Chapter XXIV: Letter XXI: Intercommunication

BUFFALO, (N. Y.) JULY 9, 1835.

The territory of the United States consists; 1. of the two great inland basins of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, which run, the former from north to south towards the Gulf of Mexico, the latter from south to north toward the gulf to which it gives its own name: 2. on the eastern side, of a group of smaller basins, which empty their waters into the Atlantic ocean, and of which the principal are those of the rivers Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac, James, Roanoke, Santee, Savannah, and Altamaha. The Alleghany Mountains, which, from their lying in the direction of the length of the continent, are called the back-bone of the United States, form a natural water-shed, dividing the great inland basins from the eastern group of small basins. On the west, the valleys of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi are bounded by the Mexican Cordilleras, which here take the name of Rocky Mountains. At the foot of this chain spreads out a wide desert, bare of vegetation, and which, excepting some cases, can never, it is said, be peopled by man.

Almost the whole English-American population is as yet on the left of the Mississippi. On the right bank there is only one State, and that one of the least important of the confederacy, and one Territory, that of Arkansas, which will soon become one of the members of the Union.[BF]

The Alleghany chain does not reach a great height; being hardly as lofty as the Vosges, while the Rocky Mountains exceed in elevation the Pyrenees and even the Alps.

The Alleghany system, although of no great height, rises from a very wide base, of which the breadth is nearly 150 miles by an air-line. Viewed as a whole, it consists of a number of cavities separated by as many ridges or crests, and stretching with great uniformity, nearly from one end of the chain to the other, from the shores of New England, where the mountains are washed by the sea, to the Gulf of Mexico, in the neighbourhood of which they gradually sink down. These alternations of the ridges and cavities form a series of parallel furrows, which may be traced on the surface, with some breaks, through a distance of 1200 or 1500 miles. The geological formations are arranged very nearly in conformity with these furrows, through great distances; there are, however, exceptions from this rule, for sometimes the same layer is seen to pass from one furrow to another, always cutting the former at a very acute angle.

Notwithstanding this general character of regularity, these cavities are not hydrographical basins or river valleys. But the rivers, instead of hollowing out beds between two successive ridges, and thus passing off to the sea, frequently pass from one furrow to another, breaking through the weak points of the ridges. These openings or gaps, as they are here called, are highly useful as routes for roads, canals, and railroads, enabling the engineer, by following the course of the rivers, to flank heights, which it would have been almost impossible to top. Of all these openings the most interesting is that made by the Potomac through the Blue Ridge, at Harper's Ferry, which Jefferson, in his Virginian enthusiasm, said was worth a voyage across the Atlantic.

The United States may then be divided hydrographically into two distinct regions, the one to the east, the other to the west, of the Alleghanies; or into three, as under: 1. the Mississippi valley: 2. the valley of the St. Lawrence with the great lakes: 3. the Atlantic coast. This vast country may also be divided into the North and the South, and it has two commercial capitals, New York and New Orleans, which are, as it were, the two lungs of this great body, the two galvanic poles of the system. Between these two divisions, the North and the South, there are radical differences, both in a political and an industrial point of view. The social frame in the South is founded on slavery; in the North, on universal suffrage. The South is a great cotton-plantation, yielding also some subsidiary articles, such as tobacco, sugar, and rice. The North acts as factor or agent for the South, selling the productions of the latter, and furnishing her in return with those of Europe; as a sailor, carrying her cotton beyond sea; as an artisan, making all her household utensils and farming tools, her cotton-gins, her sugar-mills, her furniture, wearing apparel, and all other articles of daily use, and finding her also in corn and salted provisions.

From these views it appears that the great public works in the United States must have the following objects: 1. To connect the Atlantic coast-region with the region beyond the Alleghanies; that is, to unite the rivers of the former, such as the Hudson, the Susquehanna, the Potomac, the James, or its bays, such as the Delaware and the Chesapeake, either with the Mississippi or its tributary the Ohio, or with the St. Lawrence, or the great lakes Erie and Ontario, whose waters are carried by the St. Lawrence to the Ocean: 2. To form communications between the Mississippi Valley and that of the St. Lawrence, that is, between one of the great tributaries of the Mississippi, such as the Ohio, the Illinois, or the Wabash, and Lake Erie or Lake Michigan, which, of all the great lakes of the St. Lawrence basin, reach the furthest southwards. 3. To connect together the northern and southern poles of the Union, New York and New Orleans.

