The Erie Canal by Ralph K. Andrist

Author:Ralph K. Andrist [Ralph K. Andrist]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History/United States/19th Century
ISBN: 9781612309477
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2016-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

“Like An Old Brass Kettle”

In the meantime, De Witt Clinton might have been getting things done on the construction of the canal, but he was still having his troubles elsewhere. In 1822, the anti-canal factions combined against him were so strong that he did not receive the nomination for governor. New York’s new governor was Joseph C. Yates, the former State Supreme Court justice, who on the Council of Revision had nearly succeeded in blocking the Erie Canal in 1817. Clinton had asserted that “if I had been a candidate, I would have been re-elected governor.” But Yates’s landslide victory – backed by 98 percent of voters – seemed to signal a shift in public sentiment regarding the Erie Canal.

Now, opposition was coming not only from politicians and crackpots, but many of the taxpayers as well. The costs of the canal were mounting frighteningly. Several millions of dollars had been spent, and some people were convinced that when the canal was finished, it would never pay for itself. Surely it would be better to drop it now, some believed, than to go on eternally paying its debts. These doubts, which arose from delays caused by the difficulties in digging the eastern and western sections of the canal, could only be cured by more progress and unequivocal results.

Still as canal commissioner, Clinton continued to push the project that had become the one absorbing interest of his life. Referring to this determination, a friend gave a toast, which Clinton preserved in his diary: “Like an old brass kettle . . . the harder he is rubbed, the brighter he will shine.”

Aware that time was growing short, Clinton worked feverishly. He urged his men on, settled problems, and saw that equipment and materials were on hand when and where they were needed. Regularly, from time to time, sluice gates leading from reservoirs and feeder channels were opened to let water into still another length of canal. By midsummer of 1822, the Erie was carrying water all along the 280 miles of its projected route. And just before the fall freeze-up put an end to work that year, boats were also operating between Little Falls and Schenectady. Clinton’s Ditch had become the biggest ditch anyone had ever seen.

But by then, Clinton’s friends no longer made up the majority on the Erie Canal Commission. Through political maneuvering, the Tammany Hall faction of Democrats – called Bucktails after their insignia, which featured a deer’s tail – had taken control. This shift started in 1818, when Joseph Ellicott resigned from the commission, citing poor health. Ellicott was a Quaker, surveyor, lawyer, politician, and one of the Erie Canal’s strongest supporters. To replace him, Clinton nominated another friend, Ephraim Hart. But the Bucktails blocked Hart’s appointment by presenting their own nominee, Henry Seymour, who won the New York Senate’s confirmation by a margin of one vote.

In 1920, New York legislators passed the “Two Million Bill,” which appropriated $1 million over the next two years to canal construction. Attached to the bill was a provision requiring one member to be added to the canal commission.

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