 Before the Industrial Revolution, there was a time lag in almost everything that took place in the United States. It took weeks and sometimes months just to send a letter or pass information. It took months to send packages or goods across the country. Everything happened at a glacial pace. The Transportation Revolution changed all of that. The five elements that revolutionized transportation are:
Before the Industrial Revolution, there were very few roads, and even they were in bad condition. They were muddy, flooded easily, and were filled with boulders. This made travel by stagecoach or wagon very difficult and dangerous. That all changed in 1817. In 1817, Congress authorized the construction of the National Road, also known as the Cumberland Road. This road extended from Maryland to the Ohio River at Wheeling, Virginia. This was the first road to cross the Appalachian Mountains into the territory known as the Old Northwest. The National Road was the largest road-building project to occur before the 20th century, and it was a route of crushed stone. Although this is not as advanced as roads later became, it was a huge improvement! Crushed stone was much easier to travel over. It would not get muddy or flood. Along withthe National Road, states chartered turnpikes, or toll roads. These roads not only provided easier and quicker travel, but also collected revenue for the states. Roads made transportation by wagon much faster than it was before. Before the Industrial Revolution, rivers were the easiest and the fastest way to transport goods from the North to the South because the river's current carried all of the goods to where they needed to go. But how would you transport goods by river if you wanted to go upstream? By the flatboat, the previously used boat, it would be extremely difficult and slow. With the Transportation Revolution came keelboats. Keelboats were built around a rigid timber in the middle with sails; they were built to go upstream. You could also pole or row them upstream if there was no wind. This improved transportation by river because flatboats could quickly transport downstream, and keelboats could quickly transport upstream. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the invention of the steam engine became widely popular. In 1787, John Fitch demonstrated the first steamboat, which had twelve paddles and was propelled by a steam engine. From 1787 to the 1830s, steamboats were improved. In 1787, James Rumsey created the world's first boat moved by jet propulsion. In 1804, John Stevens built a steamboat with a new high-pressure steam engine. Countless people attempted to improve steamboats so that they could carry passengers and cargo. Robert Fulton was the first to accomplish this task. By purchasing a steam engine built by James Watt, he was able to use the engine to power a 133-foot steamboat, the Clermont. In 1807, Robert Fulton's boat made a journey from New York City to Albany. By the 1830s, steamboats were the convention. They were used as methods of transportation in canals and other navigable waterways. They were used to promote trade. Canals are man-made waterways. By building canals, you could connect cities by water and make inland transportation quicker and easier. In April 1817, New York authorized the construction of the Erie Canal. The Erie Canal was a 363-mile canal connecting Albany on the Hudson River with Buffalo, New York. When completed in 1825, the Erie Canal was immediately popular. It was an inexpensive route from New York to the Old Northwest. Not only were goods able to be transported faster, but the cost went down as well. The cost of inland transportation plummeted from $100 a ton to less than $8 a ton. The Erie Canal also linked farms in the West to markets in the East. This led to a growth in agriculture and growth of the national markets, otherwise known as the Market Revolution. The Erie Canal revolutionized transportation and set the path for states to begin building their own canals to promote industrialization. Of all the advancements of the Transportation Revolution, the construction of railroads was the most significant. The first railroads carried goods for short distances, but the idea of a railroad sparked interest. Inventors and engineers wanted to be able to develop a railroad that could be used to carry goods or even passengers long distance. In 1826, a group of businessmen launched the first American railway, named the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O). After the success of the B&O in Maryland, many other companies began building railroads. However, many problems emerged. Railroads were expensive and were hastily built. There were many accidents and delays. Also, different companies used different widths of track, so only certain trains could travel on certain railroads. In 1830, Robert Livingston Stevens solved this problem by designing an iron T-shaped rail. After this invention, railroads grew from three thousand miles to thirty thousand miles in only 20 years. Shipping costs greatly decreased and industry expanded. This also contributed to the Market Revolution.
