Howe notes that the canal, “one of the most important achievements of national economic integration,” was wrought — two years ahead of schedule and under budget — not by the national government, but by one state, which the canal would transform into the Empire State. Work began on July Fourth, 1817. That year, the New York Stock Exchange’s forerunner was founded. The canal “exemplified a ‘second creation’ by human ingenuity perfecting the original divine creation and carrying out its potential for human betterment.”
Soon it was carrying twice the value of goods floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Horses or mules that could pull a wagon weighing two tons could, walking on the canal’s towpath, pull a barge weighing 50 tons.
From Buffalo to Albany, where it met the Hudson River, the canal, 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep, carried traffic at 4 mph. But it radically accelerated social change, discomfiting some along its route. The sudden disorienting growth of cities — e.g., Rochester, Syracuse, Utica — stirred religious intensity in what was called a “burned-over” region.
Many New England farms were among the economic, cultural and emotional casualties of the dynamism unleashed by the Erie Canal’s contribution to globalization. Americans were, however, as Howe says, “a mobile and venturesome people, empowered by literacy and technological proficiency,” welcoming dynamism.
Headlines announced the arrival of Long Island oysters in Batavia, a town in western New York. By 1850, the price of a wall clock had plunged from $60 dollars to $3. Howe: Largely because of lower transportation costs, “changes from the rustic to the commercial that had taken centuries to unfold in Western civilization were telescoped into a generation in western New York state.”
By lessening the commercial and political isolation of prairie farmers, the canal helped to populate the prairies by connecting them with Eastern markets. And by linking Americans living west of the Appalachian mountains to the Hudson River, it created New York City as a financial center. One day in 1824, Howe writes, there were 324 ships in New York harbor. One day in 1836, there were 1,241. Through the city’s port, America exported grain and revolution.