Cooper Shop-The Erie Canal

Описание: This video is part of the Genesee Country Village & Museum audio tour series. Click through all the videos in the playlist to learn about life in New York during the 19th century.

Transcript:
In the decades before the Civil War, farmers shifted from growing just enough food to feed their families, to producing crops for sale. Along with agriculture, the demand grew for cheaper and faster ways to get produce and other goods to market. Here in Upstate New York, the Erie Canal did that – and a lot more! The project was championed by Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, who boldly proposed that a canal be built from Lake Erie to the city of Albany, along the route of the Mohawk River. South from Albany, the Hudson River was navigable all the way to New York City, and thus, the canal would connect the Great Lakes with the eastern seaboard of the United States for the first time. Clinton obtained a subsidy from the New York legislature, and construction began on July 4th, 1817. From the day it was completed in 1825, the Erie Canal was a massive success. Shipping a ton of freight between New York City and Buffalo now took 8 days rather than 20, and cost about $10 instead of $100. Upstate cities along the route boomed, including Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. New York City surpassed Philadelphia as the country’s most populous city and most important seaport.

Canals certainly made commerce in the United States both cheaper and faster, but it was the railroad that really changed things forever. Railroads had a number of advantages over other forms of transportation. They were faster and cheaper to build than canals and didn’t freeze over in the winter. The trains themselves traveled more than twice as fast as stagecoaches, and four times as fast as steamboats. In 1828, three years after the completion of the Erie Canal, development of the first railroad began in Baltimore, Maryland. Four years later, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, known as the B&O, stretched 73 miles. By 1840, the United States had over 3,000 miles of track – nearly double the rail mileage in all of Europe. By 1860, at the start of the Civil War, there were over 30,000 miles of railroad in the U.S, ¾ of which were in the industrial North. This not only helped make the North a lot wealthier than the Confederacy but gave the Union Army the ability to move troops more quickly.