CHAPTER IX. The Dawn Of The Iron Age

Despite the superiority of the new iron age that quickly followed the widespreading ca.n.a.l movement, there was a generous spirit and a chivalry in the "good old days" of the stagecoach, the Conestoga, and the lazy ca.n.a.l boat, which did not to an equal degree pervade the iron age of the railroad. When machinery takes the place of human brawn and patience, there is an indefinable eclipse of human interest. Somehow, cogs and levers and differentials do not have the same appeal as fingers and eyes and muscles. The old days of coach and ca.n.a.l boat had a picturesqueness and a comradeship of their own. In the turmoil and confusion and odd mixing of every kind of humanity along the lines of travel in the days of the hurtling coach-and-six, a friendliness, a robust sympathy, a ready interest in the successful and the unfortunate, a knowledge of how the other half lives, and a familiarity with men as well as with mere places, was common to all who took the road. As Thackeray so vividly describes it:

"The land rang yet with the tooting horns and rattling teams of mail-coaches; a gay sight was the road in those days, before steam-engines arose and flung its hostelry and chivalry over. To travel in coaches, to know coachmen and guards, to be familiar with inns along the road, to laugh with the jolly hostess in the bar, to chuck the pretty chamber-maid under the chin, were the delight of men who were young not very long ago. The road was an inst.i.tution, the ring was an inst.i.tution. Men rallied around them; and, not without a kind of conservatism expatiated on the benefits with which they endowed the country, and the evils which would occur when they should be no more decay of British spirit, decay of manly pluck, ruin of the breed of horses, and so forth and so forth. To give and take a black eye was not unusual nor derogatory in a gentleman: to drive a stage-coach the enjoyment, the emulation, of generous youth. Is there any young fellow of the present time, who aspires to take the place of a stoker? One sees occasionally in the country a dismal old drag with a lonely driver. Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O rattling Quicksilver, O swift Defiance? You are pa.s.sed by racers stronger and swifter than you. Your lamps are out, and the music of your horns has died away."

Behind this change from the older and more picturesque days which is thus lamented there lay potent economic forces and a strong commercial rivalry between different parts of the country. The Atlantic States were all rivals of each other, reaching out by one bold stroke after another across forest, mountain, and river to the gigantic and fruitful West. Step after step the inevitable conquest went on. Foremost in time marched the st.u.r.dy pack-hors.e.m.e.n, blazing the way for the heavier forces quietly biding their time in the rear-the Conestogas, the steamboat, the ca.n.a.l boat, and, last and greatest of them all, the locomotive.

Through a long preliminary period the princ.i.p.al center of interest was the Potomac Valley, towards whose strategic head Virginia and Maryland, by river-improvement and road-building, were directing their commercial routes in amiable rivalry for the conquest of the Western trade. Suddenly out from the southern region of the Middle Atlantic States went the c.u.mberland National Road to the Ohio. New York instantly, in her zone, took up the challenge and thrust her great Erie Ca.n.a.l across to the Great Lakes. In rapid succession, Pennsylvania and Maryland and Virginia, eager not to be outdone in winning the struggle for Western trade, sent their ca.n.a.ls into the Alleghanies toward the Ohio.

It soon developed, however, that Baltimore, both powerful and ambitious, was seriously handicapped. In order to retain her commanding position as the metropolis of Western trade she was compelled to resort to a new and untried method of transportation which marks an era in American history.

It seems plain that the Southern rivals of New York City-Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Alexandria-had relied for a while on the deterring effect of a host of critics who warned all men that a ca.n.a.l of such proportions as the Erie was not practicable, that no State could bear the financial drain which its construction would involve, that theories which had proved practical on a small scale would fail in so large an undertaking, that the ca.n.a.l would be clogged by floods or frozen up for half of each year, and that commerce would ignore artificial courses and cling to natural channels. But the answer of the Empire State to her rivals was the homely but triumphant cry "Low Bridge!"-the warning to pa.s.sengers on the decks of ca.n.a.l boats as they approached the numerous bridges which spanned the route. When this cry pa.s.sed into a byword it afforded positive proof that the Erie Ca.n.a.l traffic was firmly established. The words rang in the counting-houses of Philadelphia and out and along the Lancaster and the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh turnpikes-"Low Bridge! Low Bridge!" Pennsylvania had granted, it has been pointed out, that her Southern neighbors might have their share of the Ohio Valley trade but maintained that the splendid commerce of the Great Lakes was her own peculiar heritage. Men of Baltimore who had dominated the energetic policy of stone-road building in their State heard this alarming challenge from the North. The echo ran "Low Bridge!" in the poor decaying locks of the Potomac Company where, according to the committee once appointed to examine that enterprise, flood-tides "gave the only navigation that was enjoyed." Were their efforts to keep the Chesapeake metropolis in the lead to be set at naught?

