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The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1862
Winner of Best Manuscript Award from the New York State Historical Association
Artificial River reveals the human dimension of the story of the Erie Canal. Carol Sheriff's extensive, innovative archival research shows the varied responses of ordinary people-farmers, businessmen, government officials, tourists, workers-to this major environmental, social, and cultural transformation in the early life of the Republic.
Artificial River reveals the human dimension of the story of the Erie Canal. Carol Sheriff's extensive, innovative archival research shows the varied responses of ordinary people-farmers, businessmen, government officials, tourists, workers-to this major environmental, social, and cultural transformation in the early life of the Republic.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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February 28, 2021
I enjoyed getting lost in this dive into an arguably underappreciated chapter of westward expansion. The Erie Canal today is diminished, memorialized as an antiquated song and a bike path, a relic confined to just one state. But for much of the 19th Century it was the biggest transit engine in the country, a major driver for the port of New York and the growth of New York State, overtaken in consequence by railroads only after multiple generations had already witnessed its terrific influence. Sheriff's book is less about the engineering feats and more about the social and political motivations and consequences of the canal. This book of history is mostly a book about social forces, and a compelling, if dry, account.
The young nation depicted here will seem very familiar to contemporary Americans. Even New Yorkers who agreed that the canal was an essential economic development disagreed wildly about who should benefit. The state-run, state-funded enterprise tinkered with market forces by necessity, favoring towns on the main line over those just off, creating patronage positions and boards with immense authority, favoring merchants over landowners, and having to make choices about how to handle inequalities that resulted. Subsequent expansions of the canal, and the occasional rerouting or funding of tributaries, meant that the power battles were drawn out over decades, not just confined to the era of construction. Jacksonians argued in favor of getting the government out of markets. Populations relied on the state to resolve inequities, or grew distrustful of governing forces, or both. Lives and perspectives both shaped and were shaped by the canal.
But the canal was a huge success, reshaping the fortunes of New York State, creating a whole economy for commercial development, agricultural development, tourism. Runaway slaves. Confidence men. Religious movements. Nathaniel Hawthorne bemoaned the encroachment of civilization on the wilderness, but the canal really connected east and west in a way that hadn't happened before and wouldn't happen in the rest of the country for several decades. I believe Sheriff's "paradox" of progress is really about the fact that the canal moved the country into the future, for better or ill, and while it meant that fresh oysters could now reach Buffalo, people both got used to the luxuries of being better connected and had to live with the social and moral consequences of that advancement. Many proponents wanted to build a commercial and moral utopia but the canal was built on the back of a labor underclass with little consciousness and even less recognition. The country has been grappling with its complicated relationship with immigrants and manual labor for a long time. ("The Boys who Drive the horses I think I may safely say that they these boys are the most profain beings that now exist on the face of this hole erth without exception.") The personal accounts Sheriff was able to draw from provide the colorful detail for these themes.
The young nation depicted here will seem very familiar to contemporary Americans. Even New Yorkers who agreed that the canal was an essential economic development disagreed wildly about who should benefit. The state-run, state-funded enterprise tinkered with market forces by necessity, favoring towns on the main line over those just off, creating patronage positions and boards with immense authority, favoring merchants over landowners, and having to make choices about how to handle inequalities that resulted. Subsequent expansions of the canal, and the occasional rerouting or funding of tributaries, meant that the power battles were drawn out over decades, not just confined to the era of construction. Jacksonians argued in favor of getting the government out of markets. Populations relied on the state to resolve inequities, or grew distrustful of governing forces, or both. Lives and perspectives both shaped and were shaped by the canal.