Independently of these three new systems of public works, which are in fact, in progress, and even in part completed, there are numerous secondary lines, intended to make the access to the centres of consumption more easy, or to open outlets from certain centres of production, whence arise two new classes of works; the one including the various canals and railroads, which, starting from the great cities as centres, radiate from them in all directions, and the other, comprising the similar works executed for the transportation of coal from the coal-regions.

SECT. I. LINES EXTENDING ACROSS THE ALLEGHANIES.

The works which have hitherto almost wholly occupied, and still chiefly occupy, the attention of statesmen and business men in the United States, are those designed to form communications between the East and the West. There are on the Atlantic coast four principal towns, which long strove with each other for the supremacy; namely, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. All four aimed to secure the command of the commerce of the new States which are springing up in the fertile regions of the West; and they have sustained the struggle with different degrees of success, but always with a rare spirit of intelligence. They have not, however, been equally favoured in respect to natural advantages. Boston is too far north; she has no river which permits her to stretch her arms far toward the West, and she is surrounded by a hilly country, which throws great obstacles in the way of rapid communication, and makes all works designed to promote it expensive. Philadelphia and Baltimore are shut up by ice almost every winter, and this obstruction is, on the part of the latter,[BG] a drawback from the other advantages of her position, her greater nearness to the Ohio, her more central latitude, and the beauty of her bay, which is above 250 miles in length, and receives numberless streams, as the Susquehanna, Potomac, Patuxent, Rappahannock, &c. Philadelphia is badly placed; Penn was led astray by the beauty of the Schuylkill and the Delaware; he thought that the broad plain spread out between their waters to the width of nearly three miles, would afford an admirable site for a city, whose streets should be run with regularity, and whose warehouses, easy of access, would permit thousands of vessels to load and unload at once. He forgot to secure for his city a great hydrographical basin, capable of consuming the merchandise which it should import, and of sending it in return the products of its own labour, and he neglected to make an examination of the Delaware, which he took for a great river, but which, unluckily is not so. If he had founded the city of Brotherly Love on the banks of the Susquehanna, it might have maintained a long struggle against New York.

New York is, then, the queen of the Atlantic coast. This city stands on a long, narrow island, between two rivers (the North River and the East River); ships of any burden and in any numbers may lie at the wharves; the harbour is very rarely closed by ice; it can be entered by small vessels with all winds, and by the largest ships at all times except when the wind is from the northwest. New York has beside the invaluable advantage of standing upon a river for which some great flood has dug out a bed through the primitive mountains, uniformly deep, without rocks, without rapids, almost without a slope, and cutting through the most solid mass of the Alleghanies at right angles. The tide, slight as it is on this coast, flows up the Hudson to Troy, 160 miles from its mouth; and such is the nature of its bed, that whale-ships are fitted out at Poughkeepsie and Hudson, of which the former is 75 and the latter 116 miles above New York, and that, except in the lowest stage of the water, vessels of 9 feet draft can go up to Albany and Troy, in any tide.

New York possesses in addition great advantages in respect to the character of its population. Originally a Dutch colony, conquered by the English, and lying in the neighborhood of New England, she presents a mixture of the solid qualities of the Saxon race, of the Dutch phlegm, and the enterprising shrewdness of the Puritans. This mixed breed understands admirably how to turn to account all the advantages which nature has bestowed on the city.

Hardly was the war of independence at an end, when the great men whose patriotism and courage had brought it to a happy close, filled with ideas of the wealth yet buried in the bosom of the then uninhabited West, began to form plans for rendering it accessible by canals. If it is true, that Prussia, in the time of Voltaire, resembled two garters stretched out over Germany, the United States in the time of Washington and Franklin, and it is only fifty years since, might be likened to a narrow riband thrown upon the sandy shore of the Atlantic. Washington at that time projected the canal which has since been begun according to the plans of Gen. Bernard, and which seeks the West by following up the Potomac; but from want of capital and experienced engineers, what in our day has become a long and fine canal, was then merely a series of side-cuts around the Little Falls and Great Falls of the Potomac. At the same time, the Pennsylvanians made some unsuccessful efforts and spent considerable sums, in ineffectual attempts to render the Schuylkill navigable, and to connect it with the Susquehanna. In the State of New York, some short cuts, some locks and sluices, were then the only prelude to greater schemes.[BH] The works undertaken at that time and during the fifteen first years of the present century could not be completed, or failed in the expected results. One work only was successfully executed, the Middlesex Canal, which extends from Boston to the River Merrimack at Chelmsford, a distance of 27 miles.[BI]

The war of 1812 found the United States without canals, and almost without good roads; their only means of intercourse were the sea, their bays, and the rivers that flow into them. Once blockaded by the English fleets, not only could they hold no communication with Europe and India, but they could not keep up an intercourse among themselves, between State and State, and between city and city, between New York and Philadelphia for instance. Their commerce was annihilated, and the sources of their capital dried up. Bankruptcy smote them like a destroying angel, sparing not a family.

