Cities Created by the Canal

Peter Bernstein’s Wedding of the Waters gives a detailed account of the unprecedented engineering marvel that is the Erie Canal. Once constructed, the Canal effected virtually every aspect of American life. One of the most fascinating, though not surprising, results of the economic opportunities presented by the canal was the rapid expansion of numerous towns across central New York. Rochester provides an interesting example of one such town created by the Canal.
Bernstein mentions Rochester in two very separate contexts. First, he comments on the incredible aqueduct that crossed the Genessee River. This incredible crossing was more then 3 city blocks long and strong enough to support several tons of water; it was the largest single structure along the entire canal. The construction of the canal through Rochester illustrates the scale of this project. But there is more to Rochester then merely the impressive engineering of the canal. As a result of the canal, Rochester underwent an economic boom that caused the expansion and industrialization of massive proportions.
In 1809 Rochester was virtually unheard of and largely unimportant in the context of American history. Bernstein cites a traveler who described Rochester as, "a Godforsaken place inhabited by muskrats, visited only by straggling trappers, through which neither man nor beast could gallop without fear of starvation or ague"(272). Just 27 years after the canal’s completion, Rochester’s population had ballooned to 36,000 and had become famous for its mills and factories. Rochester had become such an industrial center that into the late 20th century it was considered a major producer of American textiles and helped transform the men’s clothing industry (360). Without the Erie canal it is likely that Rochester, and many other towns in central New York that turned into industrial centers, would never have become more then a small village in the middle of wilderness.
The implications of this expansion reached many aspects of American life. Paul E. Johnson wrote a book called A Shop Keepers Millennium that places Rochester at the center of a religious revival across America in the early 19th century. Many historians agree that roots of 19th century militant American Protestantism can be found in the rapidly expanding industrial towns of Central New York. Militant Protestantism arose in these towns because rapid industrialization put lots of money into the hands of ambitious young men and thus created an environment that promoted heavy drinking, sexual promiscuity and gambling. Religious individuals that came in contact with these areas developed methods for Christianizing immoral individuals. These methods directly informed the abolitionist and temperance movements that swept across the norther states before the civil war. Thus the Erie Canal was a factor not only in the economics of 19th century America, but also in the most important moral debates of the era.