But the canal was a huge success, reshaping the fortunes of New York State, creating a whole economy for commercial development, agricultural development, tourism. Runaway slaves. Confidence men. Religious movements. Nathaniel Hawthorne bemoaned the encroachment of civilization on the wilderness, but the canal really connected east and west in a way that hadn't happened before and wouldn't happen in the rest of the country for several decades. I believe Sheriff's "paradox" of progress is really about the fact that the canal moved the country into the future, for better or ill, and while it meant that fresh oysters could now reach Buffalo, people both got used to the luxuries of being better connected and had to live with the social and moral consequences of that advancement. Many proponents wanted to build a commercial and moral utopia but the canal was built on the back of a labor underclass with little consciousness and even less recognition. The country has been grappling with its complicated relationship with immigrants and manual labor for a long time. ("The Boys who Drive the horses I think I may safely say that they these boys are the most profain beings that now exist on the face of this hole erth without exception.") The personal accounts Sheriff was able to draw from provide the colorful detail for these themes.
January 1, 2026
Read this in undergrad. Made my APUSH students read it for the 2nd quarter. They grumbled but grew to like Sheriff's cultural/social history of the canal and the market revolution in antebellum NY.
It's still a really thoughtful multidimensional approach to thinking through the progress and perils of new technology on society. It was really interesting to engage in conversations about the unforeseen downsides the canal brought to Western and Central NY during an era when we're faced with a new, anxiety-inducing technology (AI). The students saw interesting parallels.
It's still a really thoughtful multidimensional approach to thinking through the progress and perils of new technology on society. It was really interesting to engage in conversations about the unforeseen downsides the canal brought to Western and Central NY during an era when we're faced with a new, anxiety-inducing technology (AI). The students saw interesting parallels.
January 30, 2016
The Artificial River: the Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1867
© 1997 Carol Sheriff
272 pages
At the dawn of a new century, the two-decade old American republic stood hemmed in between storm-tossed Atlantic ocean and the towering Appalachian mountains. Beyond them lay the west, sparsely settled but full of potential, stifled only by the dangers and isolation of the wilderness. But then the state of New York summoned the will and resources to create a river where there had been none before, to turn the woods and rolling hills to an avenue for expansion. The Erie Canal opened the west to development and changed the nation’s history, but how did it effect the lives of the people who used it and lived along its course? Such is the question Carol Sheriff attempts to answer in The Artificial River: the Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress.
The Erie Canal was the first major infrastructure project in the early Republic, and changed the relationship between the state government and the people in a variety of ways. First, Sheriff demonstrates, it led to a stronger governmental hand in economic affairs, but the Canal Board allowed people a more direct voice in government than the House of Representatives. “The people” included farmers who were annoyed that access to their land had been limited or the land itself diminished by flooding and the actions of laborers, but the phrase also covered businessmen who were beginning to link their own prosperity with ‘the nation’s” and eager to enlist government financial support in matters that would – quite coincidentally, of course! – improve their own business prospect while furthering the nation's interests. It didn’t include so much the laborers who made the canal possible – the men who dug the ‘ditch’ by hand an in era without mechanized tools, and the boys who helped run the boats up and down the canal, seven days a week, finding their pleasures in the taverns and brothels when they could, and constantly under attack by the wealthy as the scourge of society or viewed as a band of sinners who needed to be saved from themselves by the burgeoning Temperance movement.
Aside from the government becoming more involved in the affairs of life, the canal's presence in people's lives drove home the idea of what was possible. The 19th century would be one dominated by the ever-forward March of Technology. A century earlier, a given technological triumph might be enjoyed only by a particularly wealthy lord or merchant, but in the 19th century progress became a democratic institution. The Erie Canal's swiftness was not limited to the the wealthy: the locks opened and the river flowed for all, and it became an active link to "civilization" for the initial settlers even as it served as the agent of the west's own civilization. Indeed, so quickly did the area along the canal become civilized that it was soon taken for granted and its annual winter closings were greeted not with stoic understanding, but annoyance -- like that which cell phone users experience when experiencing choppiness. The fact that they have their personal phone which is operating by sending signals into space is utterly lost on them in comparison to the impression that they have been inconvenienced. So when the railroads followed the canal down the paths it blazed through wilderness and rendered the marvelous waterway obsolete within only a few decades, no one thought it strange When Thomas Jefferson first heard the proposal to build the canal, he snorted that it would make a fine project in a century. He could have never imagined how much change would be wrought before then.
