On November 4, 1825, a group of dignitaries gathered aboard a boat in New York Harbor to watch Governor De Witt Clinton dump a barrel of lakewater into the sea. The water in the barrel was transported hundreds of miles to New York City from Lake Erie to be blended with the waters of the Atlantic in a ceremonial “wedding of the waters.” This ceremony marked the official opening of the Erie Canal, a more than 350 mile-long canal connecting the city of Buffalo on Lake Erie with New York City and the Atlantic Ocean. Despite being maligned by its detractors as folly, and referred to as “Clinton’s Ditch,” ^[1]“Clinton’s Ditch.” 4 FRIEND OF PEACE 129 (1827). This document can be found in HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library. the project would become the greatest feat of civil engineering seen in the United States to that point, and would forever transform the interior of New York State, and the rest of the country. Keep reading as we use HeinOnline to learn more about the Erie Canal!

“A canal to the moon”

The origins of the Erie Canal can be traced back to the establishment of canal companies^[2]An Act further to amend the law relative to lock navigation in this State. 1792. 453. This law can be found in HeinOnline’s Session Laws Library. in New York by the state legislature in 1792. State officials recognized the economic and military significance of the state’s waterways, particularly the Hudson River, which connected the state’s principal seaport in New York City with products and markets further Upstate.

Before long, the companies turned their attention from maintenance and regulation of existing waterways to their expansion. In the early 19th century, waterways were the swiftest and most efficient way of transporting people and goods through the vast and largely undeveloped interior spaces of the United States. But naturally occurring waterways could only go so far. A canal connecting New York City, via the Hudson River, with Lake Erie had the potential to fuel economic growth, and generate tremendous profits for the growing capitalist class of the Eastern cities. 

The notion of a canal that connected New York City with Lake Erie was floated on a number of occasions, and some surveying work was undertaken prior to 1810, but preparations were put on hold by the outbreak of war with Britain in 1812. Following the cessation of hostilities in 1814, preparations began in earnest for a canal spanning from the Hudson to Lake Erie. In 1816, the legislature passed a bill authorizing the expansion of shipping canals^[3]An Act for the improvement of the navigation of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers. Laws of New York. 1816. This law can be found in HeinOnline’s Session Laws Library. in the Hudson and Mohawk rivers, laying the groundwork for future work on the more ambitious project of carving out a canal connecting those rivers with the lakes to the west.

In 1817, the New York legislature passed what is now known as the Canal Act,^[4]An Act respecting navigable communications between the great western and northern lakes and the Atlantic ocean. Laws of New York, Fortieth Session. 1817. This law can be found in HeinOnline’s Session Laws Library. a law authorizing the construction of a canal connecting the “great western and northern lakes and the Atlantic ocean.” Construction began in July of the same year, on the advice of New York Canal Commissioners.^[5]Official Reports of the Canal Commissioners of the State of New York, and the Acts of the Leglislature respecting Navigable Communications between the Great Western and Northern Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean; with Perspicuous Maps and … Continue reading. Clinton’s ditch had its fair share of detractors, even as construction got underway. One skeptic memorably quipped that it would be just as feasible to construct a “canal to the moon”^[6]Canal Policy of the State of New-York: Delineated in a Letter to Robert Troup, Esquire (1821). This document is available on HeinOnline’s New York Legal Research Library. as to Lake Erie.

Constructing the Erie Canal

From start to finish, the construction process took just over eight years. That the canal was built at all, much less built so expeditiously, seems like something of a minor miracle in retrospect. Civil engineering, as a profession and area of study, did not exist in the United States at the time. Surveyors of the time were interested almost exclusively in determining property lines, not suitable routes for transportation infrastructure. The principal surveyors of the Erie Canal, James Geddes and Benjamin Wright, were state politicians from landed families, with no prior experience in infrastructure projects.

The architects of the project learned that the sort of work that is often referred to as “unskilled labor” is anything but. Laborers were recruited extensively from New York State, but most lacked experience in the construction of large-scale infrastructure projects, especially ones as ambitious as the Canal. To find workers with the requisite motivation and skills, officials from New York State and the various canal corporations looked abroad for the workforce the project required. 

The beginning of construction on the Erie Canal in 1817 coincided with the beginning of a century-long influx of immigration to the United States, and New York in particular, from Ireland. In 1817, Ireland was in the grips of famine (a precursor to the more infamous and deadly famine of 1845), caused by a combination of climatic factors and decades of British policy of privatizing communal Irish farmlands. Irish laborers flocked en masse to England, where they found employment working on the construction of the British canal system. However, wages in England were poor,^[7]Ryan Patrick Hanna, Erins on the Erie: A Historical Labor Study, 8 BUFF. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 189 (2002). This article can be found in HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library. and many Irishmen were eager to look for employment elsewhere. New York State and the canal companies realized the value of this large pool of untapped labor, and dispatched recruiting agents^[8]Ryan Patrick Hanna, Erins on the Erie: A Historical Labor Study, 8 BUFF. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 189 (2002). This article can be found in HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library. to England as early as 1816, before construction of the canal had even begun. 

