Digging the Erie Canal

On October 23, 1819, the portion of the Erie Canal between Utica and Rome was opened to navigation

Continuing Erie Canal Opens,
our selection from The Building of the Erie Canal essay by William H. Seward published in . The selection is presented in six easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Erie Canal Opens.

Time: 1825
Place: New York City

The canal commissioners, in their report, gave an interesting account of their proceedings, represented that the work on the middle section, under the care of Benjamin Wright as principal engineer, had been conducted with great success, and that Canvass White and Nathan S. Roberts, who had previously been assistant engineers, were assigned, on account of their eminent skill, to higher duties. Mr. White was distinguished at this time for his discovery of the manner of preparing a hydraulic cement from a peculiar kind of limestone found in the vicinity of the canal. He was the inventor, also, of the improvement in the construction of upper gates of canal locks, which had been said to be the only improvement in the mechanical construction of canals made since the building of the Languedoc Canal.

The commissioners recommended that a navigable communication should immediately be opened from the Erie Canal to the salt-works at Salina, and that the militia law should be so modified as to excuse laborers on the canals from military duty, and sustained the recommendation by the Governor of the simultaneous prosecution of all portions of the Erie Canal.

The joint committee on internal improvements consisted of Jabez D. Hammond, Henry Seymour, and Walter Bowne, Senators, and Ezekiel Bacon, Jacob Rutsen, Van Rensselaer, John Doty, Jedediah Miller, and Asahel Warner, of the Assembly. Ezekiel Bacon submitted a report and introduced a bill embodying the recommendations of the canal commissioners. This bill became a law, twenty-five members of the Assembly voting against the section which empowered the canal commissioners to commence the eastern and western portions of the Erie Canal and the branch canal from the Erie Canal to Salina. A survey was also authorized from the mouth of the Oswego River, up the same, the Seneca River and the outlet of the Onondaga River, with a view to improve the navigation of those streams. This was the first legislative step toward the construction of the Oswego Canal.

At this session a law was passed suspending the collection of the local canal tax until further directions should be given by the Legislature. An act was also passed granting a loan to citizens of Buffalo, to be applied to the construction, under the direction of the canal commissioners, of a harbor at that place, and providing for the assumption of the harbor if it should ultimately be deemed expedient.

On October 23, 1819, the portion of the Erie Canal between Utica and Rome was opened to navigation, and on November 24th the Champlain Canal admitted the passage of boats. Thus in less than two years and five months one hundred twenty miles of artificial navigation had been finished, and the physical as well as the financial practicability of uniting the waters of the western and northern lakes with the Altantic Ocean was established to the conviction of the most incredulous.

Governor Clinton announced these gratifying results to the Legislature in 1820, and admonished that body that while efforts directly hostile to internal improvements would in future be feeble, it became a duty to guard against insidious enmity; and that in proportion as the Erie Canal advanced toward completion would be the ease of combining a greater mass of population against the further extension of the system. Attempts, he remarked, had already been made to arrest the progress of the Erie Canal west of the Seneca River, and he anticipated their renewal when it should reach the Genesee. But the honor and prosperity of the State demanded the completion of the whole of the work, and it would be completed in five years if the representatives of the people were just to themselves and to posterity.

Referring to the local tax, he submitted whether it co ported with the magnanimity of Government to resort to partial or local impositions to defray the expenses of a magnificent work identified with the general prosperity. The commissioners informed the Legislature that they had employed David Thomas to survey the proposed harbor at Buffalo, and that plans for a similar improvement at Black Rock had been received.

The committee on internal improvements in the Senate consisted of Jabez D. Hammond, Gideon Granger, and Stephen Barnum; and the committee on canals in the Assembly, of George Huntington, John T. Irving, David Austin, Elial T. Foote, and Thomas J. Oakley.

A law was passed suspending the collection of the tax on steamboat passengers, and imposing, by way of commutation, on the North River Steamboat Company an annual tax of five thousand dollars, for the benefit of the canal fund. This company then enjoyed, by grant from the Legislature, a monopoly of steam navigation upon all the waters within the State, as a reward to Robert Fulton, Robert R. Livingston, and their associates, as public benefactors. The grant was afterward adjudged by the Supreme Court of the United States to be void so far as it affected navigation in tide-waters, because it conflicted with the Constitution of the United States. The same law appropriated twenty-five thousand dollars for the improvement of the Oswego River; and by other acts, Grand Island in the Niagara River, and a portion of the reservation at the Onondaga salt springs, were directed to be sold for the benefit of the canal fund; and the Legislature prescribed a general system of police for the management and protection of the canals.

By an arrangement made by the commissioners, and sanctioned by the Legislature, three of the five commissioners were charged with active duties, to be compensated by salaries, while the other commissioners were relieved from such duties. The acting commissioners designated were Mr. Young, Mr. Seymour, and Mr. Holley. During the same year the title of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company to its property and privileges was transferred to the State, and a compensation of one hundred fifty thousand eight hundred twenty-eight dollars was paid for the same.

In November, 1820, Governor Clinton congratulated the Legislature upon the progress of the public works. He urged the adoption of plenary measures to complete the Erie Canal within three years, enforcing the recommendation by the consideration that Ohio would thereby be encouraged to pursue her noble attempt to unite the waters of Lake Erie with the Ohio River. The canal commissioners showed in their report that the Erie Canal was navigable from Utica to the Seneca River, a distance of ninety-six miles, and that its tolls during four months had amounted to five thousand two hundred forty-four dollars.

An effort was made in the Assembly to abrogate the local tax, which failed, a result showing that distrust of the productiveness of the canals still lingered in the halls of the Legislature. This, however, was the last effort, and the law has been suffered to remain ever since unexecuted and unrepealed. William C. Bouck was, during the same session, appointed an acting canal commissioner.

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