The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. From the book The Making of America, published by National Geographic Society © 2002, National Geographic Books other
If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website. If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked. The Panic of 1819 alerted many to the need for more effective transportation of goods. Most rivers west of the Appalachians ran north to south, so they could not connect western farmers with the eastern markets where their goods were sold. The National Road was the primary connection between east and west, and it advanced further west each year. In addition, between 1815 and 1825 seven northern states built toll roads, or turnpikes. However, this did not solve the problem of transportation. Horse-drawn wagons had very limited capacity and roads were very expensive to maintain. Thus, interest turned toward the concept of water transportation. In 1807, Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston introduced the first steamboat, known as the Clermont, on the Hudson River. Steamboats quickly caught on and became the preferred mode of water transportation. Between 1817 and 1820 the number of steamboats in America jumped from 17 to 69, and by 1855, the number had reached 727. Before the advent of the steamboat, flatboats, sometimes little more than rafts, carried goods down the Mississippi River. There, the boats were broken up and sold as firewood because they could not make the trip back upstream. The return voyage was then made on foot or horseback. Keelboats, like flatboats except in that they had a rudder, could make the return journey upstream, but progress was extremely slow. Steamboats moved about four times as fast as keelboats upstream. The speed and versatility of the steamboat, augmented by a number of important functional improvements made over the years, established the steamboat an indispensable method of trade for all seasons. As steamboats gained popularity, enthusiasm grew for the building of canals. In 1816, the US had only 100 miles of canals. However, the invention of the steamboat and the resources of the west convinced many that canals were a necessary connection between the Mississippi-Ohio waterways with the Great Lakes, and thereby the East. The first major canal project, the Erie Canal, spanned 363 miles and connected Buffalo and Albany, New York. Through the Erie Canal, New York City was linked, by the Hudson River in the East, and the Great Lakes in the West, all the way to Ohio. The growing canal system linked the major trading and manufacturing centers of the nation. Shipping costs dropped dramatically. Average freight costs from Buffalo to New York City fell from 19 cents per ton per mile in 1817 to 2 to 3 cents during the 1830s. As the canal boom slowed in the late 1830s, the railroad boom kicked into gear. By 1840, about 3,000 miles of track had been lain in America and investment in railroads had outstripped that in canals. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, chartered in 1828, successfully competed with the Erie Canal for business. Massachusetts, unable to connect to the Erie Canal due to obstructing mountains, chartered the Boston and Worcester Railroad in 1831 and the Western Railroad from Worcester to Albany in 1833. Railroads were faster, cheaper, and had greater range than canals, but still grew only gradually at first. The transportation revolution produced the rapid growth of towns and cities. In 1820, 6.1 percent of Americans lived in places with populations of greater than 2,500 people, and only New York City and Philadelphia had more than 100,000 people. By 1860, however, nearly 20 percent of the population lived in places of 2,500 or more, and New York City's population had climbed from 124,000 to 800,000. The West experienced dramatic changes as well. Before 1830, all of the major cities in the West were on main rivers. However, the canal system heightened the importance of lake cities such as Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago. Between 1830 and 1840, the portion of westerners living along rivers dropped from 75 to 20 percent. Steamboats quickly became a symbol of the West. As such, westerners continuously sought to improve and decorate the boats. In competition for passengers, they began to offer luxurious cabins and built ornate lounges on board. The elegance of these steamboats served as a reassurance to westerners that they were not the primitive backwoods hicks painted by the eastern press. However, most steamboat passengers did not have access to this elegance. The onboard saloons were open only to those who had purchased expensive cabin passage. Passengers who could afford only deck passage slept in dirty, crowded conditions on a cotton bale if they could find one, on the floor if they could not. OpenStaxCollege [latexpage]
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
Americans in the early 1800s were a people on the move, as thousands left the eastern coastal states for opportunities in the West. Unlike their predecessors, who traveled by foot or wagon train, these settlers had new transport options. Their trek was made possible by the construction of roads, canals, and railroads, projects that required the funding of the federal government and the states. New technologies, like the steamship and railroad lines, had brought about what historians call the transportation revolution. States competed for the honor of having the most advanced transport systems. People celebrated the transformation of the wilderness into an orderly world of improvement demonstrating the steady march of progress and the greatness of the republic. In 1817, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina looked to a future of rapid internal improvements, declaring, “Let us . . . bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.” Americans agreed that internal transportation routes would promote progress. By the eve of the Civil War, the United States had moved beyond roads and canals to a well-established and extensive system of railroads.
