dug, that Colden's practical vision would begin to be transformed into a reality. And after the 363-mile Erie Canal was completed eight years later, this swift path from the Hudson River to Lake Erie, a route that, as the inaugural proclamation announced, "wedded the waters" between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, would have consequences far beyond Colden's original expectations. Not only did this waterway open the western frontier, but it was crucial to New York City's becoming the nation's chief port and one of the world's great metropolitan centers.
The canal was a state-funded engineering marvel that demonstrated, as the eighty-year- old former president Thomas Jefferson observed, "the capability of nations to execute great enterprises." The success of the Erie Canal helped further establish the precedent that a visionary and innovative government can finance and build significant projects that will dramatically improve the nation's wealth and quality of life.
Yet the creation of the Erie Canal is also a history of tenacity, a century-long tale of perseverance by far-seeing, resolute, inventive, and often stubborn individuals. It is the story of leaders who were inspired by the originality of Colden's insight; and who, with this possibility firmly rooted in their imagination, refused to surrender to any of the obstacles that either a shortsighted Politics or a malicious Nature put in the way of what they believed was in the best interests of the nation.
GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS WORRIED. Although he was no longer president, he had not abandoned his concern for the nation he had helped create. Out of office, in retirement, he grew anxious about the country's future.
For the United States to survive and prosper, the former president believed the country would need to develop its western territories. No less troubling, he feared that if America did not firmly establish its ties to the settlers in these frontier lands, then European powers would colonize the West. The opportunity to expand the country across the continent would be lost.
It was essential that government begin "applying the cement of interest," Washington insisted in a 1785 letter to Patrick Henry, the governor of Virginia, "to bind all parts of the Union together by indispensable bonds -- especially of binding that part of it which lies immediately west of us, to the middle States." And a canal, Washington believed with passion, would be "the cement" that would firmly and indispensably bond the western lands to the rest of America.
With President Jefferson's encouragement, Washington formed the Patowmack Company to build a canal along the Potomac River (as it is now known). It would run from Alexandria, Virginia, and continue westward through the mountains beyond the nation's capital.
It was an inspired idea, and it had influential and well-known supporters. Nevertheless, the project was immediately besieged by managerial, labor, and financial problems. When Washington died in 1799, an already troubled company began to unravel. Still, the Patowmack Company managed to flounder on until, at last, it went bankrupt in 1810.
Yet despite all its problems and its ultimate failure, the Patowmack Company had succeeded in popularizing the former president's original vision: A canal tying the East to the western territories was vital to the new republic's future.
AS THE IDEA OF a Potomac canal began to attract supporters in Virginia, Christopher Colles, an Irish immigrant to America, tried to apply his practical experience to the building of an interconnecting waterway based in New York. In Ireland, Colles had worked on improving navigation on the Shannon River; now he hoped to use this expertise to benefit his new homeland.
While Washington was busy trying to attract investors to his Patowmack Company, Colles went off to make an impressively detailed survey of New York's waterways. When he was finished, Colles presented his findings to the New York state legislature; unlike the former president, he believed that government, not private individuals, should finance the construction of a system that would play such an integral part in the further development of the new nation.
The paper that Colles presented to the legislature in 1784 was entitled "Proposals for the Speedy Settlement of the Vast and Unappropriated Lands of the Western Frontiers of New York, and for the Improvement of the Inland Navigation Between Albany and Oswego." Although its title was long-winded, Colles's paper was a succinct, well-reasoned call for practical action. It emphasized the advantages of travel on the calm Mohawk River waters, and detailed the economic benefits that would result from a canal that connected the nation's seacoast to its interior. Insightfully, Colles bolstered his argument by pointing out the military advantages in such a canal. "In times of war," he wrote, "provisions and military stores may be moved with facility in sufficient quantity to answer any emergency."
The legislature listened attentively to Colles's presentation, but in the end refused to allocate funds. Still, his carefully presented ideas got the citizens and politicians of New York State thinking. Perhaps, they began increasingly to reflect, a canal did make sense.
NEW YORK STATE SENATOR Philip Schuyler had been particularly intrigued by Colles's argument for a canal. More important, he was an influential voice in the legislature. A scion of New York's Dutch aristocracy and father-in- law of Alexander Hamilton, Schuyler had served in the Provincial Army in the 1750s and then went on to become a fabled Continental Army general during the Revolution. After independence, he was elected to the New York State Senate.