There could be but one answer to the challenge, and that was to rival ca.n.a.l with ca.n.a.l. These more southerly States, confronted by the towering ranges of the Alleghanies to the westward, showed a courage which was superb, although, as time proved in the case of Maryland, they might well have taken more counsel of their fears. Pennsylvania acted swiftly. Though its western waterway-the roaring Juniata, which entered the Susquehanna near Harrisburg-had a drop from head to mouth greater than that of the entire New York ca.n.a.l, and, though the mountains of the Altoona region loomed straight up nearly three thousand feet, Pennsylvania overcame the lowlands by main strength and the mountain peaks by strategy and was sending ca.n.a.l boats from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh within nine years of the completion of the Erie Ca.n.a.l.

The eastern division of the Pennsylvania Ca.n.a.l, known as the Union Ca.n.a.l, from Reading on the Schuylkill to Middletown on the Susquehanna, was completed in 1827. The Juniata section was then driven on up to Hollidaysburg. Beyond the mountain barrier, the Conemaugh, the Kiskiminitas, and the Allegheny were followed to Pittsburgh. But the greatest feat in the whole enterprise was the conquest of the mountain section, from Hollidaysburg to Johnstown. This was accomplished by the building of five inclined planes on each slope, each plane averaging about 2300 feet in length and 200 feet in height. Up or down these slopes and along the intermediate level sections cars and giant cradles (built to be lowered into locks where they could take an entire ca.n.a.l boat as a load) were to be hauled or lowered by horsepower, and later, by steam. After the plans had been drawn up by Sylvester Welch and Moncure Robinson, the Pennsylvania Legislature authorized the work in 1831, and traffic over this aerial route was begun in March, 1834. In autumn of that year, the stanch boat Hit or Miss, from the Lackawanna country, owned by Jesse Crisman and captained by Major Williams, made the journey across the whole length of the ca.n.a.l. It rested for a night on the Alleghany summit "like Noah's Ark on Ararat," wrote Sherman Day, "descended the next morning into the Valley of the Mississippi, and sailed for St. Louis."

Well did Robert Stephenson, the famous English engineer, say that, in boldness of design and difficulty of execution, this Pennsylvania scheme of mastering the Alleghanies could be compared with no modern triumph short of the feats performed at the Simplon Pa.s.s and Mont Cenis. Before long this line of communication became a very popular thoroughfare; even Charles d.i.c.kens "heartily enjoyed" it-in retrospect-and left interesting impressions of his journey over it:

"Even the running up, bare-necked, at five o'clock in the morning from the tainted cabin to the dirty deck; scooping up the icy water, plunging one's head into it, and drawing it out, all fresh and glowing with the cold; was a good thing. The fast, brisk walk upon the towing-path, between that time and breakfast, when every vein and artery seemed to tingle with health; the exquisite beauty of the opening day, when light came gleaming off from everything; the lazy motion of the boat, when one lay idly on the deck, looking through, rather than at, the deep blue sky; the gliding on, at night, so noiselessly, past frowning hills, sullen with dark trees, and sometimes angry in one red burning spot high up, where unseen men lay crouching round a fire; the shining out of the bright stars, undisturbed by noise of wheels or steam, or any other sound than the liquid rippling of the water as the boat went on; all these were pure delights." *

* "American Notes" (Gadshill Edition), pp. 180-181.

d.i.c.kens also thus graphically depicts the unique experience of being carried over the mountain peaks on the aerial railway:

"There are ten inclined planes; five ascending and five descending; the carriages are dragged up the former, and let slowly down the latter, by means of stationary engines; the comparatively level s.p.a.ces between being traversed, sometimes by horse, and sometimes by engine power, as the case demands. Occasionally the rails are laid upon the extreme verge of a giddy precipice; and looking from the carriage window, the traveler gazes sheer down, without a stone or sc.r.a.p of fence between, into the mountain depths below. The journey is very carefully made, however; only two carriages traveling together; and while proper precautions are taken, is not to be dreaded for its dangers.