One key part of the transportation revolution was the widespread building of roads and turnpikes. In 1811, construction began on the Cumberland Road, a national highway that provided thousands with a route from Maryland to Illinois. The federal government funded this important artery to the West, beginning the creation of a transportation infrastructure for the benefit of settlers and farmers. Other entities built turnpikes, which (as today) charged fees for use. New York State, for instance, chartered turnpike companies that dramatically increased the miles of state roads from one thousand in 1810 to four thousand by 1820. New York led the way in building turnpikes. Canal mania swept the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Promoters knew these artificial rivers could save travelers immense amounts of time and money. Even short waterways, such as the two-and-a-half-mile canal going around the rapids of the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky, proved a huge leap forward, in this case by opening a water route from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. The preeminent example was the Erie Canal ([link]), which linked the Hudson River, and thus New York City and the Atlantic seaboard, to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Valley. With its central location, large harbor, and access to the hinterland via the Hudson River, New York City already commanded the lion’s share of commerce. Still, the city’s merchants worried about losing ground to their competitors in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Their search for commercial advantage led to the dream of creating a water highway connecting the city’s Hudson River to Lake Erie and markets in the West. The result was the Erie Canal. Chartered in 1817 by the state of New York, the canal took seven years to complete. When it opened in 1825, it dramatically decreased the cost of shipping while reducing the time to travel to the West. Soon $15 million worth of goods (more than $200 million in today’s money) was being transported on the 363-mile waterway every year.
Although the Erie Canal was primarily used for commerce and trade, in Pittsford on the Erie Canal (1837), George Harvey portrays it in a pastoral, natural setting. Why do you think the painter chose to portray the canal this way?
Explore the Erie Canal on ErieCanal.org via an interactive map. Click throughout the map for images of and artifacts from this historic waterway. The success of the Erie Canal led to other, similar projects. The Wabash and Erie Canal, which opened in the early 1840s, stretched over 450 miles, making it the longest canal in North America ([link]). Canals added immensely to the country’s sense of progress. Indeed, they appeared to be the logical next step in the process of transforming wilderness into civilization.
This map (a) shows the route taken by the Wabash and Erie Canal through the state of Indiana. The canal began operation in 1843 and boats operated on it until the 1870s. Sections have since been restored, as shown in this 2007 photo (b) from Delphi, Indiana.
Visit Southern Indiana Trails to see historic photographs of the Wabash and Erie Canal: As with highway projects such as the Cumberland Road, many canals were federally sponsored, especially during the presidency of John Quincy Adams in the late 1820s. Adams, along with Secretary of State Henry Clay, championed what was known as the American System, part of which included plans for a broad range of internal transportation improvements. Adams endorsed the creation of roads and canals to facilitate commerce and develop markets for agriculture as well as to advance settlement in the West.
Starting in the late 1820s, steam locomotives began to compete with horse-drawn locomotives. The railroads with steam locomotives offered a new mode of transportation that fascinated citizens, buoying their optimistic view of the possibilities of technological progress. The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad was the first to begin service with a steam locomotive. Its inaugural train ran in 1831 on a track outside Albany and covered twelve miles in twenty-five minutes. Soon it was traveling regularly between Albany and Schenectady. Toward the middle of the century, railroad construction kicked into high gear, and eager investors quickly formed a number of railroad companies. As a railroad grid began to take shape, it stimulated a greater demand for coal, iron, and steel. Soon, both railroads and canals crisscrossed the states ([link]), providing a transportation infrastructure that fueled the growth of American commerce. Indeed, the transportation revolution led to development in the coal, iron, and steel industries, providing many Americans with new job opportunities.
This 1853 map of the “Empire State” shows the extent of New York’s canal and railroad networks. The entire country’s transportation infrastructure grew dramatically during the first half of the nineteenth century.
The expansion of roads, canals, and railroads changed people’s lives. In 1786, it had taken a minimum of four days to travel from Boston, Massachusetts, to Providence, Rhode Island. By 1840, the trip took half a day on a train. In the twenty-first century, this may seem intolerably slow, but people at the time were amazed by the railroad’s speed. Its average of twenty miles per hour was twice as fast as other available modes of transportation. By 1840, more than three thousand miles of canals had been dug in the United States, and thirty thousand miles of railroad track had been laid by the beginning of the Civil War. Together with the hundreds of steamboats that plied American rivers, these advances in transportation made it easier and less expensive to ship agricultural products from the West to feed people in eastern cities, and to send manufactured goods from the East to people in the West. Without this ability to transport goods, the market revolution would not have been possible. Rural families also became less isolated as a result of the transportation revolution. Traveling circuses, menageries, peddlers, and itinerant painters could now more easily make their way into rural districts, and people in search of work found cities and mill towns within their reach.
Which of the following was not a factor in the transportation revolution?
the steam-powered locomotive the canal system the combustion engine the government-funded road system
What was the significance of the Cumberland Road?
It gave settlers a quicker way to move west. It reduced the time it took to move goods from New York Harbor to Lake Erie. It improved trade from the Port of New Orleans. It was the first paved road.
What were the benefits of the transportation revolution?
The Cumberland Road made transportation to the West easier for new settlers. The Erie Canal facilitated trade with the West by connecting the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Railroads shortened transportation times throughout the country, making it easier and less expensive to move people and goods. Cumberland Road a national highway that provided thousands with a route from Maryland to Illinois Erie Canal a canal that connected the Hudson River to Lake Erie and markets in the West Mohawk and Hudson Railroad the first steam-powered locomotive railroad in the United States |
What was used to transport goods and used by settlers to move west?
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