The Artificial River differs from most Erie histories in that its focus is not on the politics and history of the canal's construction and operation but on the people whose lives it touched. There it demonstrates what a transitional period the United States was in, shifting from an agrarian republic run by a relative elite to a bustling, noisy commercial democracy where property qualifications were increasingly passe, and the future of the country was in the now very noticeable working class. It's very fine history as far as its focus goes, but for a fuller appreciation of the canal I would probably read it along with other books.
Related:
Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and American Empire, Gerared Koeppel
© 1997 Carol Sheriff
272 pages
At the dawn of a new century, the two-decade old American republic stood hemmed in between storm-tossed Atlantic ocean and the towering Appalachian mountains. Beyond them lay the west, sparsely settled but full of potential, stifled only by the dangers and isolation of the wilderness. But then the state of New York summoned the will and resources to create a river where there had been none before, to turn the woods and rolling hills to an avenue for expansion. The Erie Canal opened the west to development and changed the nation’s history, but how did it effect the lives of the people who used it and lived along its course? Such is the question Carol Sheriff attempts to answer in The Artificial River: the Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress.
The Erie Canal was the first major infrastructure project in the early Republic, and changed the relationship between the state government and the people in a variety of ways. First, Sheriff demonstrates, it led to a stronger governmental hand in economic affairs, but the Canal Board allowed people a more direct voice in government than the House of Representatives. “The people” included farmers who were annoyed that access to their land had been limited or the land itself diminished by flooding and the actions of laborers, but the phrase also covered businessmen who were beginning to link their own prosperity with ‘the nation’s” and eager to enlist government financial support in matters that would – quite coincidentally, of course! – improve their own business prospect while furthering the nation's interests. It didn’t include so much the laborers who made the canal possible – the men who dug the ‘ditch’ by hand an in era without mechanized tools, and the boys who helped run the boats up and down the canal, seven days a week, finding their pleasures in the taverns and brothels when they could, and constantly under attack by the wealthy as the scourge of society or viewed as a band of sinners who needed to be saved from themselves by the burgeoning Temperance movement.
Aside from the government becoming more involved in the affairs of life, the canal's presence in people's lives drove home the idea of what was possible. The 19th century would be one dominated by the ever-forward March of Technology. A century earlier, a given technological triumph might be enjoyed only by a particularly wealthy lord or merchant, but in the 19th century progress became a democratic institution. The Erie Canal's swiftness was not limited to the the wealthy: the locks opened and the river flowed for all, and it became an active link to "civilization" for the initial settlers even as it served as the agent of the west's own civilization. Indeed, so quickly did the area along the canal become civilized that it was soon taken for granted and its annual winter closings were greeted not with stoic understanding, but annoyance -- like that which cell phone users experience when experiencing choppiness. The fact that they have their personal phone which is operating by sending signals into space is utterly lost on them in comparison to the impression that they have been inconvenienced. So when the railroads followed the canal down the paths it blazed through wilderness and rendered the marvelous waterway obsolete within only a few decades, no one thought it strange When Thomas Jefferson first heard the proposal to build the canal, he snorted that it would make a fine project in a century. He could have never imagined how much change would be wrought before then.
The Artificial River differs from most Erie histories in that its focus is not on the politics and history of the canal's construction and operation but on the people whose lives it touched. There it demonstrates what a transitional period the United States was in, shifting from an agrarian republic run by a relative elite to a bustling, noisy commercial democracy where property qualifications were increasingly passe, and the future of the country was in the now very noticeable working class. It's very fine history as far as its focus goes, but for a fuller appreciation of the canal I would probably read it along with other books.
Related:
Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and American Empire, Gerared Koeppel
March 1, 2019
Sheriff’s book had some useful information in it but tended to wander. The first chapter presented the reader with the thesis that the canal represented both gains and losses in America as society progressed. She developed a good narrative about how New Yorkers saw the canal as an act of mankind over the forces of nature. Most of the losses she talked about, however, seemed fairly situational and she focused on these losses far more than the gains of the Erie Canal. By the end, the book focused a large amount of pages on how religious evangelicals wanted to shut down the canal on Sundays which seemed somewhat tangential. I enjoyed the book far more in the beginning and by the end I was somewhat confused by the rabbit hole into which I had descended.
