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The Gamut Archives Publications Cleveland State University EngagedScholarship@CSU The Gamut Archives Publications Fall 1983 The Gamut: A Journal of Ideas and Information, No. 10, Fall 1983 Cleveland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/gamut_archives Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Recommended Citation Cleveland State University, "The Gamut: A Journal of Ideas and Information, No. 10, Fall 1983" (1983). The Gamut Archives. 8. https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/gamut_archives/8 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Publications at EngagedScholarship@CSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Gamut Archives by an authorized administrator of EngagedScholarship@CSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CONTENTS OF ISSUE NO. la, FALL, 1983 Towpath to Prosperity: The Rise and Fall of Ohio's Canals, 1825-1913. Page 3. A historical account of the canals' heyday and. their signifi­ cance to the development of Ohio. (Largely the contribution of Mrs. Edith McNally of the Canal Society of Ohio.) Richard H. Swain Captain Pearl R. Nye's Ohio Canal Songs. Page 20. Music representative of the canal boat era as sung and pre­ served by the "last of the Canal Boat Captains." Barton R. Friedman Re-assassinating Lincoln. Page 35. Was Lincoln an emancipator or just another political oppor­ tunist? Friedman examines the arguments and comes to a resounding conclusion. P.K. Saha Languages People Die For. Page46 . Linguistic nationalism is a double-edged sword - danger­ ously destructive, yet a necessary stage in the development of every people's identity. Saha puts this dual nature of language in perspective. Susan Hinton Forest Photographs. Page 57. A look at antediluvian mystery. Bruce A. Beatie The Anatomy of Best-Seller Lists. Page 60 . Contrary to the wishes of most publishers, best sellers don't live forever - they do, however, have a life of their own. Martin Kessler Mystery-Man of Music: The Orchestra Conductor. Page 71. The glamour-boy of classical music is defined for what he really is: a hard worker with a child-like joy in music. Michael J. McTighe The Limits of Voluntary Charity. Page 81 . Can voluntarism take the place of government-sponsored charity? A review of the nineteenth-century Golden Age of Voluntarism tells us welfare is here to stay. Clark C. Livensparger Collister Hutchison: Poet. Page 89 . The Cleveland poet's literary executor remembers her as an extraordinary talent who was never adequately recognized. This issue of The Gamut is printed by R.V.R., Inc. , Newbury, Ohio. Typography by the Cleveland State University Graphic Services, Marian E. Sachs, Manager of Composition Services. Published with the support of a grant from the Cleveland Foundation. The Sylph, one of the earliest passenger packets on the Ohio Canal. Towpath to Prosperity The Rise and Fall of Ohio's Canals, 1825-1913 BehNeen 1825 and 1850 the young, On February 4, 1825, the 22-year-old poor, sparsely populated state of Ohio under­ state prepared to enter the canal age, with the took a monumental civil engineering project passage by its legislature of an"Act to provide that, proportional to its resources, dwarfs any for the internal improvement of the State of comparable modern undertaking, such as the Ohio by navigable canals.'" At that time interstate highways or even the space shuttle. Ohio's entire population was well under one Itconstructed, largely by means of hand tools million; its annual revenue amounted to less and manual labor, through swamps, forests, than $200,000; thousands of square miles and rough terrain, a thousand-mile, state­ were still virtual wilderness, dotted by mea­ wide nehNork of canals requiring hundreds of ger subsistence farms accessible only over locks a nd dozens of reservoirs and aqueducts. rough, sometimes impassable trails. As a more or less direct result of the canals, the The immediate stimulus for Ohio's state's population tripled, its income in­ Canal Act was the success of the most famous creased tenfold, and Ohio became one of the American canal, the Erie, begun in 1817 and richest states in the union. Yet most of the ca­ carried to completion over many obstacles, nals were in fuJI opera tion for less than hNen ty both natural and political, with the vigorous years. By 1850, railroads had come to Ohio support of New York's governor DeWitt Clin­ and the canals were allowed to deteriorate. A ton. When completed in 1825, "Clinton's few continued to operate into the hNentieth Ditch" extended 363 miles from the Hudson century, but now all that refnainsare scattered River at Albany to Buffalo on Lake Erie, pro­ ruins, preserved by a few citizens with a sense viding cheaper and easier transportation for of history who value these relics of an era of the settlers of the western territories and the astonishing enterprise. goods they needed and produced. The canal, For most of the material in this article, and for much of the text as well, The Gamut is indebted to Mrs. Edith McNally, who edits both the Newsletter of the Canal Society of Ohio, and Towpaths, its historical quarterly journal. The photographs are provided courtesy of Miss Cloea Thomas . 