It was in 1791 when he was a state senator that Schuyler was approached by Elkanah Watson. Watson, part adventurer, part entrepreneur, had returned to the United States after running a business in France. Upon his arrival in Virginia, Watson had a chance encounter with former president George Washington. Washington talked enthusiastically to the young man about his plan for a Potomac River Canal. It was this small conversation, Watson would later say, that first kindled "a canal flame in my mind."
Six years later, Watson, now living in Albany, New York, and helping to organize a local bank, led an expedition to explore the possibility of building a canal that would connect the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Once his report on the trip was completed, the affable Watson, a man with a unique ability to align himself with celebrated mentors, presented it to Schuyler.
Schuyler, whose interest in a canal had first been prodded years earlier by Colles, read Watson's paper with a growing enthusiasm. By the time he was finished, Schuyler was convinced that Watson's plan for two canals -- one from the Hudson to Lake Ontario, the other from the Hudson to Lake Champlain -- was both inspired and practical. He was determined to help. Schuyler used his considerable influence to convince the state senate to finance two enterprises -- the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company and the Northern Inland Lock Navigation Company -- that together would construct the two canals. The canals were never built. And in time, the companies quietly went out of business. Nevertheless, the collaboration between Schuyler and Watson had established a principle that would prove significant: New York State was willing to finance a canal.
AFTER THE DISMAL FAILURES of the two lock navigation companies, the public and political support for a New York canal seemed to disappear. For over a decade the project was largely ignored, and further political efforts were abandoned. But then, in 1807, it was suddenly revitalized. From the depths of debtors' prison, a voice reached out and once again captured people's imagination and ignited their enthusiasm.
Jesse Hawley was a western New York flour merchant whose business had collapsed because of his inability to make timely shipments to his customers. Both the rough upstate roads and the choppy Mohawk River had proved to be unmanageable routes; his flour rarely reached its destinations. When the overextended Hawley could not pay his bills, he was sentenced to twenty months in debtors' prison.
He used the time in jail to mull over his failure, and to write. Under the pseudonym of "Hercules," Hawley published a series of essays in the Genesee, New York, Messenger. These essays offered a logical and persuasively articulated plan that would solve the problems of transporting goods across the state. He urged the building of a canal to link the city of Buffalo, on the eastern end of Lake Erie, to the city of Utica in central New York State, via the Mohawk River, the Hudson's largest tributary.
"The trade of almost all the lakes in North America," Hawley predicted with confidence, "...would center at New York," and "in a century [that] island would be covered with buildings and population of its city." With impressive prescience, Hawley, the untrained amateur, accurately specified the route that a canal should (and two decades later would) follow. And he cannily estimated that it would cost $6 million; the actual expense was $7 million.
At the time, though, the great accomplishment of these essays was that they helped once again to create support for a canal in the state legislature. In 1808, two New York assemblymen, Joshua Forman and Benjamin Wright (who himself had drawn maps of the Mohawk River for the ill-fated Western Inland Lock Navigation Company), proposed a bill that would allocate $600 to survey canal routes.
The bill passed, and James Geddes, a surveyor, was hired by the state. Geddes threw himself into the task. He charted, he would write, "the rivers, streams and waters...in the usual route of communication between the Hudson River and Lake Erie." When he was done, he announced that a canal was indeed feasible. He did, however, warn that it would be a massive undertaking. Planning, labor, and costs would be considerable challenges. He conceded that unfortunately he was "born very many years too soon" to ever see it completed.
Despite these caveats, Joshua Forman, one of the original sponsors of the bill that had led to Geddes's commission, was encouraged. The survey, he felt, had proved the project "practicable beyond [the] most sanguine expectations." He went to President Thomas Jefferson to request federal support for the canal.
Jefferson listened; and then declared that the New York project was "little more than madness." It was, the president thundered, much too ambitious, an idea that was a hundred years ahead of its time.
Forman was undeterred. "The state of New York," the defiant assemblyman informed the president, "would never rest until [the canal] was accomplished."
But while the efforts continued to raise canal financing elsewhere, they had little tangible results. By 1810, Thomas Eddy, a director of the struggling Western Company, and Jonas Platt, a New York state senator, had come to believe in fact that a private company could never succeed in building a canal. The two men decided that government would need to control the project, and they formulated a plan for a New York State Canal Commission. For the commission to be effective, they realized it would need to be bipartisan. And so, in what would prove to be an inspired gesture, they reached out to DeWitt Clinton.