September 28, 2023
Could have been half the length. How many times can you repeat the pitfalls and accomplishments of the Erie Canal in mildly different wording?
January 26, 2019
Between 1819 and 1825 sections of the Erie Canal were completed culminating in the much discussed “marriage” between the waters of Lake Erie (and a multitude of other interior lakes, rivers, and smaller canals) and the Hudson River. In the process a great section of the American frontier or wilderness was thus connected with the older and more established American coastal and inlet societies. Historians have previously detailed the resulting market explosion that such a commercial corridor provided, as well as the economic windfall that results from the new ability for frontier and coastal markets to exchange goods. Enter Carol Sheriff’s work of scholarship on the canal, and her contention that while the emergence of the Eire Canal and all subsequent commercial endeavors certainly meant success or “progress” for a select group of well-invested merchants and developers, there is no dearth of evidence to suggest the canal caused irreversible destruction to the way of life and property of many citizens.
Ultimately, Sheriff’s work revolves around one very essential debate: how was the Canal Board (a hybrid State and Local organization) to interpret the goal of “common good” in the process of administrating the construction, expansion, maintenance, and operation of the Erie Canal? In this brilliant observation, Sheriff’s work takes on a much broader meaning than the history of an artificial river in New York, instead seeking to understand “the relationship between the individual, the state, and economic development.” (Sheriff, p. 85) Thus in the study of citizen’s legally filled complaints about canals that cut through frontier and farmland, Sheriff has uncovered a body of well documented evidence related to Antebellum Americans’ feelings toward market expansion, class stratification, taxation, moral values, religion, and division of labor. (Ibid, p. 91, 101) The resulting revolutions in geography, transportation, marketing, and industry created an entirely new Northern infrastructure that leaves this region far from monolithic, but with a certain sectional identity. Juxtaposing that identity against the Southern counterpart shows not just a difference of opinion on slavery, but drastically different philosophies concerning overcoming nature’s obstacles. (Ibid, pp. 4-6)
While Sheriff’s work is not a comparative study, the reader cannot help but conjuring up the iconic Northern canals and subsequent industrialism and the iconic Southern plantations and wonder why if Northern government(s) could use ingenuity to create artificial rivers in effort to overcome natural obstacles could Southern government(s) not use similar ingenuity to create alternatives to such brutally controversial agricultural slave labor? However, I’ll leave that counterfactual question for the ghosts of the Confederate dead to ponder.
Overall, Sheriff’s work is a compelling study that incorporates a strong body of evidence in the rich Canal Board Papers. These primary sources conjure up the images of government officials in a nascent organization trying their very best to measure the weight of “progress” in terms of benefit vs. damage in a case by case process. Yet what the Canal Board was truly wrestling with was nature of government sponsored “internal improvements” and whether or not this intervention—which Sheriff suggests shifts Northern society away from egalitarianism and towards more socially mobile society—was in the best interest of their constituents.
Ultimately, Sheriff’s work revolves around one very essential debate: how was the Canal Board (a hybrid State and Local organization) to interpret the goal of “common good” in the process of administrating the construction, expansion, maintenance, and operation of the Erie Canal? In this brilliant observation, Sheriff’s work takes on a much broader meaning than the history of an artificial river in New York, instead seeking to understand “the relationship between the individual, the state, and economic development.” (Sheriff, p. 85) Thus in the study of citizen’s legally filled complaints about canals that cut through frontier and farmland, Sheriff has uncovered a body of well documented evidence related to Antebellum Americans’ feelings toward market expansion, class stratification, taxation, moral values, religion, and division of labor. (Ibid, p. 91, 101) The resulting revolutions in geography, transportation, marketing, and industry created an entirely new Northern infrastructure that leaves this region far from monolithic, but with a certain sectional identity. Juxtaposing that identity against the Southern counterpart shows not just a difference of opinion on slavery, but drastically different philosophies concerning overcoming nature’s obstacles. (Ibid, pp. 4-6)
While Sheriff’s work is not a comparative study, the reader cannot help but conjuring up the iconic Northern canals and subsequent industrialism and the iconic Southern plantations and wonder why if Northern government(s) could use ingenuity to create artificial rivers in effort to overcome natural obstacles could Southern government(s) not use similar ingenuity to create alternatives to such brutally controversial agricultural slave labor? However, I’ll leave that counterfactual question for the ghosts of the Confederate dead to ponder.
