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  More Praise for Wedding of the Waters

  “Wedding of the Waters is a valuable history lesson for people—i.e., most of us—who have forgotten about the canal or never knew about it in the first place. Bernstein…gives the story of the canal’s conception and construction all the drama it deserves…. It is almost impossible to imagine what the country would be like had it not been built. Peter Bernstein does it full justice.”

  —Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book Review

  “Mr. Bernstein has opened a rich historical vein.”

  —Roger Lowenstein, Wall Street Journal

  “Mr. Bernstein is at his best in showing how a colorful group of American politicians turned this dream into reality…. The book provides a splendid window into early American life, which was as raucously divided then as it is now by class and taste.”

  —The Economist

  “Wedding of the Waters is an important window into a vital and too often neglected period in the American past.”

  —Walter Russel Mead, Foreign Affairs

  “A book that takes a sweeping, informed and often amusing look at the characters and visionaries who changed the history of America by digging a ditch across New York State….[Bernstein] does a masterful job of placing the amazing achievement of the canal-builders in historic context, and in describing the Erie Canal’s often-overlooked impact on not just local history but on the course of the nation and the development of a world economy that was changed by the Erie’s sudden opening of the American heartland…. In this book, he reminds a world that had all but forgotten the Erie Canal that it was, in its day, the engineering wonder of the world, and that it fully deserved its fame.”

  —Mike Vogel, Buffalo News

  “A riveting account of one of the most amazing technological achievements of all time….”

  —Thomas J. Brady, Philadelphia Inquirer

  “This is the epic narrative told in Wedding of the Waters, Peter L. Bernstein’s engaging new history of the canal: the tale of how an engineering project changed America from colonial backwater to world power…. An exciting account of one of America’s grandest civic projects. Bernstein gives us a colorful picture of a great undertaking by a country on the verge of greatness.”

  —Arthur Vaughan, New York Sun

  “Bernstein does a first-rate job of examining the social, political and economic impact of the canal both as a construction project and as a viable path linking the Atlantic seaboard with the American interior.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An excellent overview of the struggles that went into making the Erie Canal a reality.”

  —Josh Ozersky, Chicago Tribune

  “Bernstein’s economic analysis lucidly conveys the enormous impact of the Erie Canal and explains its crucial role in bringing about the industrial emergence of the young nation. Those interested in the confluence of history and economics will find Bernstein an especially valuable resource.”

  —Chuck Leddy, San Francisco Chronicle

  “One corner of the great American panorama enlarged to highlight starry-eyed visionaries, political machinations, indefatigable ingenuity, and cockeyed optimism.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Engrossing…. Recounting the construction of the Erie Canal, the 363-mile ditch that connected the Western US territories to New York and, by extension, Europe and the world, the tale merits a place among the popular classics of American economic history.”

  —Stephen Schurr, Financial Times

  “Bernstein’s deft writing and deep understanding of global economic history makes Wedding of the Waters not just a convincing brief for the project’s importance but a fun read as well.”

  —Nanette Byrnes, BusinessWeek

  “The story behind the canal’s construction is a narrative of political intrigue, bold vision and backbreaking work. And it all comes to life in Peter L. Bernstein’s epic history of the canal…. Bernstein does a fabulous job of reminding us just how important Clinton’s ditch was to the development of the city, the state and indeed the nation.”

  —Terry Golway, New York Post

  “This is a wonderful story, an anodyne for our time….”

  —Joe Mysak, Bloomberg.com

  “For every stripe of reader—history buff, news junkie, novel-devourer—Wedding of the Waters…will be a satisfying experience…. Gracefully written, rich in anecdote and fact, it’s a book to be savored, talked about, and kept.”

  —Ann La Farge, The Independent

  “The story, told by Peter L. Bernstein in his new book, Wedding of the Waters, isn’t unknown, of course, but Bernstein freshens it up by setting it within the larger saga of a young nation striving to find its way.”

  —Wayne Curtis, Preservation

  “In this latest work, Bernstein explains complicated subjects in digestible and delightful terms. What results is a brief history of the Erie Canal that’s neither too exhaustive nor too shallow.”

  —Matthew Lubanko, Hartford Courant

  “[Bernstein] explains the economic and financial aspects in a way that even I—usually baffled by these mysteries—could understand.”

  —Mark Dunkelman, Providence Journal

  PREVIOUS BOOKS BY PETER L. BERNSTEIN

  The Price of Prosperity

  A Primer on Government Spending (with Robert Heilbroner)

  A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold

  Economist on Wall Street

  The Debt and the Deficit (with Robert Heilbroner)

  Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street

  Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

  The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession

  WEDDING of the WATERS

  The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation

  Peter L. Bernstein

  W. W. NORTON & COMPANY • NEW YORK • LONDON

  In loving memory of my parents

  Copyright © 2005 by Peter L. Bernstein

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bernstein, Peter L.

