Advances in Transportation
In the late eighteenth century, the U.S. population was centered on the Atlantic coast, with all major population centers located on natural harbors or navigable waterways. Water and river transportation were central to the national economy, while most overland transportation was by horse, which made it difficult to move large quantities of goods. By 1803, the country was growing rapidly with the admission of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio; however, the only means of transportation between these landlocked western states and their coastal neighbors was by foot, pack animal, or ship.
During the nineteenth century, transportation routes and means of transport underwent dramatic changes, greatly increasing national mobility. New and improved transportation technology made it easier and faster to transport goods: first national roads, then canals, and finally the railroad revolution.
Roads
In eighteenth-century America, roads were privately built, and the government played little role in their construction. Early toll roads were constructed and owned by joint-stock companies that sold stock to raise construction capital. As the nation expanded, however, the government came to see the transportation network as a public good worthy of government support.
In 1808, a government-sponsored Report on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals suggested that the federal government should fund the construction of interstate turnpikes and canals. The suggestion was controversial: Anti-Federalists opposed expanding government power, but many others were persuaded by the compelling need for overland roads for military operations as well as for general commerce. Following the report, work began on a National Road to connect the west to the eastern seaboard. In 1815, construction on the National Road (also known as the "Cumberland Road") began in Cumberland, Maryland; by 1818, the road had reached Wheeling, West Virginia (then part of Virginia). Though political strife ultimately prevented its western advance to the Mississippi River, this road became the gateway for thousands of westward-bound antebellum settlers.
Canals
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, economic expansion spurred the building of canals to speed goods to market. Among the most important of these canals was the Erie Canal. First proposed in 1807, the Erie Canal waterway was constructed from 1817 to 1825 and was the first transportation system between New York City and the western interior of the United States. Extending from Albany, New York, on the Hudson River to Buffalo, New York, the canal cut transport costs by about 95 percent.
The Erie Canal made an immense contribution to the wealth and importance of New York City, which became the chief U.S. port, and it fostered a population surge in western New York State. It also served to increase trade throughout the nation by opening eastern and overseas markets to midwestern farm products, and it opened regions farther west to settlement. The success of the Erie Canal led to a proliferation of smaller canal routes in the region.
Profile of the grand Erie Canal
This is an 1832 profile of the Erie Canal, connecting New York City to the Western Interior of the U.S.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal was built in 1848 to connect the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. It helped establish Chicago as the transportation hub of the United States. Most of the canal work was done by Irish immigrants who had previously worked on the Erie Canal. Towns were planned out along the path of the canal, spaced at intervals corresponding to the length that the mules could haul the barges. From 1848 to 1852, the canal was a popular passenger route, but this ended in 1853 with the opening of the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad that ran parallel to the canal. Today, much of the canal is a long, thin park with canoeing and a 62.5-mile hiking and biking trail (constructed on the alignment of the mule tow paths).
Locktender's House on the Illinois and Michigan Canal
Lock No. 8 and Locktender's House, Illinois and Michigan Canal just west of Aux Sable Creek, near Morris, Illinois. The Illinois and Michigan Canal was an important canal in the nineteenth century, but was rendered obsolete when new railroads replaced it.
Railroads
Canals radically improved transportation, but their reign was short-lived. By the mid-nineteenth century, the canal boom was brought to a sudden end by the rapid expansion of railroads. Railroads provided a quick, scheduled, and year-round mode of transportation. Railroads were superior to water routes in that they provided a safer, less hazardous mode of transport.
Beginning in 1826, several states chartered railroads, including Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania. The most prominent early railroad was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), which linked the port of Baltimore to the Ohio River and offered passenger and freight service as of 1830.
Celebration of completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869
Railroads came to play a major role in westward expansion in the late nineteenth century.
Effect on American Indians
Improved transportation increased the United States' potential to expand its borders westward. While much of the basis for westward expansion was economic, there was also another reason, which was bound up in the American belief that the country, and the American Indian “heathens” who populated it, were destined to come under the civilizing rule of Euro-American settlers and their superior technology, most notably railroads and the telegraph. While it's unclear whether that belief was a heartfelt motivation held by most Americans or simply a rationalization of the conquests that followed, the clashes—both physical and cultural—that resulted from this western migration left scars on the country that still are felt today.
The concept of "Manifest Destiny" found its roots in the long-standing traditions of territorial expansion upon which the nation itself was founded. Land developers, railroad magnates, and other investors capitalized on westward settlement into American Indian land. The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 was pivotal in helping settlers move west more quickly. Other railway initiatives would follow, subsequently creating a network linking all corners of the nation.