"It was very pretty traveling thus, at a rapid pace along the heights of the mountain in a keen wind, to look down into a valley full of light and softness; catching glimpses, through the tree-tops, of scattered cabins; children running to the doors; dogs bursting out to bark, whom we could see without hearing; terrified pigs scampering homewards; families sitting out in their rude gardens; cows gazing upward with a stupid indifference; men in their shirt-sleeves looking on at their unfinished houses, planning out tomorrow's work; and we riding onward, high abode them, like a whirl-wind. It was amusing, too, when we had dined, and rattled down a steep pa.s.s, having no other motive power than the weight of the carriages themselves, to see the engine released, long after us, come buzzing down alone, like a great insect, its back of green and gold so shining in the sun, that if it had spread a pair of wings and soared away, no one would have had occasion, as I fancied, for the least surprise. But it stopped short of us in a very business-like manner when we reached the ca.n.a.l; and, before we left the wharf, went panting up this hill again, with the pa.s.sengers who had waited our arrival for the means of traversing the road by which we had come." *

* Op. cit.

This Pennsylvania route was likewise famous because it included the first tunnel in America; but with the advance of years, tunnel, planes, and ca.n.a.l were supplanted by what was to become in time the Pennsylvania Railroad, the pride of the State and one of the great highways of the nation.

In the year before Pennsylvania investigated her western water route, a joint bill was introduced into the legislatures of the Potomac Valley States, proposing a Potomac Ca.n.a.l Company which should construct a Chesapeake and Ohio ca.n.a.l at the expense of Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. The plan was of vital moment to Alexandria and Georgetown on the Potomac, but unless a lateral ca.n.a.l could be built to Baltimore, that city-which paid a third of Maryland's taxes-would be called on to supply a great sum to benefit only her chief rivals. The bitter struggle which now developed is one of the most significant in commercial history because of its sequel.

The conditions underlying this rivalry must not be lost sight of. Baltimore had done more than any other Eastern city to ally herself with the West and to obtain its trade. She had instinctively responded to every move made by her rivals in the great game. If Pennsylvania promoted a Lancaster Turnpike, Baltimore threw out her superb Baltimore-Reisterstown boulevard, though her northern road to Philadelphia remained the slough that Brissot and Baily had found it. If New York projected an Erie Ca.n.a.l, Baltimore successfully championed the building of a c.u.mberland Road by a governmental G.o.dmother. So thoroughly and quickly, indeed, did she link her system of stone roads to that great artery, that even today many well-informed writers seem to be under the impression that the c.u.mberland Road ran from the Ohio to Washington and Baltimore. Now, with ca.n.a.ls building to the north of her and ca.n.a.ls to the south of her, what of her prestige and future?

For the moment Baltimore compromised by agreeing to a Chesapeake and Ohio ca.n.a.l which, by a lateral branch, should still lead to her market square. Her scheme embraced a vision of conquest regal in its sweep, beyond that of any rival, and comprehending two ideas worthy of the most fa.r.s.eeing strategist and the most astute politician. It called not only for the building of a transmontane ca.n.a.l to the Ohio but also for a connecting ca.n.a.l from the Ohio to the Great Lakes. Not only would the trade of the Northwest be secured by this means-for this southerly route would not be affected by winter frosts as would those of Pennsylvania and New York-but the good G.o.dmother at Washington would be almost certain to champion it and help to build it since the proposed route was so thoroughly interstate in character. With the backing of Maryland, Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and probably several States bordering the Inland Lakes, government aid in the undertaking seemed feasible and proper.

Theoretically the daring scheme captured the admiration of all who were to be benefited by it. At a great banquet at Washington, late in 1823, the project was launched. Adams, Clay, and Calhoun took the opportunity to ally themselves with it by robustly declaring themselves in favor of widespread internal improvements. Even the G.o.dmother smiled upon it for, following Monroe's recommendation, Congress without hesitation voted thirty thousand dollars for the preliminary survey from Washington to Pittsburgh. Quickly the Chesapeake and Ohio Ca.n.a.l Company and the connecting Maryland Ca.n.a.l Company were formed, and steps were taken to have Ohio promote an Ohio and Lake Erie Company.