Overall, Sheriff’s work is a compelling study that incorporates a strong body of evidence in the rich Canal Board Papers. These primary sources conjure up the images of government officials in a nascent organization trying their very best to measure the weight of “progress” in terms of benefit vs. damage in a case by case process. Yet what the Canal Board was truly wrestling with was nature of government sponsored “internal improvements” and whether or not this intervention—which Sheriff suggests shifts Northern society away from egalitarianism and towards more socially mobile society—was in the best interest of their constituents.
September 6, 2017
More than just a local interest account of a famous public works project, the building of the Erie Canal is examined in light of its impact on and testimony to the commercial, political, and social growth of the American republic in the Antebellum Northeast. Taken with other in-depth histories of this period, it highlights the antecedents of our present day conflicts among the divergent ideas of what it means to be an American and what our dreams and aspirations can and should be.
While interesting in itself as the story of a stunning engineering, economic, and political achievement, Sheriff's account reminds us vividly that no history is ever as tidy and simplistic as any classroom may contend. And while we tend to think of history in terms of grand philosophies and sweeping vistas, our present days have been built by and on the experiences of countless individuals with passions, beliefs, strengths, and weaknesses all their own, and that all "progress" and "accomplishment" on a large scale must come with struggle, compromise, gain, and loss. In this day we are not much different than those who lived through the painful but exhilarating process that was the Erie Canal and the opening up of America's interior. If we learn nothing else from the reading of histories like this one, that is an imperative lesson indeed.
While interesting in itself as the story of a stunning engineering, economic, and political achievement, Sheriff's account reminds us vividly that no history is ever as tidy and simplistic as any classroom may contend. And while we tend to think of history in terms of grand philosophies and sweeping vistas, our present days have been built by and on the experiences of countless individuals with passions, beliefs, strengths, and weaknesses all their own, and that all "progress" and "accomplishment" on a large scale must come with struggle, compromise, gain, and loss. In this day we are not much different than those who lived through the painful but exhilarating process that was the Erie Canal and the opening up of America's interior. If we learn nothing else from the reading of histories like this one, that is an imperative lesson indeed.
January 22, 2024
The book is a different view of the Erie Canal than what I've read previously. The author brings in the positive and all the negative that the canal and its workers left on the area. The opening of the west was great but the people owning land where the canal cut suffered with their crops and split of land. The adventures of the packet boats on the canal and the life of the towpath were interesting. The author researched the content very well. The cities along the canal waterway that was used to build the canal had been rich in industry and agriculture. I wish the canal would be used again commercially. The craft using the canal water at present are mostly pleasure boaters and the towpaths have turned into parks and hiking trails.
December 7, 2019
A revealing history of an important phase a American development
The author did an excellent job of describing the development and operation of Erie canal. The book was well written and the descriptions by the author created vivid images in my mind. I enjoyed learning of all of unintended consequences resulting the construction and operation of canal. The canal is still there and a number of years ago my wife and I pedaled along it from Buffalo to Albany. This book brought back memories of that trip.
The author did an excellent job of describing the development and operation of Erie canal. The book was well written and the descriptions by the author created vivid images in my mind. I enjoyed learning of all of unintended consequences resulting the construction and operation of canal. The canal is still there and a number of years ago my wife and I pedaled along it from Buffalo to Albany. This book brought back memories of that trip.
November 13, 2017
Very well written and interesting analysis of the ways that the Erie Canal shaped social and political climates in antebellum America, though the author does tend to repeat herself a little more than necessary, which can get tiring.
