1808-'10.

EFFECT OF GALLATIN'S REPORT.

475

of dollars. She might therefore, without embarrassment, draw two millions a year for ten years from the public Treasury; or, better still, set apart the proceeds of the sales of public lands.

The report was read on the sixth of April, 1808. A time less propitious could not have been chosen. The embargo had been on three months. The first and second supplementary acts had been passed. Trade and commerce were at an end; the whole frontier was in commotion; Jefferson was on the point of declaring the people of the region around Champlain to be in a state of insurrection; while the surplus of which the Secretary spoke was fast melting away. Under these circumstances the Senate did no more than order that twelve hundred copies of the report should be printed, and that six should be given to each member of Congress.

From the information thus spread broadcast during the summer, a plentiful harvest of petitions was gathered in the autumn. Every corporation which, under the plan of Gallatin, seemed even remotely entitled to aid, now made ready to seek it. The Carondelet Canal, the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, the Ohio Canal, the Susquehanna Bridge Company, the Susquehanna and Tioga Turnpike Company, the Philadelphia, Brandywine and New London Turnpike Company, sent in memorials. Toward them all the Senate was well disposed. But a different disposition ruled the House, and there not one of the Senate bills was passed.

Such action did not discourage petitions, and with the opening of the eleventh Congress a new crop came to the tables of the Vice-President and the Speaker. And now the House began to give signs of yielding. Among the men who at that session took seats for the first time in Congress was Peter Buell Porter. He was a native of New England and a graduate of Yale. He had studied law in Connecticut, had caught the rage for Western emigration, and was then engaged in the business of transportation on the Niagara frontier. He represented the western district of New York, was perfectly familiar with the peculiar needs of the people, and had studied their political and economic condition as only a man of education could. The friends to internal improvements in the Senate consulted him

freely, and it is not unlikely persuaded him to become the champion of the movement in the House. However this may be, he undertook the task, and a bill for the internal improvement of the country by-roads and canals, a bill in the making of which he had a hand, having come down from the Senate, he seized the opportunity and presented the whole subject in a fine speech. The people of the United States, he began by saying, were parted by a geographical line into two great and distinct sections: the people who dwelt on the Atlantic slope of the Alleghanies and were made up of merchants, manufacturers, and agriculturists, and the people who dwelt on the western slopes and were exclusively farmers. It was the fashion to assert that this mountain barrier, this diversity of occupation, and the differences of character to which they gave rise, would lead to a separation of the States at no very distant day. In his humble opinion, this very diversity, if used skilfully, would become the means of producing a closer and more intimate union of the States than ever. At that very moment the people of the West were suffering, and suffering badly, for the want of a market. There was no vent for their surplus produce at home. All were farmers and produced the same articles with the same ease. Now, this want of a market had already done harm not only to the industry, but also to the morals of the people. Such was the fertility of their farms that half their time spent in labor was sufficient to produce enough to satisfy their wants. To produce more there was no incentive, for they knew not what to do with it. The other half of their time was therefore spent in idleness and dissipation. No question, surely, of greater importance could possibly come before the House than the question: How can this evil be removed? How can a market, and an incentive to labor, be provided for the people of the West? His answer was, by a canal from the Mohawk to Lake Ontario; a canal around the falls of Niagara; a canal from the Cuyahoga to the Muskingum; and another past the falls of the Ohio at Louisville.

The first result of such a system of inland navigation would be a fall in the cost of transportation. This would enable farmers to send to market grain and flour now shut out by the expense of land-carriage. Wheat was one of the staples of

1810.

PORTER ON INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.

477

the lake country, and was grown there with greater certainty and in greater perfection than in any other part of the United States. Yet wheat was selling on the lakes for fifty cents per bushel. This depression was due solely to the fact that it cost one dollar a bushel to send it to New York. Let a canal be cut from Lake Ontario to the Mohawk, and the cost of moving would fall to twenty-five cents a bushel, while the price on the lakes would rise to one dollar. But it cost the farmer from thirty to forty cents to grow a bushel of wheat. When he sold it for fifty cents his profit was, therefore, but ten cents. When he sold it for a dollar, his profit would be sixty cents, an increase of six hundred per

cent.