  Wedding of the waters: the Erie Canal and the making of a great nation /

  Peter L. Bernstein.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: “The account of how the Erie Canal forever changed the course of American history”—Provided by publisher.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN: 978-0-393-34020-4

  1. Erie Canal (N.Y.) 2. United States—Economic conditions. I. Title.

  HE396.E6B47 2005

  386'.48'09747—dc22

  2004022792

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

  www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

  Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

  It certainly strikes the beholder with astonishment, to perceive what vast difficulties can be overcome by the pigmy arms of little mortal man, aided by science and directed by superior skill.

  —Henry Tudor, an English visitor to the Erie Canal in 1831

  | CONTENTS |

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: “Does It Not Seem Like Magic?”

  PART I: THE VISIONARIES

  1 Smooth Sailing

  2 Hudson’s Wrong Turn

  3 Washington’s Pivot

  4 Canal Maniacs

  5 “A Canal to the Moon”

  PART II: THE ACTION BEGINS

  6 The Sublime Spectacle


  7 The Extravagant Proposal

  8 The Expedition

  9 War and Peace

  10 The Shower of Gold

  PART III: THE CREATION

  11 Digging the Ditch

  12 Boom, Bust, Bonds

  13 Rude Invective

  14 Unwearied Zeal

  PART IV: THE STUPENDOUS PATH

  15 A Noble Work

  16 The Pageant of Power

  17 The Wedding of the Waters

  PART V: AFTER THE WEDDING

  18 No Charge for Births

  19 The Prodigious Artery

  20 The Granary of the World

  EPILOGUE

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Illustration Credits

  | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |

  Help and encouragement from others have played a more important role in this book than in my past endeavors. I was covering unfamiliar territory and encountered a research task that far exceeded my original expectations. My gratitude runs deep for all the generous assistance and advice I have received.

  The most important person in this process was my wife, Barbara, who is also my business partner. I shall never find adequate words to express my boundless appreciation for her enthusiasm for the idea, for her tireless participation in searching for facts and concepts, for her hard-nosed editing and constructive criticism (she can tolerate four-letter words but those with three letters are very much at risk), and for her skilled management of all the other aspects of our busy lives while I was consumed with canals and Clintons.

  Early on in my career of writing books, I learned how much difference a good editor can make. Drake McFeely, of W. W. Norton, has been a forceful and cooperative partner in this enterprise from the very beginning. Drake is positive, patient, and knowledgeable, but he is also firm and decisive. His illuminating influence shines throughout the book.

  This book has been the fourth opportunity to have my wonderful friend Peter Dougherty as a prime support and creative critic. Peter has been my enthusiastic guide to what this great story was all about. His insights and understanding were essential in my discovery of the big ideas as well as in shaping and articulating them.

  Brendan Curry of Norton has been an unusually helpful associate. Without his unremitting care and attention, the final stages of preparing the manuscript would have been laborious and attenuated instead of a pleasant and rewarding task.

  I am deeply indebted to Trent Duffy, who painstakingly and skillfully reshaped a manuscript with many wrinkles, bulges, and gaps into a far smoother document than it was at the outset.

  A special note of thanks is due Ken Galbraith. Ken inadvertently planted the idea for this book one day at his home in Vermont, when he explained to Barbara and me that many of Vermont’s verdant forests replaced farmland deserted after 1825 by large numbers of their owners who rode the Erie Canal to the more fertile lands to the west.

  I was fortunate in having the invaluable assistance of Professor Richard Sylla of the Stern School of Business at New York University in finding and interpreting many facts in the book. Dick also provided authoritative criticism and a meticulous reading of the manuscript.

  Daniel Mazeau of SUNY Albany was a diligent, creative, and companionable research assistant. I could not have asked for better. His successor, Ralph Rataul, although only briefly on the job, carried on in the same spirit.

  Morton Meyers of Buffalo was a great help in the research effort. I am happy to acknowledge his tireless efforts.

  Professors Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth and Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey of the London School of Economics made an important contribution to the conclusions and findings of Chapter 20.

  The manuscript has benefited from the help provided by Philip Lord of the New York State Museum in Albany, who was generous in sharing his expert historical knowledge of New York and the Erie Canal.

  Our business associate, Barbara Fotinatos, provided invaluable assistance and support to Barbara and me at all times in this long process.

  Sam Rosborough was a valued and productive companion on our trip to the Erie Canal and the surrounding country in the spring of 2003.