As high as were the hopes awakened by this movement, just so deep was the dejection and chagrin into which its advocates were thrown upon receiving the report of the engineers who made the preliminary survey. The estimated cost ran towards a quarter of a billion, four times the capital stock of the company; and there were not lacking those who pointed out that the Erie Ca.n.a.l had cost more than double the original appropriation made for it.

The situation was aggravated for Baltimore by the fact that Maryland and Virginia were willing to take half a loaf if they could not get a whole one: in other words, they were willing to build the ca.n.a.l up the Potomac to c.u.mberland and stop there. Baltimore, even if linked to this partial scheme, would lose her water connection with the West, the one prized a.s.set which the project had held out, and her Potomac Valley rivals would, on this contracted plan, be in a particularly advantageous position to surpa.s.s her. But the last blow was yet to come. Engineers reported that a lateral ca.n.a.l connecting the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay was not feasible. It was consequently of little moment whether the Chesapeake and Ohio Ca.n.a.l could be built across the Alleghanies or not, for, even if it could have been carried through the Great Plains or to the Pacific, Baltimore was, for topographical reasons, out of the running.

The men of Baltimore now gave one of the most striking ill.u.s.trations of spirit and pluck ever exhibited by the people of any city. They refused to accept defeat. If engineering science held a means of overcoming the natural disadvantages of their position, they were determined to adopt that means, come what would of hardship, difficulty, and expenditure. If roads and ca.n.a.ls would not serve the city on the Chesapeake, what of the railroad on which so many experiments were being made in England?

The idea of controlling the trade of the West by railroads was not new. As early as February, 1825, certain astute Pennsylvanians had advocated building a railroad to Pittsburgh instead of a ca.n.a.l, and in a memorial to the Legislature they had set forth the theory that a railroad could be built in one-third of the time and could be operated with one-third of the number of employees required by a ca.n.a.l, that it would never be frozen, and that its cost of construction would be less. But these arguments did not influence the majority, who felt that to follow the line of least resistance and to do as others had done would involve the least hazard. But Baltimore, with her back against the wall, did not have the alternative of a ca.n.a.l. It was a leap into the unknown for her or commercial stagnation.

It is regrettable that, as Baltimore began to break this fresh track, she should have had political as well as physical and mechanical obstacles to overcome. The conquest of the natural difficulties alone required superhuman effort and endurance. But Baltimore had also to fight a miserable internecine warfare in her own State, for Maryland immediately subscribed half a million to the ca.n.a.l as well as to the newly formed Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. In rival pageants, both companies broke ground on July 4, 1828, and the race to the Ohio was on. The ca.n.a.l company clung doggedly to the idle belief that their enterprise was still of continental proportions, since it would connect at c.u.mberland with the c.u.mberland Road. This exaggerated estimate of the importance of the undertaking shines out in the pompous words of President Mercer, at the time when construction was begun:

"There are moments in the progress of time, which are counters of whole ages. There are events, the monuments of which, surviving every other memorial of human existence, eternize the nation to whose history they belong, after all other vestiges of its glory have disappeared from the globe. At such a moment have we now arrived."

This oracular language lacks the simple but winning straightforwardness of the words which Director Morris uttered on the same day near Baltimore and which prove how distinctly Western the new railway project was held to be:

"We are about opening a channel through which the commerce of the mighty country beyond the Allegheny must seek the ocean-we are about affording facilities of intercourse between the East and West, which will bind the one more closely to the other, beyond the power of an increased population or sectional differences to disunite."

The difficulties which faced the Baltimore enthusiasts in their task of keeping their city "on the map" would have daunted men of less heroic mold. Every conceivable trial and test which nature and machinery could seemingly devise was a part of their day's work for twelve years struggles with grades, locomotives, rails, cars. As Rumsey, Fitch, and Fulton in their experiments with boats had floundered despondently with endless chains, oars, paddles, duck's feet, so now Thomas and Brown in their efforts to make the railroad effective wandered in a maze of difficulties testing out such absurd and impossible ideas as cars propelled by sails and cars operated by horse treadmills. By May, 1830, however, cars on rails, running by "brigades" and drawn by horses, were in operation in America. It was only in this year that in England locomotives were used with any marked success on the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad; yet in August of this year Peter Cooper's engine, Tom Thumb, built in Baltimore in 1829, traversed the twelve miles between that city and Ellicott's Mills in seventy-two minutes. Steel springs came in 1832, together with car wheels of cylindrical and conical section which made it easier to turn curves.

