...When the Erie Canal, lining Lake Erie and Ontario from Albany to Buffalo in New York, had been constructed and opened in the year 1825, the economic landscape in New York would be changed forever. During the time it was built, the Industrial Revolution, adopted from the Great British movement, had shaped New England into a land of virtue and one unrecognized by the rest of the world, let alone the United States. The Erie Canal had been proven to be one of the most cogent aspects of New York’s, “rise to distinction,” throughout it’s 200 years of notable existence. It had offered many advantageous opportunities and therefore implanted growth within the colonial state as a result. Given the influx in the amount of people, workers and inventors...
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...Name Richard Brewart Jr. Date Class ★ HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY ACTIVITY 12 A Big Ditch or a Grand Canal? President Thomas Jefferson thought the idea was crazy, and in 1809 he refused to fund the project with federal money. Attempting to carve the Erie Canal through the New York wilderness was “little short of madness,” Jefferson fumed. But New York governor De Witt Clinton refused to let the plan die. He remained determined to construct the canal—making water travel from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean a reality. How would Governor Clinton carry out his plan? Clinton called on his fellow New Yorkers to fund a $7 million canal that would link Buffalo to New York City via Albany and the Hudson River. Engineers who had studied Great Britain’s canals developed the plans, and construction began in 1817. More than 3,000 workers cleared trees, leveled ground, and dug the ditch for the canal, which would cover 350 miles (563 km) and raise and lower boats nearly 600 feet (183 m) during their journey. When construction ended in 1825, the canal was an immediate success. The cost of shipping grain from Lake Erie to the Atlantic dropped from $100 to $20 a ton, and the time in transit was cut from 20 to 8 days. The Erie Canal carried such a volume that it repaid its initial cost within 12 years. Digging the Big Ditch “We are digging the Ditch through the mire; Through the mud and the slime and the mire, by heck! And the mud is our principal hire; Up our pants, in our...
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...APUSH Study Guide 8 A weak Confederacy and the Constitution, 1776-1790 Themes/Constructs: The federal Constitution represented a moderately conservative reaction against the democratilizing effects of the Revolution and the Articles of Confederation. The American Revolution was not a radical transformation like the French or Russian revolutions, but it produced political innovations and some social change in the direction of greater equality and democracy. The American Revolution did not overturn the social order, but it did produce substantial changes in social customs, political institutions, and ideas about society and government. Among the changes were the separation of church and state in some places, the abolition of slavery in the North, written political constitutions, and a shift in political power from the eastern seaboard toward the frontier. The first weak government, the Articles of Confederation, was unable to exercise real authority, although it did successfully deal with the western lands issue. The Confederation’s weakness in handling foreign policy, commerce and the Shays Rebellion spurred the movement to alter the Articles. Instead of revising the Articles, the well-off delegates to the Constitutional Convention created a charter for a whole new government. In a series of compromises, the convention produced a plan that provided for a vigorous central government, a strong executive, the protection for property, while still upholding republican...
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