The thousands of Irish who worked on the canal lived for years in temporary labor camps along the route, as they dug and blasted their way through marshes, soil, and solid rock.^[9]Michael Kraus. United States to 1865 (1959). This book can be found in HeinOnline’s Legal Classics collection. Many laborers who could not afford to pay for their passage across the Atlantic were indentured to their companies in a state of servitude, leading some scholars to refer to them as a sort of “not-yet-free”^[10]Ryan Patrick Hanna, Erins on the Erie: A Historical Labor Study, 8 BUFF. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 189 (2002). This article can be found in HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library. labor. This second class of citizenship, combined with the prevailing xenophobia held by the predominantly Protestant communities of Central and Western New York toward the predominantly Catholic Irish, compounded the hardship of daily working conditions.

Nevertheless, the immigrant workforce completed the canal in an astonishing eight years. The completed canal was an engineering marvel, rising through a series of locks^[11]Dwight B. La Du. Story of the New York State Canals; Historical and Commercial Information (1923). This document can be found in HeinOnline’s U.S. Political and Legal History Collection. from tidewater level in the Hudson Valley to an elevation of 565 feet at the Niagara River at its western terminus. For Governor Clinton, much maligned for his “ditch,” this was a stunning political vindication. He made the most of it, celebrating the opening to the canal with suitable pomp and circumstance. News of the completion of the canal in Buffalo in October 1825 was relayed to New York City in a mere 90 minutes, through the relay of a series of signals by cannons lined up along the banks of the canal. In a festive scene, Clinton made the 10-day journey along the canal from Buffalo to New York City, accompanied by a flotilla of merrymakers and revelers.

The “Mother of Cities”

It is difficult to understate the transformative impact of the canal on the communities of the interior of New York, where it came to be referred to as the “Mother of Cities,” because of the number of towns and cities that were founded along its length, and because of the growth and expansion it brought to the existing cities of Central and Western New York, such as Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. The construction of a harbor in Buffalo^[12]An Act to authorize the construction of a Harbor at the mouth of Buffalo Creek, on Lake Erie. Passed April 7, 1819. This law can be found in HeinOnline’s Session Laws Library. to meet the increased demand of freighters and river barges led to a rapid increase in the population^[13]Presidential message on Board of Engineers and Internal Improvement. 1824-1825. This document can be found in HeinOnline’s U.S. Congressional Serial Set. of the region.

The Erie Canal was a massive commercial success, and cut travel time between Buffalo and Albany in half, compared to travel by stagecoach. It also raised substantial revenue for New York State through tolls throughout the nineteenth century. The success of the canal, which secured the status of New York City as the preeminent port on the East Coast, inspired cities such as Boston and Baltimore to undertake projects of their own.^[14]Michael Kraus. United States to 1865 (1959). This book can be found in HeinOnline’s Legal Classics collection. Even inland cities, such as Pittsburgh,^[15]Canals and Roads, with reports of Secretary of Treasury, B. H. Latrobe, Robert Fulton, and Secretary of War. 1820-1821. This document can be found in HeinOnline’s U.S. Congressional Serial Set. proposed their own canal projects, seeking to connect with wider markets.

The canal also had a transformative effect on the demographics of the community. Irish and German immigrants, many of whom worked on the canal, settled in cities along the canal to work in docks and mills and established tightknit enclaves in neighborhoods such as the Old First Ward in Buffalo, where their cultural influence can still be seen at present day. On the other hand, the influx of white settlers also brought about an acceleration in displacement of Indigenous peoples from the region, particularly the Senecas, who were ejected from valuable lands near Lake Erie and confined to reservations.^[16]Treaty with the New York Indians, . 7 Stat. 550 (1838). This treaty can be found in HeinOnline’s United States Statutes at Large.

The Erie Canal Today

By midcentury, railroads eclipsed canals as the preferred method for transporting people and freight, and the Erie Canal and other canals began a period of decline. Nevertheless, the canal remained in use. In 1903, New York State allocated $100 million for the improvement of the state canal system,^[17]An Act making provision for issuing bonds to the amount of not to exceed one hundred and one million dollars for the improvement of the Erie canal, the Oswego canal and the Champlain canal, and providing for a submission of the the same to the … Continue reading in the process demolishing many portions of the original canal and replacing them with wider and more modernized waterways.

Commercial use declined throughout the twentieth century, although it never completely died out. In 1920, nearly a century after its completion, nearly 800 commercial barges continued to ship freight on the Canal. While some commercial vessels use the Canal at present, the vast majority of traffic is recreational in nature. The Erie Canal is free to use for recreational boaters.

Further Reading

If you’re interested in further reading on immigration, labor, and state infrastructure projects, a great resource is HeinOnline’s Session Laws Library. The fully-indexed collection is the culmination of a nine-year project here at HeinOnline, and hosts a wealth of material, including state and territorial legislation, in some cases predating the establishment of the United States.