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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