America's 19th-century canal-building mania is now largely forgotten, but it is the granddaddy of misguided infrastructure-spending tales. Steamboats, first perfected by Robert Fulton in 1807, chugged along on all major rivers before states began using funds to build canals and harbors. Congress tried to get the federal government involved by passing a massive canal and road-building bill in 1817, but President James Madison vetoed it. New York responded by building the Erie Canal—a relatively rare success story. Most state-supported canals lost money, and Pennsylvania in 1857 and Ohio in 1861 finally sold their canal systems to private owners.
In Ohio, when the canals were privatized, one newspaper editor wrote: "Everyone who observes must have learned that private enterprise will execute a work with profit, when a government would sink dollars by the thousand."Me: The above is accurate as far as it goes, but it doesn't amount to "Entrepreneurs built our ... canals far better than government did." Canal building was mostly done by government, for better and worse. The financial troubles faced by many canals other than Erie, manifested in the Panic of 1837, spurred a turning away from government infrastructure for the rest of the 19th century, such that the railroads were built by the private sector (although government helped in various ways to make this happen). In the 20th century, the pendulum swung back toward government infrastructure projects, albeit with plenty of wobbling back and forth over the decades. It's also worth pointing out that what worked well in, say, 1825 may or may not be the best model for what should be done in 2013.
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| Fort Montgomery 10-5-14 |
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| DeWitt Clinton portrayal at Erie Canal Museum |
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| Sign at Camillus Park |
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| 1842 Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct, restored in Camillus Park |
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| Dry dock at Chittenango |
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| This nondescript parking lot in Albany was recently discovered to be the site of Lock 1 of the original Erie Canal. |
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| That stone in the foreground is a remnant. |
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| Somewhat further north, some much more visible infrastructure. |
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| A portion that ran along the Schuyler estate; the nearby house was destroyed by vandals in the 1960s. There was not much NIMBY sentiment back in the 19th century; people wanted the canal to be close to their houses. |
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| A building where the mules that towed the boats were housed. |
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| A lock of the enlarged canal, built a couple of decades after the original. |
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| Remnant of a weighlock, in which boats were weighed. |
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| The Cohoes Falls, an important source of power generation. |
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| An example of reuse of the canal route for recreation. |
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| Clute's Dry Dock, once a bustling place of boat building and repair. |
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| A relocated bridge designed by famous 19th-century engineer Squire Whipple. |
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| A view of the canal from the bridge. |
DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828) was an early American politician who transformed the country in far-reaching ways — physically, economically and financially. He was the driving force in building the Erie Canal, a massive engineering achievement that helped make Wall Street into a major financial center and the United States into an economically dynamic nation where investors would want to put their money.
Clinton served at various times as governor of New York state, mayor of New York City, U.S. senator and member of the Erie Canal commission. He ran for president in 1812, losing a fairly close contest to James Madison. He was an intellectual with interests ranging from rattlesnake biology to the history of Native Americans. He also was imperious and abrasive. A couple of years before the infamous Hamilton-Burr duel, Clinton went up against Burr supporter John Swartwout and irritably shot him in the leg.
Review copy requested: The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion, by Virginia Postrel. (Pub. date Nov. 2013).
Review copy received: Divine Fury: A History of Genius, by Darrin M. McMahon. (Pub. date Oct. 22, 2013.)
Current reading: Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and the American Empire, by Gerald T. Koeppel. This is an excellent history and valuable addition to my Erie Canal research.
DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828) was one of the most important American politicians of the early 19th century. He was at various times governor of New York, mayor of New York City, U.S. senator and presidential candidate. He was the driving force behind getting the Erie Canal built, the achievement for which he is best remembered by history. But his career was multifaceted — his interests ranged from laying out Manhattan’s street grid to delving into the natural science and history of North America.Whole thing here.
That career included much that’s worth contemplating, and even emulating, in the context of early 21st century politics. While DeWitt Clinton is not exactly an unfamiliar name today — it’s emblazoned for instance on a Bronx high school and a Manhattan park, among other locales — his importance and relevance are underappreciated, even at a time when the founding fathers and other early politicians (such as Andrew Jackson) are more in vogue than they have been for some time.