DEWITT CLINTON WAS A popular and influential Republican politician. He had resigned from the U.S. Senate in 1803 to run for mayor of New York. He was elected for three terms, and also served simultaneously from 1806 to 1811 in the State Senate, and then from 1811 to 1813 as lieutenant governor.
The "Hercules" essays had convinced Clinton of "the practicability of such a canal," and now he readily agreed to support a Canal Commission. With his vocal backing, the commission was ratified by the state assembly and $3,000 was appropriated for its expenses.
In recognition of his efforts (and his influence), Clinton was appointed to the Canal Commission, along with fellow Republicans Simon DeWitt (Clinton's cousin and the state surveyor) and Peter Porter. The Federalist members were Gouverneur Morris, Stephen van Rensselaer, William North, and Thomas Eddy.
It was a truly bipartisan group, and, as history would demonstrate, a visionary one. The New York commissioners put aside their many differences to form a united group that, despite all political obstacles, would persevere to lead one of the great engineering achievements of all time.
WITH THE SHARED SENSE that they were embarking on a great mission, the Canal Commission members began their work. Using Geddes's survey and the "Hercules" essays as their guides, in the summer of 1810 the new state commissioners set out to explore possible canal routes. It was a rough trip.
DeWitt Clinton's journal vividly describes the distinguished statesmen's discomforting journey along the Mohawk River wilderness. Day after day, they battled "an army of bed bugs, aided by a light infantry in the shape of fleas, and a regiment of mosquito cavalry." The locals, too, did not welcome them; one farmer, apparently enraged by the spectacle of the august commissioners' arrival on his property, responded by hurling a pitchfork at them.
But the commissioners continued on, and in March 1811, they submitted their findings to the legislature. It created a furor.
Matter-of- factly, the commission dismissed all previous suggestions about merely improving river navigation. Instead, it proposed a full-scale canal.
The Lake Ontario route, however, was categorically rejected. The commissioners criticized its limited supply of water, its impracticality for schooners and larger boats, and the large number of transshipments that would be required for a trip from the seacoast to Lake Ontario.
The Lake Erie route had none of these disadvantages. There was plentiful water; this would make building a canal easier since it could be constructed on an inclined plane and fed from the lock. And the resulting absence of locks on most sections of the canal would greatly reduce maintenance fees. The Erie route, the report declared, made the most practical and economic sense.
The canal, the commission predicted, would be a good investment. It would make money, and it would facilitate commerce throughout the state. Nevertheless, the report resolutely concluded that the canal should not be financed or run by the private sector. "Too great a national interest is at stake. It must not become the subject of a job, or a fund for speculation....Such large expenditures can be more economically made under public authority, than by the care and vigilance of any company."
The New York state legislature agreed: The canal should be a public enterprise. In April 1811, it authorized the Canal Commission to seek funding from the federal government and from otherstates.
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS AND DEWITT Clinton, as representatives of the commission, went to Washington, D.C., determined to reverse the results of the unsuccessful appeal that had been made years earlier to President Jefferson. In preparation for their meeting with President James Madison they had prepared a memo that, they felt, persuasively enumerated the many benefits of the canal. It would "encourage agriculture, promote commerce and manufacturers, facilitate 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."
Full of optimism, convinced of the rightness of their argument, Morris and Clinton confidently made their case. The president listened with apparent concentration. He nodded his head enthusiastically, as if mutely agreeing with every point they made.
When the presentation was concluded, Madison began by praising the commission's efforts. He then went on to share that he was "an enthusiast as to the advantages of interior navigation, by means of canals." But finally Madison said he could not offer federal support. It would be, he explained, unconstitutional. He conceded that he was "embarrassed by scruples deriving from his interpretation of the Constitution." Nevertheless, this was, he apologized with terse authority, the end of the discussion.
Morris and Clinton were discouraged, but they would not give up. They approached Albert Gallatin, secretary of the Treasury, who was a well-known advocate for transportation development. But Gallatin, too, was unsupportive; the impending war with Britain, he explained, restricted the availability of funds. Perhaps, the desperate commissioners countered, the Treasury could offer support in the form of land grants. Again, Gallatin refused.
So, the two commissioners began to approach the states adjacent to New York for funding. This time the response was not simply negative but entirely skeptical. "A railroad from the earth to the moon could not be treated with more derision," an exasperated Clinton complained.
Despite the failure to raise financing, the commissioners did not abandon their efforts. They simply chose another strategy: New York State would need to build and finance the Erie Canal on its own.
HOPING TO ATTRACT SUPPORTERS in the legislature, the Canal Commission in March 1812 issued a new report. It was a shrewdly practical document, insisting that the canal would be a moneymaking investment for the state.
The report opened with a candid admission. The canal would require more locks than had initially been planned and therefore it would cost more than previously estimated: $6 million. But the report breezily put this sum into perspective: "It is almost a contradiction in terms to suppose that an expenditure of five or six million, in ten or twenty years, can be a serious consideration to a million men, enjoying one of the richest soils and finest climates under heaven."
The report then went on to focus more solidly on the economics of building and financing a canal. A $5 million loan, the commissioners asserted, could be readily obtained from European sources for a term of ten or fifteen years and at a rate of only six percent.
According to the report's calculations, servicing this loan would not be a problem. Within only twenty years, the legislators were assured, the canal would carry an impressive 250,000 tons of freight annually. At a toll of $2.50 per ton, this, combined with other fees, would generate $1,250,000 each year. These proceeds, the commissioners stated, would not only be sufficient to pay the interest on the loan but also would bring a substantial profit to the state.
The report concluded by urging the state to take immediate action. "Things which twenty years ago a man would have been laughed at for believing, we now see," the commissioners reminded their fellow elected officials. However complicated the engineering challenges, however daunting the cost, the canal was a similar enterprise: a futuristic idea that could be made into a reality.
But while the report was bursting with a gung-ho confidence, sentiments ran similarly high among the canal's opponents. The project was dismissed as frivolous and as a drain on the nation's budget. "It would require the revenue of all the kingdoms of the earth, and the population of China, to accomplish it," mocked one state legislator.
To the Federalists, Clinton's motives were also suspect. His visit to Washington to meet with President Madison, they charged, had been "undertaken by him for electioneering purposes." Senator James A. Bayard railed that the intent was more "to open a road to the presidency than a canal from the lakes."
Gouverneur Morris acidly shot back at the commission's critics. The commissioners, he said, "must, nevertheless, have the hardihood to brave the sneers and sarcasm of men who, with too much pride to study, too much wit to think, undervalue what they do not understand, and condemn what they do not comprehend."
In the end, the canal supporters prevailed. On June 19, 1812, the legislature by a small majority ratified the report's findings. And in an accompanying bill, the commissioners were authorized to borrow a maximum of $5 million on the credit of the state and to sell the rights of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company to raise additional funding.
THE COMMISSION'S CELEBRATION WAS short-lived. On the same day that New York ratified its plan to build the canal, President Madison declared war on Great Britain.
The commissioners tried at first to convince themselves that the War of 1812 would not impede the construction of the canal. In fact, war could very well make the project a priority; after all, there were military advantages in having a swift waterway route to the west.
But this logic proved to be only wishful thinking. With the outbreak of war, a flurry of large problems quickly followed. First, the hydrological and geographical surveys of the proposed canal route were suspended because of "military operations which are not favorable to internal improvements." Then, the English engineer chosen by the commission to oversee the project was prohibited from coming to New York; and the available American engineers were, it was conceded, too inexperienced. And finally, the hostilities made it impossible for the state to secure a European loan; no bank would lend a fortune to a nation whose future was in doubt.
Domestic political problems further undermined the project. DeWitt Clinton, the canal's most vocal advocate, was defeated in the 1812 presidential election, and the loss left his reputation tarnished and his influence diminished. At the same time, the Federalist Party, whose members nearly uniformly supported the project, was in shambles. With the party's opposition to both Madison and the war, it no longer had the power to rally the legislature.
In 1814, the New York state legislature canceled the commission's right to borrow capital on behalf of the state. The commissioners were devastated. They had, one observer commiserated, "given up all hopes of the legislature being induced again to take up the subject, or to adopt any measure to prosecute the scheme."
Clinton, too, acknowledged the totality of his defeat. "Without power and without money," he wrote, the canal was an impossibility. This was, he accepted with a grim certitude, the end of his dream.
YET ONCE THE WAR of 1812 was concluded, the nation looked back at the hostilities; and now from the perspective of experience, the strategic and economic necessity of a canal became increasingly apparent. Much of the war, for example, had been fought in the west. With its skill at inland navigation, Britain had been able to dispatch forces and supplies westward. But the United States had struggled to transport men, weapons, and provisions to this front -- and these failures had lost battles.
