by Mark Stein
Hawley was not the first to speculate on a waterway connecting the hinterland to the Hudson. As early as 1724, surveyor Cadwallader Colden wrote of the potential for waterways connecting New York’s Mohawk River, which flows into the Hudson, to the Great Lakes:
Many of the branches of the river Mississippi come so near to the branches of several of the rivers which empty themselves into the Great Lakes, that in several places there is but a short land-carriage from one to the other.… If one considers the [Mohawk] river and its numerous branches, he must say that, by means of this river and the lakes, there is opened to view such a scene of inland navigation as cannot be paralleled in any other part of the world.3
In addition to the extraordinary commercial advantages of connecting the Hudson to the Great Lakes, Colden also emphasized its national security value—from the point of view of England before the Revolutionary War. He argued that the French, who had come to control the vast swath surrounding the Mississippi River, the Great Lakes, and the St. Lawrence River, “plainly showed their intention of enclosing the British settlements.”
National security remained an important element when Hawley published his 1807 essays, but from a substantially changed perspective. The St. Lawrence still belonged to another nation, but now that nation was England, which had conquered French Canada in 1763. And while the Mississippi River was now entirely within the United States, owing to the Louisiana Purchase, that same purchase triggered a growing fear that someday the lower half of the Mississippi might also be part of another nation composed of the American slave states.
Between Colden’s report to the colonial governor of New York and Hawley’s newspaper series, numerous others had discussed aspects of what was to become the Erie Canal. Hawley’s essays revealed that his passion for the topic had recently been augmented when Thomas Jefferson, in his second inaugural address, urged “an amendment to the Constitution [enabling surplus funds to] be applied in time of peace to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects within each state.” Amendment to the Constitution? Indeed, the Constitution limits Congress to funding internal improvements only if they are roadways that convey mail or provide access to forts; it specifically prohibits Congress from acts that favor commerce in one state over any other. Apparently, Jefferson’s vision differed from that of the other Founding Fathers.
Jefferson’s views on the role of the federal government inspired not only Hawley but also others who contemplated a canal connecting the Great Lakes to the Hudson.4 New York State Assemblyman Joshua Forman met with President Jefferson in 1809, seeking federal funds for the New York canal. But even Jefferson’s jaw dropped. “You talk of making a canal of 350 miles through the wilderness!” he told Forman. “It is little short of madness to think of it at this day.”5
Jesse Hawley (1773-1842) (photo credit 12.1)
Erie Canal: significant rivers
Jefferson’s insights into madness proved to be limited. Hawley’s essays provided so much detail regarding the project’s geography, hydrology, and cost that they became the introductory textbook for those joining with Forman to undertake the building of the Erie Canal. Hawley himself was not an engineer. Nor was he a surveyor, wealthy patrician, military man, or even a college graduate. He was just a middle-class flour merchant. His passion regarding the canal was so intense because the absence of such a waterway had landed him in debtors’ prison.
Jesse Hawley had been born and raised in Connecticut, a sixth-generation American whose father was a carpenter. As an adult he migrated westward for the economic opportunities that beckoned to those in New England’s coastal regions, where the growing population limited one’s options. In western New York, Hawley became a flour merchant, milling wheat and shipping it east via waterways being made navigable by the Western Inland Company. Though the shipping costs devoured his profits, the Western Inland Company had declared its commitment to further improvements along the rivers that would reduce the cost of shipping. But the company changed its policy on waterways, causing Hawley’s business to sink. Unable to pay his debts, Hawley was arrested in 1806. A friend posted bail. Hawley then jumped bail and went where he felt he would never be found: Pittsburgh.