Early American politicians often get enlisted in today’s ideological causes — Thomas Jefferson as hero to liberals and libertarians, Alexander Hamilton or John Adams as paragons for conservatives (notably, with Hamilton, conservatives not of a strongly decentralist bent). Often, the fit between the historical figure and the current-day cause is less than perfect, but there is some affinity. Clinton fits only awkwardly into our current-day polarized politics — and therein is a key part of his relevance.
To judge by his speeches, notably an inaugural address that fear-mongered about “American carnage,” the president believes the country is in deep trouble and needs to get its own house in order. Trump is more interested in recovering past glories—the old days when “we’d win with wars” rather than now, when “we don’t win anymore”—than in creating a new tomorrow. It’s no surprise that some of the loudest complaints about Trump’s ban came from tech companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook that rely on the immigrants that Trump demonizes.Me: I've spent the last few years researching the history of the Erie Canal, for a book I am now preparing to publish.
UPDATE:Upcoming event and quite a milestone: DeWitt Clinton's 250th Birthday. At @ErieCanalMuseum on Sat., March 2, at 11 AM. https://t.co/HQs9jnnIuq— Erie Canal Book (@ErieBook) February 13, 2019
Highly impressed by Buffalo Maritime Center, where I spoke for DeWitt Clinton's 250th birthday. Look forward to riding in replica Seneca Chief one day. pic.twitter.com/f2RYesEgxZ— Kenneth Silber (@kennethsilber) March 3, 2019
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| Otsego Lake at the source of the Susquehanna. |
“I did a little research,” Mrs. Clinton said at a town-hall-style event at Eagle Heights Elementary School in Clinton on Saturday. “Clinton County is named for DeWitt Clinton, the sixth governor of New York,” Mrs. Clinton continued. “He was the person who said, ‘We’re going to build a canal from the Hudson River down to Lake Erie all the way across New York.’ ”Me: It was odd to see the subject of my in-progress book show up on the campaign trail. This political season has been a rather engrossing distraction. One thing I admire greatly about DeWitt Clinton is that, even though he was a professional politician, his interests outside politics were many, deep and varied.
Previously at FrumForum, I wrote about two early American political leaders: DeWitt Clinton, New York governor and mayor and key figure in the nation-building achievement of getting the Erie Canal built; and George Clinton, governor turned vice president, whose efforts to limit federal power culminated in an independent (and erroneous, in my view) decision to terminate America’s first central bank.Whole thing here.
Now, I take quill to parchment again, this time regarding James Clinton (1736-1812), a Revolutionary War general who was DeWitt’s father and George’s brother.
Though less remembered today than the other two, James struck important blows for American independence. For me, these figures are of interest for family history as well as national history. James and DeWitt are direct ancestors of my wife, and our son is named DeWitt after his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.
Veterans Day, which honors veterans living and dead, would be a suitable time to remember James Clinton. Although he had some involvement in politics, he was primarily a military man. One historian described him a few decades after his death as “a plain blunt soldier, born upon the frontiers, and who spent no inconsiderable portion of a long life amid the toils and perils of border wars.”
He was influenced, he says, by Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, a science fiction saga in which a galactic empire falls and ushers in a dark age. "It's sort of a futuristic version of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Let's say you were at the peak of the Roman empire, what would you do, what action could you take, to minimise decline?"
It takes me a moment to realise it's not a rhetorical question. Um, poison the barbarians' water supply, I joke. Musk smiles and shakes his head. The answer is in technology. "The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We're obviously in a very upward cycle right now and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not. There could be some series of events that cause that technology level to decline. Given that this is the first time in 4.5bn years where it's been possible for humanity to extend life beyond Earth, it seems like we'd be wise to act while the window was open and not count on the fact it will be open a long time."
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| Schoharie Aqueduct, 5/25/13. |
I read David Frum's new book Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic in just a couple of sittings, and highly recommend it to people across the political spectrum, including current Trump supporters, as it is a valuable, cogent analysis that will provoke thinking and rethinking.