Additionally, the cost of supplying the troops in the western territories had been crippling. An 1816 report by General James Tallmadge, who had commanded the wartime forces in upstate New York, offered daunting testimony: the cost of shipping a single barrel of pork inland to feed the troops was $126; a single cannon, fabricated back east for $400, wound up costing an additional $2,000 by the time it was delivered to the troops on the shores of Lake Erie.
The war had also shown the need to end the nation's reliance on imports and foreign manufacturers. In the future, America would need to be more economically self-reliant. And one way to accomplish this, it was generally agreed, would be to reap the natural benefits of the continent's vast interior wilderness. But first there needed to be a practical way to transport goods out west, and natural resources back east. A canal, people were once again beginning to realize, was vital if the country was to remain militarily strong and economically independent.
With the end of the war, though, the possibility of a Lake Ontario route for the canal was uniformly dismissed. Relations between Canada and the United States had soured; the war had left the country suspicious about its northern neighbor's secret alliances and hidden intentions. All the discussions now centered on the Lake Erie route.
But even as sentiment for a canal was once again building, its longtime public champion was too preoccupied to offer his support. DeWitt Clinton was busy trying to save his own future. His political career was in near ruin.
New York's Tammany organization, Clinton's bitter enemies, had finally succeeded in undermining his support in the Democratic Party. They had persuaded Governor Daniel Tompkins to remove Clinton from his position as mayor of New York.
Dismissed from the mayoralty, Clinton's political life was apparently over. Yet the ambitious and tenacious Clinton would, against all odds, manage to save his career. And in the process, he would ensure that the long-doomed Erie Canal would be built, too.
OUT OF POWER, HIS political capital spent, Clinton nevertheless decided to make a new push for the canal. This time, by necessity, he devised a different approach. He would not try to sell the project to the state legislators. Instead, he would appeal directly to the people.
On December 3, 1815, Clinton, along with fellow commissioners Eddy and Platt, convened a meeting of distinguished New Yorkers. The purpose was to persuade these influential citizens of the necessity of a canal. Before the session ended, they too agreed that the time had come to reach out to the citizens of New York. It was decided that Clinton would draft a statement outlining the argument for a canal; and then this document would be circulated as a petition around the state.
Clinton's thirteen-page manifesto was inspired.
It was grounded in history: "The prosperity of ancient Egypt and China may in a great degree be attributed to their inland navigation."
It looked to the future: The canal would make New York City "the great depot and warehouse of the western world...the greatest commercial city in the world."
It was pragmatic: The canal would cost $6 million, but the state could secure a loan for ten to fifteen years, and profits would certainly offset interest payments. Moreover, private landowners were willing to donate more than 100,000 acres of land, tracts worth more than $1 million.
It was impassioned: "Our merchants should not be robbed of their legitimate profits...public revenues should not be seriously impaired by dishonest smuggling, and...the commerce of our cities should not be supplanted by mercantile establishments of foreign countries."
It was poetic:
The whole line of canal will exhibit boats loaded with flour, pork, beef, pot and pearl ashes, flaxseed, wheat, barley, corn, hemp, wool, flax, iron, lead, copper, salt, gypsum, coal, tar, fur, peltry, ginseng, bees-wax, cheese, butter, lard, staves, lumber and the other valuable productions of our country; and also with merchandise from all parts of the world. Great manufacturing establishments will spring up; agriculture will establish its granaries, and commerce its warehouses in all directions. Villages, towns, and cities will line the banks of the canal, and the shores of the Hudson from Erie to New York. The wilderness and the solitary place will become glad, and desert will rejoice and blossom as the rose.
And, above all, it was a mandate for action: "It is your incumbent duty to open, facilitate, and improve internal navigation...to create a new era in history, and to erect a work more stupendous, more magnificent, and more beneficial than has hereto been achieved by the human race."
Not surprising, the document enraged Clinton's opponents. The Martling Men, a group of New York City Republicans led by Martin Van Buren, were particularly vocal. They did not want Clinton to lead a historic undertaking, especially one that if it succeeded would no doubt restore his political career. Governor Tompkins argued that improved roads were preferable to the certain folly of " Clinton's canal."