The railroad was just beginning to master its mechanical problems when a new obstacle confronted it in the Potomac Valley. It could not cross Maryland to the c.u.mberland mountain gateway unless it could follow the Potomac. But its rival, the ca.n.a.l, had inherited from the old Potomac Company the only earthly a.s.set it possessed of any value-the right of way up the Maryland sh.o.r.e. Five years of quarreling now ensued, and the contest, though it may not have seriously delayed either enterprise, aroused much bitterness and involved the usual train of lawsuits and injunctions.

In 1833 the ca.n.a.l company yielded the railroad a right of way through the Point of Rocks-the Potomac chasm through the Blue Ridge wall, just below Harper's Ferry on condition that the railroad should not build beyond Harper's Ferry until the ca.n.a.l was completed to c.u.mberland. But probably nothing but the financial helplessness of the ca.n.a.l company could have brought a solution satisfactory to all concerned. A settlement of the long quarrel by compromise was the price paid for state aid, and, in 1835 Maryland subsidized to a large degree both ca.n.a.l and railroad by her famous eight million dollar bill. The railroad received three millions from the State, and the city of Baltimore was permitted to subscribe an equal amount of stock. With this support and a free right of way, the railroad pushed on up the Potomac. Though delayed by the financial disasters of 1837, in 1842 it was at Hanc.o.c.k; in 1851, at Piedmont; in 1852, at Fairmont; and the next year it reached the Ohio River at Wheeling.

Spurred by the enterprise shown by these Southerners, Pennsylvania and New York now took immediate steps to parallel their own ca.n.a.ls by railways. The line of the Union Ca.n.a.l in Pennsylvania was paralleled by a railroad in 1834, the same year in which the Allegheny Portage Railway was constructed. New York lines reached Buffalo in 1842. The Pennsylvania Railroad, which was incorporated in 1846, was completed to Pittsburgh in 1854.

It is thus obvious that, with the completion of these lines and the building of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway through the "Sapphire Country" of the Southern Alleghanies, the new railway era pursued its paths of conquest through the very same mountain pa.s.sageways that had been previously used by packhorseman and Conestoga and, in three instances out of four, by the ca.n.a.l boat. If one motors today in the Juniata Valley in Pennsylvania, he can survey near Newport a scene full of meaning to one who has a taste for history. Traveling along the heights on the highway that was once the red man's trail, he can enjoy a wide prospect from this vantage point. Deep in the valley glitters the little Juniata, route of the ancient canoe and the blundering barge. Beside it lies a long lagoon, an abandoned portion of the Pennsylvania Ca.n.a.l. Beside this again, as though some monster had pa.s.sed leaving a track clear of trees, stretches the right of way of the first "Pennsylvania," and a little nearer swings the magnificent double-tracked bed of the railroad of today. Between these lines of travel may be read the history of the past two centuries of American commerce, for the vital factors in the development of the nation have been the evolution of transportation and its manifold and far-reaching influence upon the expansion of population and commerce and upon the rise of new industries.

Thus all the rivals in the great contest for the trade of the West speedily reached their goal, New York with the Erie and the New York Central, and Pennsylvania and Maryland with the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore and Ohio. But what of this West for whose commerce the great struggle was being waged? When the railheads of these eager Atlantic promoters were laid down at Buffalo on Lake Erie and at Pittsburgh on the Ohio they looked out on a new world. The centaurs of the Western rivers were no less things of the far past than the tinkling bells borne by the ancient ponies of the pack-horse trade. The sons of this new West had their eyes riveted on the commerce of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley. With road, ca.n.a.l, steamboat, and railway, they were renewing the struggle of their fathers but for prizes greater than their fathers ever knew.

New York again proved the favored State. Her Mohawk pathway gave her easiest access to the West and here, at her back door on the Niagara frontier, lay her path by way of the Great Lakes to the North and the Northwest.

