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Federal Land Grants in Aid of Canals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

John Bell Rae
John Bell Rae
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Extract

In the history of federal aid to transportation in the United States the land grants given to assist in the construction of canals have been almost completely overshadowed by the far more munificent land subsidies to the railroads. The disparity between the two is, indeed, striking: the canals received altogether about 4,500,000 acres, as against the approximately 130,000,000 acres which ultimately passed to the railroads. Nevertheless, the importance of the canal grants is not to be judged solely by the amount of land involved. To the extent that they were effective they contributed to the building of waterways, the influence of which on the economic development of the Middle West was considerably greater than is generally appreciated today. The Ohio canals, for example, are credited with stimulating the growth of that state in a way comparable to the impetus given New York by the Erie Canal; the Wabash and Erie Canal in Indiana, chronically insolvent as it was, produced, within ten years of its opening, a fivefold increase in the population of the counties that it traversed; and the historian of the Illinois and Michigan Canal asserts that this waterway “not only transformed a wilderness into a settled and prosperous community, but it made Chicago the metropolis of the Mississippi Valley.” The natural enthusiasm of authors for their subject may require some discounting of these claims, but not enough, in the face of the evidence that is offered to support them, to detract seriously from the significance of the land-grant canals.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , November 1944 , pp. 167 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1944

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References

1 The only complete published study of a canal grant is the account of the Illinois and Michigan grant in Putnam, James W., The Illinois and Michigan Canal (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1918)Google Scholar. Benton, Elbert J., The Wabash Trade Route in the Development of the Old Northwest (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1903Google Scholar) has some information on the Wabash and Erie grant, but does not go into the matter as comprehensively as Putnam. Harlow, Alvin F., Old Towpaths; The Story of the American Canal Era (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1926Google Scholar) has scattered references to the canal grants.

2 The figure for canal grants is to be found in General Land Office, Statement of Land Grants in Aid of Railroads, Wagon Roads, Canals, and Internal Improvements (Washington, 1916), pp. 25–6Google Scholar; for railroad grants, there is in the Railroad Division, General Land Office, an unpublished summary of this statement revised to June 30, 1933.

3 Harlow, Old Towpaths, p. 262.

4 Benton, The Wabash Trade Route, p. 95.

5 Putnam, The Illinois and Michigan Canal, p. 155. Chap, iv of this work and chap, iii of Benton's contain thorough and convincing analyses of the economic influence of these canals.

6 This caused immense trouble with the railroads because “tolls,” in the sense that they are used on canals, are not a part of railroad operation. The courts eventually ruled that the government was entitled to free use of the roadbed but not of the rolling stock, a distinction that produced an arbitrary rebate for government transportation on land-grant railroads and competing fines. This privilege was partially abolished by the Transportation Act of 1940, which provided for the cancellation of land-grant rates for nonmilitary traffic in return for the release by the railroads of their remaining land claims. See Dewey, Davis R., “The Transportation Act of 1940,” The American Economic Review, XXXI (March 1941), 26.Google Scholar

7 2 U. S. Statutes at Large 175. This step was taken primarily to compensate the state for the exemption of public lands from taxation for five years after their sale.

8 Harlow, Old Towpaths, pp. 226, 233. In each case the government contributed about one third of the estimated cost of the canal.

9 Even the land grants were opposed on the ground that the canal projects were premature for such an unsettled area, Congressional Debates, II (19th Cong., 1st Sess.), 591.

10 Harlow, Old Towpaths, p. 111.

11 Benton, The Wabash Trade Route, p. 40.

12 Congressional Debates, III (19th Cong., 2d Sess.), 310–12.

13 Ibid., II (19th Cong., ist Sess.), 591, 688; III, 313.

14 Ibid., 111, 337.

15 3 U.S. Statutes at Large 659; 4 U. S. Statutes at Large 47.

16 Benton, The Wabash Trade Route, p. 39.

17 4 U. S. Statutes at Large 234, 236, 305.

18 General Land Office, Statement of Land Grants, p. 25.

19 5 U. S. Statutes at Large 245.

20 4 U. S. Statutes at Large 393, 662.

21 Congressional Debates, III, 310.

22 Putnam, The Illinois and Michigan Canal, p. 18.

23 Ibid., p. 76.

24 Ibid., p. 41.

25 Ibid., p. 49.

26 Ibid., p.65.

27 Ibid., p. 78.

28 Benton, The Wabash Trade Route, p. 49.

29 Ibid., p. 48.

30 The figures on the Wabash and Erie Canal's finances are taken from Benton, p. 760 and p. 88n.

31 Ibid., p. 105.

32 Harlow, Old Towpaths, p. 258.

33 Ibid., p. 249.

34 G.L.O., Statement of Land Grants, p. 25.

35 G.L.O. to Register, Lima, Ohio, December 14, 1840, in G.L.O., Miami Canal Papers, p. 129.

36 Register, Lima, Ohio, to G.L.O., January 19, 1841, in ibid., p. 129.

37 10 U. S. Statutes at Large 35.

38 13 U. S. Statutes at Large 519; 14 ibid. 80, 81.

39 14 U. S. Statutes at Large 30.

40 Goff, John H., “History of the St. Mary's Falls Canal,” in Moore, Charles, ed., The St. Mary's Falls Ship Canal. Semi-Centennial Celebration at Sault Ste. Marie, August, 1905 (Detroit: Semi-Centennial Commission, 1907), p. 126.Google Scholar

41 G.L.O. to Andrew Parsons, Governor of Michigan, June 1, 1854, in G.L.O., Division C Letter Record, Miscellaneous, vol. 105, p. 139; G.L.O. to James F. Joy, July 10, 1854, in ibid., St. Mary's Canal Papers. These frauds were reported to include about 70,000 acres. The state, as the original grantee, had to select the land, subject to approval by the General Land Office. Title passed first from the national government to the state.

42 P. J. Avery to J. S. Wilson, April 5, 1867, in G.L.O., Portage and Lake Superior Canal File (Letters Received, H 594).

43 H. H. Crapo to J. S. Wilson, June 20, 1867, in ibid. (Letters Received, H 7480).

44 Annual Report of the Interior Department, 1866, II, 319–22.