FIRST LINE. ERIE CANAL.

The lesson was hard, but it was not lost. The Americans, to do them justice, know how to profit by the teachings of Providence, especially if they pay dear for them. The project of a canal between New York and Lake Erie, which had already been discussed before the war, was eagerly taken up again after the peace. De Witt Clinton, a statesman whose memory will be ever hallowed in the United States, succeeded in inspiring his countrymen with his own noble confidence in his country's great destiny, and the first stroke of the spade was made on the 4th of July, 1817. In spite of the evil forebodings of men distinguished for their sagacity and public services; in spite of the opinion of the venerated patriarch of democracy, of Jefferson himself, who declared it necessary to wait a century longer before undertaking such a work; in spite of the remonstrances of the illustrious Madison, who wrote that it would be an act of folly on the part of the State of New York to attempt, with its own resources only, the execution of a work for which all the wealth of the Union would be insufficient; notwithstanding all opposition this State, which did not then contain a population of 1,300,000 inhabitants, began a canal 428 miles in length, and in eight years it had completed it at a cost of 8,400,000 dollars. Since that time it has continued to add numerous branches, covering almost every part of the State, as with net-work. In 1836, the State had completed 656 miles of canal including slack-water navigation, at the expense of 11,962,712 dollars, or 18,235 dollars per mile.[BJ]

The results of this work have surpassed all expectations; it opened an outlet for the fertile districts of the western part of the State, which had before been cut off from a communication with the sea and the rest of the world. The shores of Lake Erie and Ontario were at once covered with fine farms and flourishing towns. The stillness of the old forest was broken by the axe of New York and New England settlers, to the head of Lake Michigan. The State of Ohio, which is washed by Lake Erie, and which had hitherto had no connection with the sea except by the long southern route down the Mississippi, had now a short and easy communication with the Atlantic by way of New York. The territory of Michigan was peopled, and it now contains 100,000 inhabitants, and will soon take its rank among the States.[BK] The transportation on the Erie Canal exceeded 400,000 tons in 1834, and it must nearly reach 500,000 tons in 1835. The annual amount of tolls from the canals, and at moderate rates, is about one million and a half dollars. The population of the city of New York increased in the ten years, from 1820 to 1830, 80,000 souls.[BL] New York is become the third, if not the second port in the world, and the most populous city of the western hemisphere. The illustrious Clinton lived long enough to see the success of his plans, but not to receive the brilliant reward which the gratitude of his countrymen intended for him. He died, February 11, 1828, at the age of 59 years, and but for this premature death, he would probably have been chosen President of the United States.

The Erie Canal is no longer sufficient for the commerce which throngs it. In vain do the lock-masters attend night and day to the signal horn of the boatmen, and perform the process of locking with a quickness that puts to shame the slowness of our own; there is no longer room enough in the canal, whose dimensions however are rather limited.[BM] The impatience of commerce, with whom time is money, is not satisfied with a rate of speed about fourfold that which is common on our canals. Merchandise of all sorts, as well as travellers, flows in at every point in such quantities, that railroads have been constructed along the borders of the canal, to rival the packet-boats in the transportation of passengers only. There is one from Albany to Schenectady, 15 miles in length, which, though not well built, cost about 550,000 dollars. A second, which will be finished in 1836, runs from Schenectady to Utica, and is 78 miles in length.[BN] A third railroad is in progress from Rochester to Buffalo by way of Batavia and Attica, about 80 miles in length, and it is probable that before long the line will be completed from one end of the canal to the other.[BO]

A still greater undertaking is already in train; a company was chartered in 1832, which will begin next spring the construction of a railroad from New York city to Lake Erie, through the southern counties of the State; on account of the circuitous route made necessary by the uneven nature of the ground, the length of this road will be about 340 miles.[BP] Meanwhile the Canal Commissioners have not slept; in July, the Canal Board, in compliance with an act of the Legislature, directed the construction of a double set of lift locks on the whole line, in order that there may be as little delay as possible in the passage of boats, and the enlargement of the canal so that the width shall be 70 feet and the depth 6 feet, with a corresponding increase in the dimension of the locks; larger boats may then be used the speed may be increased, and perhaps it will be practicable to use steam tow-boats. The cost of this work is estimated at about 12,500,000 dollars.

Finally, to make herself more entirely mistress of the commerce of the West, and to penetrate her own territory more completely, the State of New York is about to commence a new branch of the Erie canal (if we may call a work of which the entire length will be 120 miles, a branch), which will form an immediate connection with the River Ohio. This canal is to run from Rochester, the flourishing city of millers, following up the course of the Genesee, with a rise of 979 feet to the summit level, and a fall of 78 feet thence to Olean, on the River Alleghany, 270 miles from its junction with the Monongahela at Pittsburg. The main canal from Rochester to Olean is only 107 miles in length, but there is a branch to Danville. The Alleghany, in its natural state, is navigable only during a few months in the year; the total distance from New York to Pittsburg by this route is 800 miles.

When there could no longer be a doubt of the speedy completion of the Erie Canal, Philadelphia and Baltimore felt that New York was going to become the capital of the Union. The spirit of competition aroused in them a spirit of enterprise. They wished also to have their routes to the West; but both had great natural obstacles to overcome. By means of the Hudson, which had forced a passage through the heart of the mountains, New York was freed from the greatest difficulty in the way of effecting a communication between the East and the West, that of topping the crest of the Alleghanies. Between Albany, where the Erie canal begins, and Buffalo, where it meets the lake, there are no high mountains. Baltimore could not look for a similar service to the Patapsco, nor Philadelphia to the Delaware; neither of these cities can approach the west by the basin of the great lakes, unless by a very circuitous route; they are too far off. It became necessary for them, therefore, to climb the loftiest heights, and thence to descend to the level of the Ohio with their works.

SECOND LINE. PENNSYLVANIA CANAL.

What is called the Pennsylvania canal is a long line of 400 miles, starting from Philadelphia, and ending at Pittsburg on the Ohio. It was begun simultaneously with several other works, at the expense of the state of Pennsylvania, in 1826. It is not entirely a canal; from Philadelphia a railroad 81 miles in length, extends to the Susquehanna at Columbia. To the Columbia railroad, succeeds a canal, 172 miles in length, which ascends the Susquehanna and the Juniata to the foot of the mountains at Holidaysburg. Thence the Portage railroad passes over the mountain to Johnstown, a distance of 37 miles, by means of several inclined planes constructed on a grand scale, with an inclination sometimes exceeding one tenth, which does not, however, deter travellers from going over them.[BQ] From Johnstown a second canal goes to Pittsburg, 104 miles. This route is subject to the inconvenience of three transhipments, one at Columbia at the end of the railroad from Philadelphia, and the others at the ends of the Portage railroad, one of these may be avoided by means of two canals constructed by incorporated companies, namely, the Schuylkill canal, which extends up the river of that name, and the Union canal, which forms a junction between the upper Schuylkill and the Susquehanna. The distance from Philadelphia to Pittsburg by this route is 435 miles, or 35 miles more than by the other route.

The Pennsylvania canal, begun in 1826, was finished in 1834. The State has connected with this work a general system of canalization, which embraces all the principal rivers, and especially the Susquehanna, with its two great branches (the North Branch and the West Branch), and also works preparatory to a canal connecting Pittsburg with Lake Erie, at Erie, a town founded by our Canadian countrymen, and by them called Presqu'île. Pennsylvania has executed, then, in all about 820 miles of canals and railroads, of which 118 are railroads, at a cost of about 25,000,000 dollars, exclusive of sums paid for interest. Average cost per mile, 35,000 dollars; average cost per mile, of canals, 32,500; average cost per mile of railroads, 48,000.

This is much more than the cost of the New York works, although the dimensions of the works are the same, and the natural difficulties were not greater in one case than in the other; it is owing to bad management in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvanians had no Clinton to guide them. An unwise economy, forced upon the Canal Commissioners by the legislature, prevented them from securing the services of able engineers, and for the sake of saving some thousands of dollars in salaries, they have been obliged to spend millions in repairing what was badly done, or in doing badly what more able hands would have executed well at less cost.

THIRD LINE. BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD.

Still less than Philadelphia, could Baltimore think of a continuous canal to the Ohio. Wishing to avoid the transhipments which are necessary on the Pennsylvania line, the Baltimoreans decided on the construction of a railroad extending from their city to Pittsburg or Wheeling, the whole length of which would be about 360 miles. It is now finished as far as Harper's Ferry on the Potomac, a distance of 80 miles, and the company seem to have given up the design of carrying it further. It will here be connected with the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, of which I shall speak below, as the Columbia railroad is connected with the Pennsylvania canal. It is probable, that, on approaching the crest of the Alleghanies, the canal will in turn give away to a railroad across the mountains, and thus the Maryland works will be similar to the Pennsylvania line.[BR]

FOURTH LINE. CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO CANAL.

The plan, which had been cherished by Washington, of making a lateral canal along the Potomac which should one day be extended across the mountains to the Ohio, was resumed when New York had taught the country that it was now ripe for the boldest enterprises of this kind. John Quincy Adams, then President of the United States, favoured the project with all his might. At that time it was not a settled principle, that the Federal government had no right to engage in internal improvements. The old idea, which Washington had cherished, of making the political capital of the Union a great city, was not less to the taste of Mr Adams and his friends. It was, therefore, resolved to undertake the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and a company was incorporated for this purpose. Congress voted a subscription of 1,000,000 dollars; the city of Washington without commerce, without manufactures, with its population of 16,000 souls, subscribed the same sum; the other little cities of the Federal District, Georgetown and Alexandria, having both together a population of about 10,000, furnished a half million; Virginia contributed 250,000, and Maryland 500,000 dollars; and 600,000 dollars were raised by individual subscriptions. The work was begun July 4, 1828. Next year, by aid of a loan of 3,000,000 from Maryland, this great work will be carried to the coal-beds of Cumberland at the foot of the mountains; the length of this division is 185 miles, the estimated cost 8,500,000 dollars, or 46,000 dollars per mile. The execution is on a bold scale, and superior to that of the works before-mentioned; its dimensions exceed those generally adopted in the proportion of 3 to 2, which gives a larger section in the ratio of 9 to 4.

FIFTH LINE. JAMES RIVER AND KANAWHA COMMUNICATION.

Virginia, formerly the first State in the confederacy, but now fallen to the fourth in rank, and already outstripped by Ohio, which was not in being during the war of Independence, is at length roused to action, and has determined to profit by the lessons, which have come to her from the North. A company, whose means consist of little more than the subscriptions of the State and of the capital, Richmond, is about to open a canal from the East to the West. James River, which flows into Chesapeake Bay, is navigable for vessels of 200 tons to the foot of the table-land, on which Richmond stands in so charming a situation. On the east of the mountains, the canal, starting from Richmond, will follow the course of James River, and on the West it will descend the Kanawha, one of the tributaries of the Ohio, to Charleston, at the head of steamboat navigation. The Alleghany crest will be passed by a railroad, 150 miles in length; the canal itself will be about 250 miles long.

* * * * *

South Carolina, stirred up by the example of Virginia, is engaged in a great railroad from Charleston to Cincinnati on the Ohio; and the surveys are at present actively going on. The people of Cincinnati are enthusiastically interested in this scheme.[BS] Georgia is also dreaming of a great railroad from the Savannah to the Mississippi, at Memphis; but this project has not assumed a substantial shape. North Carolina does nothing, and projects nothing. If she ever becomes rich, it will not be because she has seized fortune by the forelock, but because fortune has come to her bedside.[BT]

SIXTH LINE. RICHELIEU CANAL.

The Canadians are constructing a canal which will form another communication between the East and the West, that is, between the Hudson and the St. Lawrence, between New York and Quebec. The great fissure, which forms so fine a bed for the Hudson between New York and Troy, does not end here, but stretches on towards the north to the St. Lawrence, constituting the basin of Lake Champlain, which is a long and narrow cavity in the midst of the mountains, and the bed of the River Richelieu. Between Lake Champlain and the Hudson, there is only a ridge 54 feet above the level of the former, and 134 above that of the latter. The River Richelieu, which issues from the northern end of the lake and flows into the St. Lawrence, is broken by rapids, and a lateral canal, 12 miles in length, and of sufficient dimensions to receive the lake-craft, will be opened here in the course of a year; the cost will be 350,000 dollars; the distance from New York to Quebec by the canals, rivers, and lakes, is 540 miles. The railroad from St. John, where the rapids of the Richelieu begin, to Laprairie, on the St. Lawrence, opposite to Montreal, a distance of 16 miles, effects for Montreal what the canal does for Quebec; it cost about 160,000 dollars, or 10,500 dollars per mile. The distance from Montreal to New York is 360 miles.