CHAPTER X. THE PATHWAY OF THE LAKES

As one stands in imagination at the early railheads of the West-on the Ohio River at the end of the c.u.mberland Road, or at Buffalo, the terminus of the Erie Ca.n.a.l-the vision which Washington caught breaks upon him and the dream of a nation made strong by trans-Alleghany routes of commerce. Link by link the great interior is being connected with the sea. Behind him all lines of transportation lead eastward to the cities of the coast. Before him lies the giant valley where the Father of Waters throws out his two splendid arms, the Ohio and the Missouri, one reaching to the Alleghanies and the other to the Rockies. Northward, at the end of the Erie Ca.n.a.l, lies the empire of the Great Lakes, inland seas that wash the sh.o.r.es of a Northland having a coastline longer than that of the Atlantic from Maine to Mexico.

Ships and conditions of navigation were much the same on the lakes as on the ocean. It was therefore possible to imagine the rise of a coasting trade between Illinois and Ohio as profitable as that between Ma.s.sachusetts and New York. Yet the older colonies on the Atlantic had an outlet for trade, whereas the Great Lakes had none for craft of any size, since their northern sh.o.r.es lay beyond the international boundary. If there had been danger from Spain in the Southwest, what of the danger of Canada's control of the St. Lawrence River and of the trade of the Northwest through the Welland Ca.n.a.l which was to join Lake Ontario to Lake Erie? But in those days the possibility of Canadian rivalry was not treated with great seriousness, and many men failed to see that the West was soon to contain a very large population. The editor of a newspaper at Munroe, New York, commenting in 1827 on a proposed ca.n.a.l to connect Lake Erie with the Mississippi by way of the Ohio, believed that the rate of Western development was such that this waterway could be expected only "some hundred of years hence." Even so gifted a man as Henry Clay spoke of the proposed ca.n.a.l between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior in 1825 as one relating to a region beyond the pale of civilization "if not in the moon." Yet in twenty-five years Michigan, which had numbered one thousand inhabitants in 1812, had gained two hundredfold, and Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois had their hundreds of thousands who were clamoring for ways and means of sending their surplus products to market.

Early in the century representatives of the Fulton-Livingston monopoly were at the sh.o.r.es of Lake Ontario to prove that their steamboats could master the waves of the inland sea and serve commerce there as well as in tidewater rivers. True, the luckless Ontario, built in 1817 at Sackett's Harbor, proved unseaworthy when the waves lifted the shaft of her paddle wheels off their bearings and caused them to demolish the wooden covering built for their protection; but the Walk-in-the-Water, completed at Black Rock (Buffalo) in August, 1818, plied successfully as far as Mackinac Island until her destruction three years later. Her engines were then inherited by the Superior of stronger build, and with the launching of such boats as the Niagara, the Henry Clay, and the Pioneer, the fleet builders of Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit proved themselves not unworthy fellow-countrymen of the old seafarers of Salem and Philadelphia.

But how were cargoes to reach these vessels from the vast regions beyond the Great Lakes? Those thousands of settlers who poured into the Northwest had cargoes ready to fill every manner of craft in so short a s.p.a.ce of time that it seems as if they must have resorted to arts of necromancy. It was not magic, however, but perseverance that had triumphed. The story of the creating of the main lakeward-reaching ca.n.a.ls is long and involved. A period of agitation and campaigning preceded every such undertaking; and when construction was once begun, financial woes usually brought disappointing delays. When a ca.n.a.l was completed after many vicissitudes and doubts, traffic overwhelmed every method provided to handle it: locks proved altogether too small; boats were inadequate; wharfs became congested; blockades which occurred at locks entailed long delay. In the end only lines and double lines of steel rails could solve the problem of rapid and adequate transportation, but the story of the railroad builders is told elsewhere. *

* See "The Railroad Builders," by John Moody (in "The Chronicles of America").

Ohio and Illinois caught the ca.n.a.l fever even before the Erie Ca.n.a.l was completed, and the Ohio Ca.n.a.l and the Illinois-Michigan Ca.n.a.l saw preliminary surveying done in 1822 and 1824 respectively. Ohio particularly had cause to seek a northern outlet to Eastern markets by way of Lake Erie. The valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami rivers were producing wheat in large quant.i.ties as early as 1802, when Ohio was admitted to the Union. Flour which brought $3.50 a barrel in Cincinnati was worth $8 in New York. There were difficulties in the way of transportation. Sometimes ice prevented produce and merchandise from descending the Ohio to Cincinnati. At other times merchants of that city had as many as a hundred thousand barrels awaiting a rise in the river which would make it possible for boats to go over the falls at Louisville. As these conditions involved a delay which often seemed intolerable, the project to build ca.n.a.ls to Lake Erie met with generous acclaim. A northward route, though it might be blocked by ice for a few months each winter, had an additional value in the eyes of numerous merchants whose wheat, sent in bulk to New Orleans, had soured either in the long delay at Louisville or in the semi-tropical heat of the Southern port.

