JAMES RENWICK, LL.D.

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CHAPTER XIII.

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The Canal Commissioners undertake to examine the Route. - Clinton and others proceed by Water from Schenectady. - Their Progress to Geneva, after a Deviation to Oswego. - Journey by Land to Niagara, and return to Albany by the way of Ithaca. - Meetings of the Commissioners at Utica and Chippeway. - Diversity of Opinion in the Board. - Opinion of Morris. - Clinton's Views prevail in the Board. - Report drawn up by Mr. Morris. - Examination of its Features and Consequences.

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The commissioners appointed under the resolution of Judge Platt entered forthwith on the duties of their office. Surveys were directed to be made, under the superintendence of Simeon Dewitt, the surveyor-general of the state, who was a member of the board; and the commissioners resolved to proceed personally to examine the country. In most cases this is an empty ceremony. The best qualified and most practised engineers can decide little by the eye alone; and those who have not the habit of judging of levels and distances will be wholly at fault. The plans of public improvement must therefore be decided upon in the cabinet by reference to accurate profiles and maps, and not in the field. In the present instance, a formal progress of the commissioners through the region to be examined was of vital importance. It was necessary to arouse the attention of the people to the importance of the object, and excite a curiosity which should lead to the study of the benefits likely to flow from the completion of the project.

The survey of the most important part of the route was intrusted to Judge Geddes, who had already explored a part of it.

Clinton and Eddy left New-York on the 30th of June in the steamboat for Albany. This voyage occupied, as was usual in that early period of steam navigation, upward of 30 hours. The 2d of July was occupied in a meeting of the board, and laying stores and equipage for the voyage; the 3d in reaching Schenectady, and it was not until the afternoon of the 4th that the party embarked. Two boats were provided for their accommodation, one of which was occupied by the commissioners, the other by servants and baggage. Of the latter there was about a ton and a half, as it was necessary to carry almost every article of ordinary comfort. The party suffered from having trusted to the sleeping quarters which were presented on the route, and would have experienced less fatigue had it been provided in addition with tents. The boats were of the burden of about ten tons, were provided with sails to use when the wind was fair, and were propelled on other occasions by setting poles. In using these, the men walked along a gangway formed for the purpose on the gunwale, and pressed against the poles with their shoulders. The boats were without decks, but were sheltered by an awning and curtains. The party within had sufficient space to sit and read or write, but there was not room the spread the beds.

The river was low, and, although the boats were light, the passage of several of the rapids was attended with difficulty. Utica, therefore, was not reached until late on the evening of the fifty day.

The parties of Morris and Van Rensselaer occupied the whole of the principal hotel in Utica, and the voyagers took their lodging at another. At the present day the same hotel has been enlarged until it can conveniently lodge several hundred guests, and there are three or four others of almost equal extent. In 1810, the regular public communication between Albany and Utica was by a single daily stage, which was thirty-six hours in performing the journey. From Utica to Geneva the stage ran only three times a week, while beyond that point, none had been established.

The freight of goods by the river to Schenectady was seventy-five cents per ton, the carriage by wagon a dollar per ton.

Utica at that time contained 300 houses, inhabited by 1650 persons.

A meeting of the board was held on the 10^th July at Utica, which adjourned to reassemble at Rome on the 12^th.

At Utica, General North and Judge Geddes joined the party in boats, and, leaving Utica on the 11^th, the commissioners reached Rome the same day. Here the proposed meeting was held, and an incident occurred in the discussion which we shall refer to on a future occasion.

At Rome the routes by land and water separated, and the next place of meeting was fixed for Geneva. The party in the boats passing the cut at Fort Stanwix, entered and descended Wood Creek, traversed the Oneida Lake, and, running down its rapid outlet, reached Three River Point before sundown on the 15^th July. Thence they followed the stream to Oswego, which they reached the next evening.

A day was spent in examining the neighbourhood of Oswego, and on the morning of the 18^th the commissioners proceeded on foot up the bank of the river for five miles, in order to facilitate the passage of the boats up the rapids. Re-embarking, Three River Point was reached at two o’clock on the 19^th, and the Seneca River entered. This was found to be a dead and sluggish stream until its confluence with the Cayuga outlet was passed, whence there was a rise of fifty feet into the Seneca Lake. Geneva was not reached until the afternoon of the 24^th, and at the close of the twentieth day after leaving Schenectady. Deducting the three days spent in the deviation to Oswego, seventeen days were spent in the voyage, which, as it was performed in light vessels, may be considered as giving less than the average time of passing over this distance by the existing water communications. The same distance was performed by the packet-boats on the canal in thirty-six hours, and by the lighter class of freight-boats it is passed over in about fifty hours. The latter carry with ease from forty to fifty tons, while the capacity of some of the heavy boats, even before the enlargement of the canal was commenced, reached nearly to a hundred tons.

This voyage has been dwelt upon at some length, because it affords a standard of comparison whereby the great advantages derived from the Erie Canal, in the facility and cheapness of transportation, may be conveniently illustrated.