But the response from citizens throughout the state was enthusiastic. The Canal Commission had organized meetings in the cities and towns along the path of the proposed canal and Clinton's manifesto was read out loud. More than 100,000 signatures were collected urging the legislature to fund construction of the Erie Canal.
The state assembly bowed to the unprecedented public pressure. In 1816, the assembly passed a bill authorizing a $2 million loan for both construction of the middle section of the Erie Canal, from the city of Rome to the Seneca River, and the Champlain Canal, a sixty-four- mile route from Watervliet on the Hudson to Lake Champlain.
BEFORE CLINTON AND HIS fellow commissioners could celebrate their victory, the state senate annulled the lower house's authorization. At Martin Van Buren's urging, the senators passed a motion stipulating that more extensive surveys needed to be completed and the exact route determined before the actual construction of the two canals could begin. The senators appropriated a trifling $20,000 to conduct these surveys.
Yet the commissioners refused to be defeated. Rather than complain about the meager sum allotted for such a monumental task, they decided to make the most of the funds they were given. They hired a surveyor to oversee the project. But this time they did not choose an expensive Englishman who, as one contemporary pointed out, "knows very little about the management and conducting of business in this country." Instead, they hired, for a lesser salary, an American.
A new, accurately detailed survey was quickly begun. After its completion in February 1817, the commission presented an exhaustive 174-page report to the state legislature. The bottom line, though, was succinct: The 353-mile project would cost $4.9 million, about $13,400 per mile.
The legislators in the assembly immediately wanted to know where this money, a breathtaking sum in 1817 dollars, would come from. Many of the assemblymen felt New York City should be taxed to pay for a substantial portion of the construction. As Elisha Williams, an assemblyman from Columbia County, argued: "Will not all the productions of this vast and fertile territory go to New York?...If this canal is to be a shower of gold, it will fall upon New York....Are we to give her the means of enriching herself beyond all former example, and of monopolizing the trade of the whole world, and she pays nothing in return?"
The delegation from New York City, however, fervently objected to any special taxes. They pointed out that there would be cheap merchandise coming in from the west that would discourage people from buying goods manufactured in the city. In fairness, the city legislators argued, the tax should be apportioned statewide.
After much debate, the city's objections were overcome. The bill authorizing the construction of the canal passed the assembly by a vote of 51 to 40.
Only now the Senate had to approve the measure. Clinton knew this was where the real battle would take place. He expected Martin Van Buren to lead the fight against passage; after all, Van Buren was still fuming over Clinton's recent nomination by his party for governor and the two men barely talked. So Clinton braced himself when Van Buren took the floor.
Van Buren's speech left Clinton surprised and astonished. "Our tables have groaned with the petitions of the people," the senator announced. "We are bound to consider that the people have given their assent." And it wasn't simply this outpouring of popular support that had persuaded Van Buren. The senator went on to explain that he had come to believe the canal would greatly benefit the country's future. He urged his fellow senators to vote to allocate the funds for construction.
With Van Buren's support, the canal bill passed the Senate by 18 to 9.
THERE WAS ONE MORE legislative hurdle. Since the bill had not won by a two-thirds majority in both houses, it still could be vetoed by the Council of Revision. This body was composed of men known to be unsympathetic to the canal: the governor, the state chancellor, and three state supreme court judges.
The council's debate, however, began with the appearance of an unexpected visitor. Daniel Tompkins, the new U.S. vice president, former New York governor, and longtime Clinton enemy, arrived, glibly explaining that he just happened to be in Albany. In the past, Clinton had dismissed Tompkins as being "destitute of language, science, and magnanimity -- a mere creature of accident and chance, without an iota of real greatness." As when Van Buren had taken the Senate floor, Clinton prepared himself for the expected tirade. This time he was not surprised.
The canal, Tompkins insisted, was too ambitious. It required a financial investment that was not simply huge but potentially dangerous. This money, the vice president railed, should be appropriated for military purposes. "England," he predicted, "will never forgive us for our victories....We shall have another war," he said with certainty, "within two years." It would be more prudent to prepare for this inevitable war than build a canal.
It was a fiery diatribe, relentless in its opposition, passionate in its rageful call to war. And it backfired. The state chancellor, James Kent, responded, "If we must have war, or a canal, I am in favor of a canal." The other council members agreed.
The bill authorizing the construction of the canal had finally passed.
