President Henry Clay announced before Congress the official
opening of a project a lifetime in the making: a canal to allow travel by water
from the Atlantic to the Pacific without having to navigate southward across
the equator. Explorers had searched for a Northwest Passage over centuries,
discovering many of the rivers that would later evolve into colonial
settlements. While a route by sea was theoretically possible north of Canada,
the extreme cold froze even seawater, and several expeditions perished before
enormous icebreakers proved capable of traveling there in the twentieth
century.
Clay’s American System pursued a different tactic: if a
Northwest Passage could not be found, why not build one? Canal-building boomed
in the 1820s after the successful completion of the Erie Canal across northwest
New York. Opponents called it “Clinton’s Ditch” after the governor’s pursuit of
an outrageously expensive, 350-mile canal that required eight years of digging.
After its opening in 1825, however, the passage between the Hudson River and
the Great Lakes proved to be an exponential boon to the economy as well as a
focus of westward settlement. Ohio boomed and soon built its own canal to
complete an inland waterway from New York to New Orleans.
Henry Clay had radically encouraged transportation
improvements as Secretary of State under John Quincy Adams with projects like
the National Road and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The Democratic-Republican
Party from the Era of Good Feelings began to fracture over the question of
federal authority and states’ rights, the latter championed by southerners who
felt they were missing out on major investments, such as John C. Calhoun’s
South Carolina. Adams took a narrow victory for his reelection in 1828, mainly
from Clay’s efforts to win votes in the Ohio Valley. Clay determined to have his
own victory in 1832, but to do so, he needed to grab attention from the
expansion-minded South.
Clay campaigned with promises to boost settlement through
the West by bridging the Missouri and Snake rivers into a Northwest Passage with
a system of canals. New Orleans seized on the idea, and campaigners supported
Kentuckian Clay as a fellow westerner rather than an untrustworthy northerner. The
city had grown to become the fifth largest in the United States and looked to grow
beyond its previous claim to fame in the heroism of General Andrew Jackson, who
perished in the fight to defend the city from British seizure in 1815. It would
serve as the southern gateway to the Pacific, drawing in trade from the
European ships frequenting the Caribbean.
Once Clay was elected, the problem became how to build the
canal in a land that was mostly unexplored. The area around the nearby Yellowstone
River lay in legend among trappers as a place of boiling mud, which John Colter
called “fire and brimstone” when he journeyed through it after departing the
Louis and Clark Expedition, which went northward as it struggled to find a way
across the Continental Divide. Clay’s expeditions discovered that the legends were
accurate with numerous geothermal springs including geysers. To the west, they
discovered a narrowing of the Rockies that would allow for a channel to be cut
south from the Madison River branch of the Missouri to reach the long, flat
valley along the Snake River, joining the Columbia River before pouring into
the Pacific.
Clay’s engineering teams faced an enormous challenge of
actually cutting through the rock. It was infeasible to cut very deeply,
meaning the crews would need to build over 100 locks that would bring
riverboats up and down the steep inclines. The nearby strange land around the
Yellowstone headwaters proved to be a divine gift. Ingredients for blasting
powder such as sulfur and nitrates were readily available from the geological
formations as well as ample wood for charcoal, leading to the largest gunpowder
manufactory west of the Mississippi. A miraculous 136-square-mile lake rested
above the canal-building area, and workers cut a controlled channel to bring
water down to readily refill the locks.
Although there were many who decried the enormous expense of
the Northwest Passage Canal, which would be billions in today’s dollars, most investors
were eager to contribute. The National Bank shouldered much of the loans, which
saw investment from foreign interests eager to save months of travel time to
the west. Clay’s administration sold land long the rivers at high prices,
easing the federal expenditure. Towns quickly sprang up not just to support the
workforce but also in anticipation of heavy river traffic in the years to come.
Speculation ran wild, popping the bubble in the major economic downturn in
1837, coinciding with Clay’s departure from the presidency as his American
System policy had worn thin.
Clay played up the economic crash, blaming his Democratic
rivals squarely, even though that was a gross over-simplification. The
simplification did lend to easy slogan, and Clay’s reelection in 1840 was a
sure thing based on demands to make the country rich. Despite the international
praise at the opening of the canal, it soon became obvious that the system had
to close down in winter due to bitter cold freezing the channels and burying
them in snow during blizzards. Clay did not seek reelection in 1844, nor did
anyone ask him to.
The Northwest Passage proved to be a mixed success. It did
prompt massive settlement westward, leading to statehood for territories in the
Great Plains and past the Rockies. Feeling the growing pressure of American
settlers, Great Britain pushed for clarity on the boundary of Oregon Country,
which was finally agreed to at 49 degrees with American claim to Vancouver
Island. Tensions continued to build with Mexico, whose own designs connecting
the Pacific and Gulf via a canal between the Gila and Rio Grande rivers had been
halted by political instability and the issue of building a supply of water in
the desert to fill the necessary locks. This would soon lead to war.
Although impressive in its time, technology would put an end
to the Northwest Passage Canal when train travel took over within two decades.
The locks were desperately expensive, and soon they became nothing more than
areas for recreation and tourism in a radically developed area that would
suffer terrible environmental damage for decades to come. Following the
downturn of American manufacturing, which surged in the region until after the
Second World War, the area declined into what many called the Western Rust
Belt.
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