  I have one unorthodox acknowledgment: to the Internet. Having made only minimal use of the Internet in my previous books, I had no idea back then of the amazing quantity of information and analysis residing there. I am especially grateful to Bill Carr, who put online all of the material from Dr. David Hosack’s invaluable memoir of De Witt Clinton and its extraordinary appendix of recollections by just about everyone who was in any way connected with the creation of the Erie Canal. That was just the beginning. A quick glance at the endnotes will reveal the critical importance of the Internet as a research source.

  Many others were helpful in a wide variety of ways. In particular, I want to thank Keith Ambachtsheer, Peter Brodsky, Tom Green, Ned Goldwasser, Alan Greenspan, Judith Heller, Representative Carolyn Maloney and her staff, Brad Seymour, Michelle Smith, Lawrence Summers, Richard Sutch, Richard Tedlow, Erin Walsh, and Julian Zelizer.

  WEDDING of the WATERS

  | INTRODUCTION |

  “DOES IT NOT SEEM LIKE MAGIC?”

  We live today in a time of widespread concern and fascination with technological innovation, the system of networking, and the influence of both on globalization in the twenty-first century. We also live in a time when the United States faces bewildering questions about its role in the world and, indeed, the vision of its long-term future. This acceleration in change has affected our political system, our society, the economy, and the world of finance in ways we are only beginning to comprehend.

  This book draws upon the story of the Erie Canal to illuminate the turbulent and exciting present with a great but unfamiliar history of how a revolutionary technological network molded the triumph of the United States as a continental power and as a giant in the world economy. The Erie Canal was the child of many dreamers and a host of surveyors, engineers, and politicians, most of whom had never seen a canal before and few of whom had any experience in designing, building, or operating a canal. But the heroes of this story had the foresight to change the face of the earth, not only literally but in a much more fundamental sense. They understood that the process they launched would alter every aspect of how people lived their lives.

  When the canal was completed in October 1825 and Governor De Witt Clinton could celebrate the Wedding of the Waters by pouring a keg of water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic Ocean, he opened an uninterrupted navigable waterway through the imposing barrier of the mountain range extending from Maine all the way down to Georgia. The end result would lead to an historic explosion of commerce, ideas, and technological change. By bringing the interior to the seas and the seas into the interior, the Erie Canal would shape a great nation, knit the sinews of the Industrial Revolution, propel globalization—extending America’s networks outside our own borders—and revolutionize the production and supply of food for the entire world. That was by no means all. In time, this skinny ditch in upstate New York would demonstrate that trade and commerce are the keys to the expansion of prosperity and freedom itself.

  The notion of a canal connecting the eastern seaboard to the west had been an active topic of discussion for more than twenty years before construction actually began in 1817. The Appalachian mountain range posed a formidable barricade between the narrow line of states touching the Atlantic Ocean and the almost boundless lands on the other side of the mountains. While rivers often lead the people on opposite sides of their banks to join in forming one community, populations divided by mountains tend to become separate nations unless some easy means of communication exists between the two.

  George Washington was keenly aware of this risk. Even before the Revolution, in 1775, he had expressed his concerns about the peril of losing the lands on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains to either France or Canada, or both, unless the mountain barrier could be pierced—and soon. The pioneers moving west had little allegiance to the lands they le
ft behind. If nothing were done, the young United States would be left squeezed between the mountains and the sea, a constricted minor-league nation compared with the growth and power developing on the other side of the mountains.

  Ink on the peace treaty declaring American independence was barely dry before Washington was organizing the Patowmack Company to convert the Potomac River into a canal running from the seacoast at Alexandria, Virginia, all the way up to the mountains. Washington’s canal was an engineering achievement but a financial disaster. It was still under construction when he died in 1799 and fell into bankruptcy before work on the Erie Canal had even begun.

  The geography for crossing the mountains was much more favorable in New York than in Virginia, but New Yorkers appeared to be in less of a hurry to capitalize on what nature had bestowed upon them. There was a succession of frustrating efforts over a period of some twenty-five years before they would finally break ground for the Erie Canal in 1817. The visionaries and supporters were determined to pursue their dream. Their opponents were stubborn in their skepticism about the feasibility of such a gigantic engineering venture, and many were also frightened by the prospect of spending so many millions of dollars of the state’s money with no assurance that the canal would actually pay its way.

  To Americans in the early days of the Republic—in what was then, in today’s parlance, an “emerging economy” in which 93 percent of the population still lived on farms—the very idea of connecting the east to the west by means of a gigantic artificial waterway appeared as fantastic as sending a rocket to the moon. In January 1809, Thomas Jefferson judged it to be “little short of madness.” Without the gritty determination of a small group of men convinced of the prospect of a great nation, an unquenchable enthusiasm to make it reality, and a keen sense of how to deploy power, the Erie Canal would not have been built and the western territories would in all likelihood have broken away.