It is unnecessary to enter into the detail of the remainder of the journey. Clinton, with his party, proceeded to the Niagara River, which they crossed to Newark in Canada, visited the falls, and returned by the ridge road, then newly cut through the woods. On returning to Geneva, a deviation from the direct route was made to Ithaca, at the head of Lake Cayuga, whence the state road was joined at Auburn. Finally, on the 19^th August, Schenectady was reached, and, after a delay of a day in Albany, Clinton returned by the steamboat to New-York.

The feasibility of a canal to Lake Erie, in a direct course, was necessarily a subject of discussion at the several meetings of the board to which we have alluded. The relative advantages of the direct route, and that by the way of Lake Ontario, were also canvassed. Clinton appears to have avoided any positive expression of his views until the meeting at Chippeway, when he had, by personal information and examination of the surveys of Judge Geddes, satisfied himself that a canal of the ordinary character was practicable from the Hudson to Lake Erie. The practicability of the other route had long been obvious. It therefore became a question merely of policy, which ought to be adopted. On this head his decision had been made up at an early stage of the investigation. He saw, upon the proposed line from Rome to Buffalo, a country capable, by its fertility, of supporting the proposed canal; he weighed the difficulties and expense attending transshipment from vessels calculated to navigate the lakes to canal-boats; and, more than all, he dreaded that the trade of the West might be diverted to the St. Lawrence, and its growing population compelled to perform connexions in business with the British colonies.

Morris, of more sanguine temperament, had come at a much earlier period to similar conclusions, and had made up his mind that all material obstacles must give way to the Erie route. He adopted in its full extent, and without waiting for the result of the surveys, the brilliant but crude conception of Hawley. This plan he urged with all his eloquence on his colleagues at their meeting in Utica. The occurrence is thus stated in the journal of his tour kept by Clinton.

"At this meeting, the senior commissioner talked wildly. He was for breaking down the mound of Lake Erie, and letting out the waters to follow the level of the country, so as to form a sloop navigation with the Hudson, and without any aid from any other water."

However correct, then, were Morris’s views of the policy of the direct route to Lake Erie, it is evident that he had formed no practical idea of the mode in which it might be accomplished, nor did he at any subsequent period reduce his soaring imagination to the level of common sense.

To the policy of the direct route to Lake Erie all the commissioners save one assented, and at the final meeting at Chippeway Clinton was compelled to combat on the one hand the magnificent but impracticable project of Morris, and on the other the plausible and popular plan of adhering as closely as possible to the natural course of the waters. The expense of constructing a canal from Albany to Oswego, and another around the Falls of Niagara, would have been much less than that of a direct canal to Lake Erie, and would therefore have been more certainly within reach of the resources of the state; and had the sole object of the navigation been that of forming a communication with the shores of the upper lakes, the argument would have been unanswerable.

Had this opinion prevailed, the consequences would have been disastrous to the State of New-York; the current of population which has been borne on the waters of the canal to every point within its reach, and which has made the region west of Rome the richest agricultural district in the Union, would have flowed onward to Lake Erie, and even more distant regions, to which the Ontario route would have given a more ready access.

On the other hand, had the scheme of Morris been the only one submitted to the public, its utter want of practicability would have defeated the chance of any farther action. At this point, then, do the paramount services of Clinton in the canal policy of the state commence. Up to this moment he had been an efficient and ardent friend of a system of internal improvement, but had waited for personal inspection to satisfy himself of its practicability and importance. He from this moment took the lead in all the measures which were necessary for its accomplishment.

Clinton’s views were sanctioned by the majority of his colleagues, but he saw the importance of securing a unanimous report. It was believed by some of the commissioners that Morris had been convinced by the arguments of Clinton; at all events, the subject had been fully discussed in his presence. By courtesy, Morris, as senior commissioner, was entitled to the right of drawing the report of the board, unless a difference of opinion had arisen of sufficient moment to have justified his colleagues in intrusting that duty to another. Had this been done, three adverse reports would in all probability have been presented, and the popular arguments in favour of the Ontario and Niagara route would have been brought forward. By leaving Morris in possession of his prescriptive right, this danger would be avoided; and it was believed that any objection which might be raised to Morris’s individual views would be obviated by the exhibition of the surveys and practical conclusions of Judge Geddes.

The report of the board was, in consequence, drawn by Morris, and well sustained his veteran reputation for ability as a writer, and for enlarged views as a statesman. It established the practicability of an inland canal, and illustrated its advantages in a masterly manner. But it also included the idea of creating an artificial river from the elevation of Lake Erie to the Hudson, and a digression into a long exposition of the facilities and advantages of an inclined plane canal, in which rivers and lakes were to be passed by aqueducts, and valleys by mounds. This plan, which, in the hands of Hawley, who argued from imperfect knowledge of the country, and from a general view of its qualifications, was a brilliant conception, became ridiculous when contrasted with the actual levels. From these it appeared that, besides minor obstacles, the wide and deep chasm of the Cayuga Lake fell so far below the level of a uniform slope, that it would require to be passed by a mound and aqueduct, which, if not impossible in the nature of things, was rendered so by the enormous expenditure it must have occasioned.

