Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation

by Peter Bernstein. Published by W.W. Norton & Co., 448 pp, $24.95. Reviewed by Dave Johnson in 'Along the Towpath', March 2005

The Erie Canal was the most important American engineering achievement of the first half of the nineteenth century, to be matched only by the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. Not only did it link the west to the Atlantic seaboard, it proved the feasibility of such massive projects, opening the subsequent era of canal and railroad construction that finally tied the country together, made possible the Industrial Revolution and growth of national economic power, and led to the settlement of the continent.

The story of the Erie Canal has been recounted in many history books, but it has been nearly forty years since Ronald E. Shaw’s Erie Water West (1966) devoted an entire volume to it. Now Peter Bernstein has produced a fine new book on the canal and its importance to New York and the nation. The title, Wedding of the Waters, refers to the celebration of the completion of the canal in October 1825, when Governor DeWitt Clinton emptied casks of Lake Erie water into the Atlantic Ocean.

The key to the Erie Canal’s success was that the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers cut completely through the Appalachian Mountains. To the south, in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, there were no continuous water routes across the mountains. Streams on the western slopes flowed to the Ohio, not to the Atlantic, and attempts in those states to build a canal over the summits were doomed to failure. (Pennsylvania linked its eastern and western canals by the Portage Railroad; the C & O Canal Company gave up on its plans to cross the Alleghenies beyond Cumberland.) New York, by following the Mohawk from Albany to Utica, was able to build a canal 363 miles long with a total elevation change between the Hudson and Lake Erie of only 675 feet, up and down, on eighty-three locks. (Compare this to the C & O Canal, 605 feet (seventy-four locks) in just 184 miles from Georgetown to Cumberland, with another two to three thousand feet up and down from there to Pittsburgh.)

Wedding of the Waters is much more than just a book on canal construction and operation. It is the story of the political and economic battles to get the canal approved and built. There was the issue of federal funding for the canal. When that fell through, the State of New York undertook it alone. Whether to build all the way to Lake Erie, or shorten the canal to enter Lake Ontario was a debate that festered for years between those with competing interests. And always there was the question of whether such a monumental project could even be built through a wilderness. No one had ever done anything like it before. The War of 1812 also played a significant role in the history of the Erie Canal. It delayed the start of construction, but in the end it became a deciding factor in the canal’s authorization, because of the difficulties encountered moving troops and supplies from the Hudson to the Niagara frontier, the principle theater of military operations. In addition, the blockades and embargoes before and during the war forced America to become more self-reliant in domestic commerce and industry, and made improved internal communications and transportation essential.

The hero of this story, of course, is DeWitt Clinton, but the cast of characters includes many others, both names that are famous and relatively unknown. In particular, Benjamin Wright, who went on to become chief engineer for the C & O Canal and to design the Monocacy Aqueduct, was one of the principal engineers on the Erie and receives significant mention in the book.

The end result was a 500-mile all-water route from Lake Erie to the sea, requiring no transfer of cargo, because the canal boats could be towed by Hudson River steamers between Albany and New York City. The Erie Canal’s instant success following its completion in 1825 started the great canal building boom throughout the country, which lasted until the rail industry began to catch up by mid-century. Alas, no other towpath canal in America ever matched the Erie’s success or the prosperity it generated. Buffalo became the gateway to Ohio, Indiana, and Chicago, and New York City became the greatest seaport and the economic capital of the country. New York truly became the Empire State because of the Erie Canal.

This book makes a fine sequel to Joel Achenbach’s The Grand Idea (2004), which told of George Washington’s vision for the Potomac as the gateway to the west. Bernstein devotes an early chapter to Washington and the Patowmack Company, and demonstrates why New York triumphed where Maryland and Virginia failed to develop an all-water route to the lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. If you enjoyed Joel’s book, Wedding of the Waters should be next on your reading list.

-- Dave Johnson

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