Then would the farmer be able to pay for his land. The people who had settled on the public domain were indebted to the Government to the amount of several millions of dollars. Without a market they could never free themselves from debt. Without internal improvements they could never reach a market, and without the help of Congress there could never be internal improvements. Neglect this opportunity to secure the affections of the Western people, refuse to extend to them the benefits their situation so strongly demanded, and they would, some day, accost the Government in language higher than the Constitution. Let them see millions expended for the encouragement of commerce, while constitutional doubts were expressed concerning the right to expend one cent for the advancement of agriculture; let them see banks established for the accommodation of the merchant, but no canals dug for the accommodation of the farmer, and they would very soon take possession of their country and with physical force defy all the tax-gatherers that could be sent against them. If they were to be attached to the Union they must be attached through their interests. If the Government shunned all communication with them save that which sprung from the relation of debtor and creditor, let no man doubt that this relationship would very speedily be ended. When Porter had finished his speech he moved for a committee to consider the fitness of appropriating land, or the proceeds thereof, to building roads and canals of national importance. The House, without a

division, agreed, and appointed a committee of twenty.* From them came a bill essentially the same as one which, not many weeks before, had been reported in the Senate. In substance, this bill provided that the Government should take one half of the capital stock of any corporation which had been, or which might be, chartered to dig any of the canals or build any of the roads suggested by Gallatin. Having done this much, Congress would do no more, and the session passed without action. Nor was the following session more fruitful of results. The Senate made a land grant to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, refused a grant to the Havre de Grace bridge, and ordered a subscription to the stock of the Ohio Canal. But again the House would do nothing, and the eleventh Congress was in turn beset with petitions, old and

new.

Twenty years before, in the early days of the rage for canals, Pennsylvania had chartered two companies. One was to join the waters of the Schuylkill and Delaware. The other was to construct a canal from the Schuylkill to the Susquehanna. Each had raised money; each had made surveys; each had bought land, dug some miles of trench, become embarrassed, and fallen into decay. From this condition the directors and stockowners were suddenly roused by the report of Gallatin in 1807. Regarding this report as a pledge of Federal aid,‡ the Legislature of Pennsylvania united the two companies in one, called the new corporation the Union Canal Company of Pennsylvania, and gave it power to extend its route from the Susquehanna to Lake Erie. As soon as the new charter was secured, the affairs of the old companies were put in order, and Congress asked to help on the enterprise. But, of all beggars, the sturdiest, the most unblushing was the State of New York. There, too, after years of effort on the part of individuals, the State was roused to activity by the report of Gallatin. Encouraged by the near prospect of Federal aid, the Legislature instructed a commission to explore a route for

* Annals of Congress, 1809-'10, February 9, 1810, p. 1401.

Memorial of the President and Managers of the Union Canal Company. Annals of Congress, 1811, 1812, pp. 2159-2161.

+ Ibid.

1811-'12.

THE ERIE CANAL.

479

Con

inland navigation from the Hudson to Lakes Erie and Ontario.* The commission reported † and the Legislature promptly passed an act to provide for the improvement of the internal navigation of the State. In it nine well-known men were named canal commissioners.# Among the many duties assigned them was that of applying to Congress and the Legislatures of the neighboring States for aid and co-operation in the undertaking. The answers were not encouraging. Tennessee instructed her senators and requested her representatives to vote for congressional aid. New Jersey was deeply interested in the canal, but could not help it herself, and saw no reason for asking the Federal Government to do so. necticut thought it inexpedient to act on the request. Vermont put off consideration. Massachusetts and Ohio followed the example of Tennessee. The acting Governor and the judges of Michigan Territory did not approve of the route. The special committee sent to Washington to lay the application before Congress reported failure. Madison they found troubled with constitutional scruples. Gallatin thought land might be given, but not money. Some congressmen thought the scheme too vast; some were jealous of New York; some were eager for a constitutional amendment giving Congress power to charter banks and build canals without consulting the States. In the end New York received nothing. The Senate did not act. The House, taking up the memorials of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, of the Union Canal, of the commissioners from New York, declared that the state of the country was not such as to justify grants of land or gifts of money for the purpose of building canals. Though incensed by the refusal of land, the commissioners were not disheartened, and recommended the Legislature to borrow money abroad and begin the work without delay. I

*

Appointed by joint resolutions, March 13-15, 1810.

+ Report of the Commissioners, etc., Albany, 1811. Act of April 8, 1811.

#Gouverneur Morris, Stephen Van Rensselaer, De Witt Clinton, Simeon De Witt, William North, Thomas Eddy, Peter B. Porter, Robert R. Livingston, Robert Fulton.

Report of the commissioners appointed by an State of New York, etc., passed April 8, 1811, etc.

act of the Legislature of the Albany, 1812.