On the meeting of the commissioners to consider the report, these objections were apparent. Motives of delicacy, and the personal respect they all bore to Morris, prevented any proposition being made for striking out this portion of it. Some of the commissioners were, in fact, inclined to leave it to be signed by Morris as senior commissioner, and thus avoid fixing their names to it. Clinton, however, urged the importance of the appearance of unanimity, and pointed out the fact that, while Morris had not refrained from expressing his own opinions, he had, at the same time, avoided committing his colleagues as sanctioning them, and had fairly declared that there was room for difference of opinion. He had also referred to the surveys, whence the true state of the case might be at once inferred by all who should with intelligence examine the subject.

"In respect to the inland navigation," says the report, "from the lakes to the Hudson River, the commissioners beg leave to refer for information to the annexed reports and maps of Mr. James Geddes, employed at their request by the surveyor-general. From these it is evident that such navigation is practicable. Whether the route here sketched out will hereafter be pursued, whether a better way may not be found, and other questions subordinate to these, can only be resolved at a future time, when an intelligent man, regularly bred to this business, shall, under the direction of those on whom the public may think proper to devote this superintendence, have made a more exact and careful scrutiny than the time and means of the commissioners would permit."

As a farther concession to the opinions of his colleagues, the report says, "Preliminary points are to be adjusted, and of these the first is, Whether it is be made for sloops or barges. The expense of the former will, it is believed, be at least double that of the latter. Another question, Whether it shall be carried along an inclined plane, or by a line ascending and descending, must be directed by a comparison of the expense and of the utility each way."

If Morris had taken advantage of his position as canal commissioner to place his individual opinions in a prominent light, he had made no unfair use of his seniority in suppressing those of his colleagues. They, on the other hand, were justified in trusting that the public would not accept or reject a scheme of so much importance without a close and deliberate examination; and Clinton was a believer in the final triumph of good sense in all questions fairly submitted to the people.

Clinton was justified in the course he took on this occasion by the result. The report excited a prodigious sensation. There were some who were qualified to judge, and who, aware of the practicability of a canal to Lake Erie upon ordinary principles, regretted that the project of the inclined plane had ever been broached. These received the report with a feeling of disappointment. It did not alter their well-founded belief, but it caused them to fear that a scheme practicable in itself might be defeated by the ridicule which they saw must be cast upon the stupendous project of Morris. Those who were also qualified to judge of the plan, but were as yet unacquainted with the circumstances, were not seduced by the eloquence of Morris from an examination of the documents appended to the report; and, on mature deliberation, became satisfied that a plan of less imposing magnificence was feasible.

At that time, however, the state numbered but few who possessed the knowledge which would have enabled them to examine such a question with intelligence. The multitude was therefore divided into two great parties; the one was carried away by the eloquence of Morris, and saw in the splendour of the enterprise he proposed, not only a source of wealth to the state, but of honour in the execution of a work more grand in conception than Babylonian majesty had dreamed of, or Roman energy had accomplished; the other revolted at the scheme, as one far in advance of the time, and likely to be ruinous by loading the state with an inextinguishable debt. The report thus afforded ample room for discussion; and when, by an exhibition of a plan founded on sound principles, all the objections which had been raised against that of Morris had been obviated, it was too late to have recourse to new arguments against it; and many of those who on the first view had opposed the canal, became converts to its practicability and utility when they saw that the arguments which had been used against it had ceased to be applicable.

This first report, then, had the merit, from its very extravagance, of exciting the public attention in a degree far greater than could a paper containing no more than an accurate exposition of the facts ascertained by the commissioners, and the proposal of a plan founded on the experience of other countries. Morris therefore rendered an essential service to the cause of internal improvement, not merely by his honest but mistaken zeal in its behalf, but by provoking discussions which a man of less genius but of more practical talent would have avoided.

The report was presented to the Legislature in due course; and on its reception, Clinton, who now prepared to take the lead in all measures calculated to further this great scheme of internal improvement, brought a bill into the Senate for the purpose of continuing the investigations, and preparing for the execution of the project. By this bill, which became a law, the same commissioners were continued, and the members of the board increased by the addition of Robert Fulton and Robert L. Livingston. Fifteen thousand dollars were appropriated for farther surveys; and the commissioners were authorized to apply to the general government, or to those of any of the individual states, for assistance in the accomplishment of the canal.

In compliance with this law, full and complete surveys were made under the direction of the commissioners, and a report was made in 1812 to the Legislature; in this the inclined plane was formally abandoned, and a plan presented identical in its great features with that which was actually executed. The intervention of the war at this epoch put an end to all active proceedings, and the action of the Legislature on this report will fall with more propriety into a subsequent portion of this memoir.

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Transcribed from the original text and html prepared by Bill Carr, last updated 12/10/99.