The Ohio Legislature in 1822 authorized the survey of all possible routes for canals which would give Ohio an outlet for its produce on Lake Erie.The three wheat zones which have been mentioned were favored in the proposed construction of two canals which, together, should satisfy the need of increased transportation: the Ohio Canal to connect Portsmouth on the Ohio River with Cleveland on Lake Erie and to traverse the richest parts of the Scioto and Muskingum valleys, and to the west the Miami Canal to pierce the fruitful Miami and Maumee valleys and join Cincinnati with Toledo.De Witt Clinton, the presiding genius of the Erie Canal, was invited to Ohio to play godfather to these northward arteries which should ultimately swell the profits of the commission merchants of New York City, and amid the cheers of thousands he lifted the first spadefuls of earth in each undertaking.
The Ohio Canal, which was opened in 1833, had a marked effect upon the commerce of Lake Erie.Before that date the largest amount of wheat obtained from Cleveland by a Buffalo firm had been a thousand bushels; but in the first year of its operation the Ohio Canal brought to the village of Cleveland over a quarter of a million bushels of wheat, fifty thousand barrels of flour, and over a million pounds of butter and lard.In return, the markets of the world sent into Ohio by canal in this same year thirty thousand barrels of salt and above five million pounds of general merchandise.
Ever since the time when the Erie Canal was begun, Canadian statesmen had been alive to the strong bid New York was making for the trade of the Great Lakes.Their answer to the Erie Canal was the Welland Canal, built between 1824 and 1832 and connecting Lake Erie with Lake Ontario by a series of twenty-seven locks with a drop of three hundred feet in twenty-six miles.This undertaking prepared the way for the subsequent opening of the St.Lawrence canal system (183 miles) and of the Rideau system by way of the Ottawa River (246 miles).There was thus provided an ocean outlet to the north, although it was not until 1856 that an American vessel reached London by way of the St.Lawrence.
With the Hudson and the St.Lawrence in the East thus competing for the trade of the Great Lakes, it is not surprising that the call of the Mississippi for improved highways was presently heard.From the period of the War of 1812 onward the position of the Mississippi River in relation to Lake Michigan was often referred to as holding possibilities of great importance in the development of Western commerce.Already the old portage-path links between the Fox and Wisconsin and the Chicago and Illinois rivers had been worn deep by the fur traders of many generations, and with the dawning of the new era enthusiasts of Illinois were pointing out the strategic position of the latter route for a great trade between Lake Michigan and the Gulf of Mexico.Thus the wave of enthusiasm for canal construction that had swept New York and Ohio now reached Indiana and Illinois.Indian ownership of land in the latter State for a moment seemed to block the promotion of the proposed Illinois and Michigan Canal, but a handsome grant of a quarter of a million acres by the Federal Government in 1827 came as a signal recognition of the growing importance of the Northwest; and an appropriation for the lighting and improving of the harbor of the little village of Chicago was hailed by ardent promoters as sure proof that the wedding of Lake Michigan and the Mississippi was but a matter of months.
All the difficulties encountered by the advocates of earlier works of this character, in the valleys of the Potomac, the Susquehanna, and the Mohawk, were the portion of these dogged promoters of Illinois.Here, as elsewhere, there were rival routes and methods of construction, opposition of jealous sections not immediately benefited, estimates which had to be reconsidered and augmented, and so on.The land grants pledged to pay the bonds were at first of small value, and their advance in price depended on the success of the canal itself, which could not be built unless the State underwrote the whole enterprise--if the lands were not worth the bonds.Thus the argument ran in a circle, and no one could foresee the splendid traffic and receipts from tolls that would result from the completed canal.
The commissioners in charge of the project performed one interesting service in these early days by putting Chicago on the map; but the two terminals, Ottawa on the Illinois and Chicago on Lake Michigan--both plotted in 1830--were very largely figures of speech at that time.The day of miracles was at hand, however, for the little town of one hundred people at the foot of Lake Michigan.The purchase of the lands of the Potawatomies, the Black Hawk War in 1832, which brought steamboats to Chicago for the first time, and the decision of Illinois in 1836 to pledge her good name in favor of the Illinois and Michigan Canal made Chicago a city of four thousand people by the panic year of 1837.