The Ohio Legislature in 1822 authorized the survey of all possible routes for ca.n.a.ls which would give Ohio an outlet for its produce on Lake Erie. The three wheat zones which have been mentioned were favored in the proposed construction of two ca.n.a.ls which, together, should satisfy the need of increased transportation: the Ohio Ca.n.a.l to connect Portsmouth on the Ohio River with Cleveland on Lake Erie and to traverse the richest parts of the Scioto and Muskingum valleys, and to the west the Miami Ca.n.a.l to pierce the fruitful Miami and Maumee valleys and join Cincinnati with Toledo. De Witt Clinton, the presiding genius of the Erie Ca.n.a.l, was invited to Ohio to play G.o.dfather to these northward arteries which should ultimately swell the profits of the commission merchants of New York City, and amid the cheers of thousands he lifted the first spadefuls of earth in each undertaking.

The Ohio Ca.n.a.l, which was opened in 1833, had a marked effect upon the commerce of Lake Erie. Before that date the largest amount of wheat obtained from Cleveland by a Buffalo firm had been a thousand bushels; but in the first year of its operation the Ohio Ca.n.a.l brought to the village of Cleveland over a quarter of a million bushels of wheat, fifty thousand barrels of flour, and over a million pounds of b.u.t.ter and lard. In return, the markets of the world sent into Ohio by ca.n.a.l in this same year thirty thousand barrels of salt and above five million pounds of general merchandise.

Ever since the time when the Erie Ca.n.a.l was begun, Canadian statesmen had been alive to the strong bid New York was making for the trade of the Great Lakes. Their answer to the Erie Ca.n.a.l was the Welland Ca.n.a.l, built between 1824 and 1832 and connecting Lake Erie with Lake Ontario by a series of twenty-seven locks with a drop of three hundred feet in twenty-six miles. This undertaking prepared the way for the subsequent opening of the St. Lawrence ca.n.a.l system (183 miles) and of the Rideau system by way of the Ottawa River (246 miles). There was thus provided an ocean outlet to the north, although it was not until 1856 that an American vessel reached London by way of the St. Lawrence.

With the Hudson and the St. Lawrence in the East thus competing for the trade of the Great Lakes, it is not surprising that the call of the Mississippi for improved highways was presently heard. From the period of the War of 1812 onward the position of the Mississippi River in relation to Lake Michigan was often referred to as holding possibilities of great importance in the development of Western commerce. Already the old portage-path links between the Fox and Wisconsin and the Chicago and Illinois rivers had been worn deep by the fur traders of many generations, and with the dawning of the new era enthusiasts of Illinois were pointing out the strategic position of the latter route for a great trade between Lake Michigan and the Gulf of Mexico. Thus the wave of enthusiasm for ca.n.a.l construction that had swept New York and Ohio now reached Indiana and Illinois. Indian ownership of land in the latter State for a moment seemed to block the promotion of the proposed Illinois and Michigan Ca.n.a.l, but a handsome grant of a quarter of a million acres by the Federal Government in 1827 came as a signal recognition of the growing importance of the Northwest; and an appropriation for the lighting and improving of the harbor of the little village of Chicago was hailed by ardent promoters as sure proof that the wedding of Lake Michigan and the Mississippi was but a matter of months.

All the difficulties encountered by the advocates of earlier works of this character, in the valleys of the Potomac, the Susquehanna, and the Mohawk, were the portion of these dogged promoters of Illinois. Here, as elsewhere, there were rival routes and methods of construction, opposition of jealous sections not immediately benefited, estimates which had to be reconsidered and augmented, and so on. The land grants pledged to pay the bonds were at first of small value, and their advance in price depended on the success of the ca.n.a.l itself, which could not be built unless the State underwrote the whole enterprise-if the lands were not worth the bonds. Thus the argument ran in a circle, and no one could foresee the splendid traffic and receipts from tolls that would result from the completed ca.n.a.l.