4 TOWPATH TO PROSPERITY whjch followed the valley of the Mohawk eachofwhich raised the canallevel by a height River, circumvented the great barrier to west­ of six to twelve feet. Sometimes a canal re­ ward expansion, the Appalachian mountain quired the excavation of a deep cut through a chain, crossed only by the roughest of roads. l !:till or the construction ofan aqueduct overan A canal system across Ohio would in turn link existing stream. Lake Erie with the Ohio River, and hence with Benjamin Franklin in 1772 observed, the Mississippi. "Riversare ungovernable things, espeCially in Canals had been constructed for navi­ hilly countries. Canals are quiet and very gation as well as for drainage in the Egypt of manageable." In later years, canal boatmen the Pharaohs, in early China, and later in Hol­ would at times differ with him. Ice jams, land, Germany, Italy, and France. By 1760 floods, and washouts from time to time de­ therewas an inland navigation system in Eng­ stroyed boatsand drowned animals and boat­ land and Wales of more than1,300miles, used men. A number of ballads that originated on primarily to transport coal. By 1820 the system the Erie Canal described such dangers ­ had grown to almost 3,700 miles.) though sometimes with a touch of exaggera­ Transportation by canals, therefore, tion. In "The Raging Canal," for example, the was not unknown to the leaders of the United boatmen satirized themselves by describing States. ThomasJefferson while ambassador to the perils of their profession in terms more France had visited the Canal du Midi, in oper­ appropriate for sailors on ocean-going ves­ ation since 1681.' During his years as a sur­ sels: veyor and participant in military expeditions, Come listen to my story, George Washington had seen much of the Ye landsmen, one and all, vast and fertile, butoftenimpenetrable, lands And I'll sing to you the dangers of his new country. He was aware of the Of that raging Canal; potential for water transportation routes and For I am one of many Who expects a watery grave, actually proposed "to connect the Atlantic. For I've been at the mercies Seaboard with the Mississippi Valley by way Of the winds and the waves.' of either the Patowmack or Kanawha with the And in the well-known ballad "The E-ri-e Was James River."5 Arisin'," the greatest catastrophe envisioned In the nineteenth century, canal boats is the depletion of the boat's gin supply. capable of holding up to 85 tons of cargo were towed by horses or mules in tandem at an av­ Interest in Canals Begins in Ohio erage speed of three miles per hour. Though Ohio's leaders were well aware of the this may seem unimpressive to modern need for a transportation system to bring readers, it was a vast improvement over the trade from the East and hard cash for the sur­ wagons or pack animals which were the only plus crops of grain, flour, meat, and whiskey. alternatives for transporting farm products Before canals and railroads, these products and other goods over areas not traversed by were sent to market by flatboat on the rivers navigable rivers. It might be noted that the flowing southward into the Ohio River. This importance of whiskey as a "cash crop" in uncertain, one-way route then continued to early America was due in part to the relative the Mississippi and down to New Orleans. ease of transporting it, compared with trans­ In 1807 it was proposed to clean and porting the grain required to make it. deepen the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas rivers Bu t canals posed engineering problems so that goods could be taken by boats up the and were expensive to build and maintain. Cuyahoga to the portage. There they would They had to be filled with water from nearby be transferred to wagons and taken to boats rivers, streams, or reservoirs. The water sup­ on the Tuscarawas and thence to the plywas conducted to the canals through man­ Muskingum and Ohio rivers. The legislature made channels called feeders, which were approved the scheme but granted no funds. also sometimes navigable. At the higher ele­ The Cuyahoga and Muskingum Navigation vations, or summits, where streams are nor­ Lottery was organized with prominentCleve­ mally small or intermittent, it was necessary landers as commissioners to supply $12,000 to construct reservoirs to collect and store wa­ for the project, but ticket sales were far from ter.
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