June 17, 2025
While not what I was initially expecting, I greatly enjoyed this look at the social, cultural, and economic impacts of the building of the Erie Canal in the larger context of progress in the pre-Civil War United States.
January 17, 2018
I had to read this book for my Economics class. It wasn't a bad read considering it was for school and not pleasure.
October 15, 2018
It was a textbook, so it was fine.
November 17, 2019
Quick summary of the social and political forces surrounding the creation and use of the Erie Canal. Best to supplement with other material.
July 12, 2021
This book provides a very in-depth look at life with the Erie Canal.
Read
July 1, 2024Read for a class.
March 14, 2025
Not sure why I gave this a 5 star review… I just never thought a book about canals could be actually very interesting and spark an interest in learning more about them!
April 4, 2025
Good info, but pretty redundant
October 8, 2025
This book could’ve been a third of the length. At a certain point it just starts repeating itself ad nauseam
March 15, 2017
While interesting, I found it kind of born great & difficult to follow.
April 5, 2021
This book focuses on the people who built and used the canal. Very interesting.
September 16, 2016
This book had some interesting concepts about earlier American reformation and radicalism. Sheriff tends to illustrate American progress by using the Erie Canal showing readers the difficult struggles that Americans faced. Thus, Sheriff describes the social, economical, cultural, and political issues during this time period; although, these struggles were real, Sheriff tends to place the blame all on progress of the Erie Canal. Regardless, this is an interesting read for it shows how women gained their rights to work outside their homes, describes labor issues of New York during the time of the Erie Canal construction and beyond, and the tensions between North and South. I recommend this book to any historian that wanted to study a unique system, the Erie Canal and how progression, reformation, and radicalism shaped American politics, economy, society, and cultural.
November 25, 2016
"The Artificial River uses the Eerie Canal region as a microcosm in which to explore the relationships between some of the antebellum era's important transformations: widespread geographic mobility; rapid environmental change; government intervention in economic development; market expansion; the reorganization of work; and moral reform..... The Artificial River recounts, then, a chapter in American perceptions and aspirations. It does not seek to retell the familiar history of the Canal's impact on westward expansion and northeastern industrialization; rather, it looks at men and women who visited the Canal's locks, lived along its banks, and steered its boats." -Carol Sheriff
March 18, 2009
This book is about the Erie Canal and when it was being made. Sheriff talks about how the canal was suppose to be a show of America's progress. It ends up not even barely being recognized because of the coming of the railroad and the Civil War.
This book goes over very well what was happening in the time period and how the canal effected many people's lives in the area, I personally just was not that interested in the novel itself.
If you are a history buff, then you will probably enjoy this novel.
This book goes over very well what was happening in the time period and how the canal effected many people's lives in the area, I personally just was not that interested in the novel itself.
If you are a history buff, then you will probably enjoy this novel.
July 9, 2013
Many of us know the story of the Erie Canal and it's role in shaping New York's economy. Sheriff goes at the topic from the aspect of the canal's effect on human condition during the antebellum period. A really good read that combines the canal's history with it's effects on the politicians, the workers and the public.
February 21, 2015
Enjoyed this and the Bond of Union. I think both books need to be read for a well rounded understanding of the Erie Canal and those involved in the event that altered the American Landscape. This book had a faster pace and told more about the average worker than bond of Union, but provides excellent insights to the men, such as DeWitt Clinton behind the project.
October 23, 2008
it seems as if this author took on a bit too large of a subject. this leaves the book feeling a little unfinished and it does not flow all that well. Still, an interesting read for those who want to know more about the Erie Canal.
November 26, 2012
One gains an appreciation of the magnificent engineering accomplishment the Erie Canal truly was. It was built in the pre-Industrial Revolution days and was a multicultural achievement. Like the Transcontinental Railroad, it proved what Americans can do when they work together.
May 22, 2008
Excellent analysis of what the canal meant. Should be read with Peter May's work on canal workers.
Read
October 23, 2014This book is great for a high school classroom
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews