Mort Künstler: DeWitt Clinton Opens Erie Canal

Artist: Mort Künstler
1931 -
Nationality: American
Artwork Year: 1986
Image Size: 14 by 12 inches
Overall Size: 20 by 18.5 inches
Medium: Acrylic on Cold Press Illustration Board

Born the largest nation in the New World, the United States more than doubled her original size with the acquisition of Louisiana and the Floridas and was in need of imaginative and effective systems of transportation to knit the whole together. At the beginning of Jefferson's administration, his Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, proposed an elaborate network of roads and canals to link together the vast reaches of the nation. Little was accomplished until the farsighted DeWitt Clinton, Governor of New York, persuaded his state to undertake the stupendous task of joining the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes by means of a canal stretching from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. The work was slow: construction began on July 4, 1917; the canal reached Buffalo -- some 365 miles -- in October 1825. A great engineering feat, the significance of the Erie Canal was far-reaching, even decisive. It made New York the greatest port for the commerce of the whole interior; it opened up the Old Northwest, from Erie to Superior, to a flood of emigration from New England and New York, and thus from Europe, too, and changed the ethnic character of that area. Furthermore, by linking the Northwest economically with the Atlantic seaboard, the canal diverted trade from the Ohio-Mississippi system, which fed into the slave-holding South, to the North. Doubtlessly, the last is the most important historically, since it assured support for Lincoln and the Union in the Civil War.

This artwork was originally published on the Fleetwood® Commemorative Cover for Epic Events in American History series issued in 1985.

Artwork Copyright © 1986 Unicover Corporation. All Rights Reserved under United States and international copyright laws. You may not reproduce, distribute, transmit, or otherwise exploit the Artwork in any way. Images of the Artwork may be watermarked and/or digitally watermarked. Any sale of the physical original does not include or convey the Copyright or any right comprised in the copyright.

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