AT SUNRISE ON THE Fourth of July, 1817, a huge crowd gathered outside the city of Rome for the ceremonial groundbreaking. Speeches were applauded; cannons fired their salutes; and then Judge John Richardson, the contractor for this first section of the canal, plunged a spade into the earth. After decades of false starts and apparent dead ends, the construction of the canal had begun.
It was not easy work. Armed with only axes, shovels, and handsaws, crews of men had to create a trench four feet deep and forty feet wide through hundreds of miles of thick forest. But the workers were industrious and inventive. As they moved through the forests, they became more skilled in felling trees, inventing new methods.
Ingenuity came to the rescue, too, as the walls of the canal were constructed. When it became apparent that the lime mortar applied was inadequate, that the rising water quickly ate through the cement and caused dangerous structural cracks, a solution was found. Canvass White, a young engineer, identified a type of limestone found in Madison County that with time became increasing hard underwater. White patented his discovery in 1820. Soon this "miracle" cement was not simply used on the canal walls but was widely employed throughout the country.
Only six months after the groundbreaking, by the end of 1817, 15 miles of the canal were fully navigable. Fifty contractors had signed on, and more than a thousand men were working on the 58-mile middle section. Work, in fact, was moving ahead faster than anticipated.
The state legislature was buoyed by this progress. On April 7, 1819, the state authorized the completion of the entire canal, and the work continued to progress steadily. By 1820, the sluices were opened and water rushed in to fill the 94-mile middle section, from Utica to Montezuma. Money, too, flowed smoothly into the project. There was a great demand for the bonds, and the commission was authorized to borrow an additional $2 million.
Yet even as the canal neared completion, its speedy construction proclaimed "an engineering miracle," DeWitt Clinton's enemies decided to strike. The prospect of the canal's success propelling Clinton into the White House infuriated them. Led by Martin Van Buren, a resolution was introduced in the New York State legislature in 1824 proposing that Clinton be removed from the Canal Commission, where he had been serving as president. The measure passed by a 24-3 vote in the assembly, and a similarly impressive 64-34 in the Senate. In a resounding vote, the legislators had stripped the "Father of the Erie Canal" of custody of his hard-won child.
When the news spread throughout the state, people were infuriated. In mass meetings in New York and Albany, the legislators were attacked and Clinton cheered. Editorials condemned Clinton's removal. Even an astonished Van Buren conceded that his rash action had mobilized "the sympathies of the people."
Clinton, opportunistic and resourceful, decided to make the most of his new popularity -- and the canal's success. He ran for governor in 1824. He won by 16,359 votes, at the time a state record.
ON OCTOBER 26, 1825, Governor DeWitt Clinton boarded the Seneca Chief for the inaugural journey down the Erie Canal. The festive trip took eight days, and at each port cheering crowds lined up to greet the Chief.
When the boat made its early morning way into New York Harbor on November 4, it was followed by a procession of forty-six ships. The jubilant flotilla continued on to the mouth of the Hudson at Sandy Hook. Led by Clinton, the official delegation poured a keg of Lake Erie water slowly into the Atlantic.
On November 23, the Seneca Chief returned upriver to Buffalo. Judge Samuel Wilkeson, an old and faithful supporter of the canal, poured a keg of Atlantic water into Lake Erie. With that symbolic gesture, the "wedding of the waters" was consummated. The Erie Canal, a century-long vision, the longest canal in the world, a state-funded project, an engineering triumph, was finally completed.
THE CANAL WAS AN immediate success. Just twelve years after it opened, the construction debt was paid off. While from the start, its impact on the national economy was also dramatic. Largely as a result of commerce on the canal and the country's newfound ability to tap the resources in the western territories, the gross national product nearly doubled. And New York City, as predicted, also prospered, growing into a world commercial and cultural capital.
No innovation, however, lasts forever; progress demands change. With the increased competition from highways, railroads, airplanes, and other newer waterways, as the twenty-first century dawned, commercial traffic on the Erie Canal had diminished. It was no longer the lifeblood of New York's economy.
Today, though, it is still thriving -- only as a recreational resource. In 2001, the Erie Canal waterways were designated the nation's twenty-third National Heritage Corridor. Sailboats and pleasure crafts now glide down its calm waters. Hikers follow its long and winding towpaths.
Nearly two hundred years after its completion, the Erie Canal remains proof that a daring government investment, guided and encouraged by tenacious and visionary leaders, can continue to reward the nation.
Copyright © 2009 by Felix G. Rohatyn