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Americans in the early 1800s were a people on the move, as thousands left the eastern coastal states for opportunities in the West. Unlike their predecessors, who traveled by foot or wagon train, these settlers had new transport options. Their trek was made possible by the construction of roads, canals, and railroads, projects that required the funding of the federal government and the states. New technologies, like the steamship and railroad lines, had brought about what historians call the transportation revolution. States competed for the honor of having the most advanced transport systems. People celebrated the transformation of the wilderness into an orderly world of improvement demonstrating the steady march of progress and the greatness of the republic. In 1817, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina looked to a future of rapid internal improvements, declaring, “Let us . . . bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.” Americans agreed that internal transportation routes would promote progress. By the eve of the Civil War, the United States had moved beyond roads and canals to a well-established and extensive system of railroads. One key part of the transportation revolution was the widespread building of roads and turnpikes. In 1811, construction began on the Cumberland Road, a national highway that provided thousands with a route from Maryland to Illinois. The federal government funded this important artery to the West, beginning the creation of a transportation infrastructure for the benefit of settlers and farmers. Other entities built turnpikes, which (as today) charged fees for use. New York State, for instance, chartered turnpike companies that dramatically increased the miles of state roads from one thousand in 1810 to four thousand by 1820. New York led the way in building turnpikes. Canal mania swept the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Promoters knew these artificial rivers could save travelers immense amounts of time and money. Even short waterways, such as the two-and-a-half-mile canal going around the rapids of the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky, proved a huge leap forward, in this case by opening a water route from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. The preeminent example was the Erie Canal, which linked the Hudson River, and thus New York City and the Atlantic seaboard, to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Valley. Although the Erie Canal was primarily used for commerce and trade, in Pittsford on the Erie Canal (1837), George Harvey portrays it in a pastoral, natural setting. Why do you think the painter chose to portray the canal this way? With its central location, large harbor, and access to the hinterland via the Hudson River, New York City already commanded the lion’s share of commerce. Still, the city’s merchants worried about losing ground to their competitors in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Their search for commercial advantage led to the dream of creating a water highway connecting the city’s Hudson River to Lake Erie and markets in the West. The result was the Erie Canal. Chartered in 1817 by the state of New York, the canal took seven years to complete. When it opened in 1825, it dramatically decreased the cost of shipping while reducing the time to travel to the West. Soon $15 million worth of goods (more than $200 million in today’s money) was being transported on the 363-mile waterway every year. Explore the Erie Canal on ErieCanal.org via an interactive map. Click throughout the map for images of and artifacts from this historic waterway. The success of the Erie Canal led to other, similar projects. The Wabash and Erie Canal, which opened in the early 1840s, stretched over 450 miles, making it the longest canal in North America. Canals added immensely to the country’s sense of progress. Indeed, they appeared to be the logical next step in the process of transforming wilderness into civilization. This map (a) shows the route taken by the Wabash and Erie Canal through the state of Indiana. The canal began operation in 1843 and boats operated on it until the 1870s. Sections have since been restored, as shown in this 2007 photo (b) from Delphi, Indiana. Visit Southern Indiana Trails to see historic photographs of the Wabash and Erie Canal: As with highway projects such as the Cumberland Road, many canals were federally sponsored, especially during the presidency of John Quincy Adams in the late 1820s. Adams, along with Secretary of State Henry Clay, championed what was known as the American System, part of which included plans for a broad range of internal transportation improvements. Adams endorsed the creation of roads and canals to facilitate commerce and develop markets for agriculture as well as to advance settlement in the West. Starting in the late 1820s, steam locomotives began to compete with horse-drawn locomotives. The railroads with steam locomotives offered a new mode of transportation that fascinated citizens, buoying their optimistic view of the possibilities of technological progress. The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad was the first to begin service with a steam locomotive. Its inaugural train ran in 1831 on a track outside Albany and covered twelve miles in twenty-five minutes. Soon it was traveling regularly between Albany and Schenectady. Toward the middle of the century, railroad construction kicked into high gear, and eager investors quickly formed a number of railroad companies. As a railroad grid began to take shape, it stimulated a greater demand for coal, iron, and steel. Soon, both railroads and canals crisscrossed the states, providing a transportation infrastructure that fueled the growth of American commerce. Indeed, the transportation revolution led to development in the coal, iron, and steel industries, providing many Americans with new job opportunities. This 1853 map of the “Empire State” shows the extent of New York’s canal and railroad networks. The entire country’s transportation infrastructure grew dramatically during the first half of the nineteenth century. The expansion of roads, canals, and railroads changed people’s lives. In 1786, it had taken a minimum of four days to travel from Boston, Massachusetts, to Providence, Rhode Island. By 1840, the trip took half a day on a train. In the twenty-first century, this may seem intolerably slow, but people at the time were amazed by the railroad’s speed. Its average of twenty miles per hour was twice as fast as other available modes of transportation. By 1840, more than three thousand miles of canals had been dug in the United States, and thirty thousand miles of railroad track had been laid by the beginning of the Civil War. Together with the hundreds of steamboats that plied American rivers, these advances in transportation made it easier and less expensive to ship agricultural products from the West to feed people in eastern cities, and to send manufactured goods from the East to people in the West. Without this ability to transport goods, the market revolution would not have been possible. Rural families also became less isolated as a result of the transportation revolution. Traveling circuses, menageries, peddlers, and itinerant painters could now more easily make their way into rural districts, and people in search of work found cities and mill towns within their reach.
A transportation infrastructure rapidly took shape in the 1800s as American investors and the government began building roads, turnpikes, canals, and railroads. The time required to travel shrank vastly, and people marveled at their ability to conquer great distances, enhancing their sense of the steady advance of progress. The transportation revolution also made it possible to ship agricultural and manufactured goods throughout the country and enabled rural people to travel to towns and cities for employment opportunities. https://www.openassessments.org/assessments/970 Review Question
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Cumberland Road a national highway that provided thousands with a route from Maryland to Illinois Erie Canal a canal that connected the Hudson River to Lake Erie and markets in the West Mohawk and Hudson Railroad the first steam-powered locomotive railroad in the United States |
How was water transportation improved in the 1800s?
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