While on the lam, Hawley published his initial essay using a pseudonym. To his credit, guilt over having jumped bail brought him back to New York, where he was sentenced to twenty months in debtors’ prison. There, expanding his initial writing, Hawley continued to publish under his pseudonym, now fearing that readers would dismiss his ideas if they knew the author was in debtors’ prison.6 The projected canal was, after all, so grand that many Americans dismissed the idea even when proposed by worthies such as State Assemblyman Forman, former U.S. senator (and Constitution coauthor) Gouverneur Morris, and future New York governor DeWitt Clinton. Clinton relied heavily on Hawley’s essays when, as governor, he got the state legislature to appropriate $7 million to create what opponents called “Clinton’s Ditch.” The governor committed his subsequent career to the Erie Canal and, after its completion and enormous success, continued to credit Hawley as the foremost progenitor of the project.
While commercial benefit was the primary reason for building the Erie Canal, there were two related factors that were also of great importance. One involved national security; the other, internal security.
Prominent New Yorker William Cooper (founder of Cooperstown and father of James Fenimore Cooper) connected the canal’s economic benefits to national security when he wrote of the Great Lakes region: “The trade of this vast country must be divided between Montreal and New York, and the half of it lost to the United States unless an inland communication can be formed from Lake Erie to the Hudson.”7 Trade would be lost to the United States because it had to rely on the St. Lawrence River in Canada. The Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution, guaranteed England free navigation of the Mississippi River but made no mention of American rights to navigate the St. Lawrence. Indeed, Americans did not enjoy smooth sailing on that river. Prior to Hawley’s essays, the Senate considered legislation authorizing the president to acquire “by negotiation, or otherwise, as he may deem most expedient,” free navigation along the St. Lawrence.
But the British were not the only impediment to navigation on the St. Lawrence. Boulders, rapids, and, in the winter, ice also hindered that waterway connecting Lake Ontario to the Atlantic. Canadians, equally aware of the vast market to be tapped by connecting the Great Lakes to the sea began to create their own series of canals.8
The Erie Canal also represented a means of further uniting the states. Despite the failure of the Articles of Confederation, which loosely linked the states, many Americans continued to cling to that document’s distrust of a national government. An 1822 article in the influential North American Review said of the idea of an Erie Canal:
It connects the east with the west by a reciprocal and advantageous commerce … and thus a strong but mutual interest will ultimately unite them with a chain which neither the fervors of party nor the mutual jealousy of state will ever be able to destroy.… The union of the states is our only safety.… Remove it, give an absolute independence to every state, and the promise of our youth is blasted, and with it the world’s best hope laid low.
The Great Lakes, if given access to the sea, would become more than lakes; they would become major avenues of commerce. Illustrating this fact on the American map, five states today have boundaries that were adjusted to provide access to the Great Lakes.
The boundary adjustment that most clearly reveals a state reaching for the Great Lakes was the tab at the western end of Pennsylvania’s northern border. But this adjustment cannot be ascribed to Jesse Hawley’s influence, since it occurred in a 1785 agreement between Pennsylvania and New York, more than twenty years before Hawley’s essays appeared. It was, however, after Cadwallader Colden’s report regarding connecting Lake Erie to the Hudson, and the numerous editions of his report published in the mid-eighteenth century indic
ate the high level of interest in the prospect of such a waterway.
That interest also contributed to Ohio’s boundary adjustment in 1805, though in this case Ohio’s primary goal was to possess the entirety of its western river, the Maumee. That goal could only have been augmented by the fact that the segment of the Maumee originally located in Michigan was its outlet on Lake Erie at Toledo. Congress allowed Ohio to adjust its border with Michigan to include this port. If this irked Michigan, the territory was too sparsely populated for its irk to be heard. But after the Erie Canal was built, its irk grew into fury. The land that had been transferred to Ohio was now so valuable it sparked the Toledo War (see “Stevens T. Mason” in this book).
Border adjustments for Great Lakes access
After the publication of Hawley’s essays, Indiana’s boundary with Michigan was moved north to give it access to the Great Lakes at Gary. Illinois’s boundary with Wisconsin was moved north to give it access at Chicago. And Minnesota’s boundary with Wisconsin was moved east from the Mississippi to the St. Croix River to give Minnesota access to the Great Lakes at Duluth.
While the impact of Hawley’s writing was thus surfacing on the map, Hawley himself went back to being the businessman he used to be. “Notice is hereby given that … the subscribers have been duly appointed as assignees of Jesse Hawley, an insolvent debtor,” a legal notice in a Canandaigua, New York, newspaper stated in 1812. “Creditors of the said insolvent [are] to appear at Freeman Atwater’s inn … on Tuesday the 19th of May at ten o’clock A.M. … to receive a dividend (if there be any) of the said insolvent’s estate.” Hawley managed this bankruptcy in a way that avoided debtors’ prison, though his financial difficulties may have contributed to disputes he had with his sisters, his in-laws, and his wife, from whom he eventually was divorced—an unusual recourse in that era.
But he kept bouncing back. In 1817 DeWitt Clinton’s election as governor resulted in Hawley being appointed collector of revenue for the port of Genesee, New York. Three years later, he was elected to the New York State Assembly on the coattails of Governor Clinton. Two years after that, when Clinton was not renominated, neither was Hawley.
Though Hawley’s prominence had been confined primarily to New York—and, within New York, to those involved in the legislation enabling the creation of the canal—he did have one brief moment in the national spotlight. It occurred on October 26, 1825: “The columns of the New York papers are filled to overflowing with the particulars of the grand celebration of the event of finishing the Erie Canal,” the New Hampshire Statesman reported. “Jesse Hawley, of Rochester, in behalf of the visitors, made a congratulatory address, which was replied to by Judge [Joshua] Forman, in behalf of the citizens of Buffalo. On a discharge of cannon, the boat started in fine style, drawn by four horses.”
Jesse Hawley died in January 1842. In his one-time hometown of Rochester, New York, his obituary consisted of three sentences. In Albany, the terminus of the Erie Canal, four sentences were devoted to his passing. But in Milwaukee, of all places, two full-page columns were devoted to his memory.9 The length and location of these obits reflect Hawley’s impact on the nation. Rochester, a port on Lake Ontario, and Albany, a port on the Hudson River, were prosperous before the canal was created. But Milwaukee, a port on Lake Michigan, would likely not have existed without the Erie Canal. Not until several months after ground was broken for the canal did the American Fur Company form a settlement in what is now Milwaukee.
The Erie Canal remains in use to this day despite the subsequent development of railroads and interstate highways. While it transports far less cargo than during its heyday, it has remained a shipping channel even after the United States and Canada created the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959. Jointly operated by both nations, the seaway annually transports more than 200 million tons of cargo between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic.
· · · NORTH CAROLINA, GEORGIA · · ·
JAMES BRITTAIN
The Man History Tried to Erase
Raise as many Militia of your Battalion as you shall think necessary and pursue [the Georgians] from place to place … until you have taken their Leaders, if possible, and show them that we have law sufficient to suppress unruly Citizens.
—LT. COL. WILLIAM WHITSON, NORTH CAROLINA STATE MILITIA,
TO MAJ. JAMES BRITTAIN, DECEMBER 17, 18101
Had it not been for the actions of James Brittain, the boundary between North Carolina and Georgia might well be twelve miles north of where it is today. Until recently, however, one would be hard-pressed to find any history book that mentioned Brittain. The reason his name has now resurfaced is the flip side of the reason it was suppressed: convenience/inconvenience.2 Brittain’s story is an important part of North Carolina and Georgia history, but it has become more important for what it reveals about history itself.
James Brittain was born in the mid-1700s, served in the American Revolution, and afterward settled in Mills River, North Carolina, with his wife and children. The various surviving documents in which his name appears suggest he was a leading citizen in the region, though never its preeminent leader. He represented Buncombe County in the North Carolina Senate for six (nonconsecutive) terms.
He was not always an illustrious leader, as a 1792 resolution suggests:
The commissioners appointed to fix the center and agree where the public buildings in the County of Buncombe should be erected have failed to comply with the above recited Act, and the inhabitants of said county much injured thereby.… For remedy … Joshua Inglish, Archibald Neill, James Wilson, Augustin Shotes, George Baker and John Dillard … [shall] be appointed commissioners in the room and stead of Philip Hoodenpile, William Britain, William Whitson, James Brittain and Lemuel Clayton.3
Ten years later, Brittain’s name crops up in another snafu over public buildings, as revealed in an 1802 directive issued by the Buncombe County Grand Jury:
The Court house and Jail, the former of which being 35 feet long, stands partly on the Town street, and partly on the lot of Samuel Chunn and Zebulon Baird, and the latter on the lots of James Brittain and Andrew Erwin, so that the County, after expending a very considerable sum of money in executing said Buildings, have not the slightest title to the ground on which they stand …
(Signed) William Whitson, Foreman4
Brittain subsequently appears to have opted to donate the land inadvertently used to build the county jail, unlike others on the list.
Brittain’s personal finances were considerably more involved in his state’s boundary dispute with Georgia. In 1802 he purchased 100 acres of land, and in 1806 an additional 200 acres, elsewhere in Buncombe County, North Carolina—or, from Georgia’s point of view, in Walton County, Georgia.
Technically, this land had originally belonged to South Carolina. But South Carolina had ceded the region to the United States in 1787. At the time, it was within the domain of the Cherokee nation. In 1798 the government “negotiated” a treaty with the Cherokees that required them to relocate to a reservation west of the Mississippi River—a forced migration now known as the Trail of Tears. In the absence of the Cherokees, the land South Carolina had ceded to the United States remained outside any state’s jurisdiction. It came to be called the Orphan Strip.
The difficult access in the mountainous Orphan Strip provided ideal terrain for people who didn’t want to be found. So many such people repaired to the region that, in 1800, a congressional committee proposed that it be given to South Carolina.
South Carolina, however, passed on the offer. It had no interest in extending its jurisdiction into this labyrinth of mountains, where many residents had repaired to escape jurisdiction.5 North Carolina and Georgia weren’t interested either. But in 1802 the federal government found a new solution. Georgia (which then still included present-day Alabama and Mississippi) had gotten in hot water regarding land fraud in its western region. The federal government offered Georgia a deal. In return for relinquishing the land that would become Alabama and
Mississippi, the United States would let Georgia off the hook for land fraud if it also agreed to accept jurisdiction over the Orphan Strip.
The Orphan Strip
North Carolina did not protest this offer, though some North Carolinians suspected that the state’s border with Georgia had been inaccurately surveyed. The border was stipulated as being a line along the 35th parallel. As it turned out, the 35th parallel is twelve miles south of where the border had been located.
Still, the United States had rid itself of a pesky problem, and Georgia dutifully organized the land as Walton County (not to be confused with present-day Walton County, Georgia). Georgia went on to appoint officials to govern its new county. What had been a notorious no-man’s-land was looking better and better … to North Carolina. That state now declared that the land was part of its Buncombe County. North Carolina likewise appointed officials to enforce state laws and register land titles.
Among those buying land and having the title recorded in North Carolina was James Brittain. Such purchases by absentee investors were precisely what most fueled Georgia’s ire. Often the investors sought to charge rent to those living on their land titled in Buncombe County, North Carolina. This did not sit well with those living on the land who held title to it in Walton County, Georgia. In some instances the North Carolina owners turned to the region’s North Carolina authorities to evict those who refused to pay their rent. Those Georgians living on such land who held title to it in Georgia turned to the region’s Georgia authorities for protection. Confrontations, often violent, ensued.
In December 1804 one such confrontation involved Buncombe County constable John Havner and several Walton County residents. It ended when Havner was struck in the face with the butt of a rifle, an injury that proved fatal.6 In response, North Carolina sent a unit from its state militia, under the command of Brittain. Walton County residents quickly massed to defend themselves. In Georgia the Augusta Chronicle reported the following in February 1805:
