The Transportation Revolution in America, 1815–1830

Introduction

This paper argues that, even prior to the advent of the railroads, a transportation revolution had taken place in the United States in the early nineteenth century. Two developments were most important: steamboat navigation and the construction of the great canals. In particular, the building of the Erie Canal constituted a revolution in its own right. It was on account of the transportation revolution of the 1815–30 period that the American economy was decisively transformed in a capitalist direction.

In 1800, the United States did not lack a transport infrastructure, but it was a very poor one. With the exception of cities and towns located on the Atlantic coastline or along navigable waterways, there was literally no means of transporting agricultural produce and manufactured items to or from market centers other than country roads. These roads were unpaved, infrequently maintained, and often impassable in wet weather (Taylor 15–16). A diary passage from 1817 gives some sense of their condition: "I returned from Baltimore a few days earlier. Had wet weather, muddy roads, and my flour condemned" (qtd. in Majewski 46).

By 1860, however, America's infrastructure had so greatly improved that the country was in the throes of a major economic transformation. On the eve of the Civil War, writes Peter Way, the United States, although still largely an agricultural nation, "was competitive, market-driven and increasingly dominated by relatively large business organizations fueled by multitudes of unattached workers" (11).

But what was chiefly responsible for this improvement? The greatest part of the transformation can undoubtedly be attributed to the railroads, which were chiefly built from the 1830s onwards. "Virtually all accounts agree that the railroad was the dominant factor in the development of the nineteenth-century American economy" (Roy 78). Yet it is not hard to see that even before the 1830s, American life was already in the process of being revolutionized by developments in the field of transportation. Even if the railroads had never been built, or had not been built until much later in the century, there would still be grounds for thinking of the period between 1815 and 1830 as one in which transportation was revolutionized.

The Turnpike Roads

Many more substantial toll roads — called turnpikes — were built from 1794 onwards (Taylor 17–18). Yet it is hard to accord these roads a significant role in transforming the American economy. "To travelers, whether by carriage or stagecoach, they were an unquestioned blessing," explains Taylor (26). But they were much less useful for commerce. While they offered advantages for local transportation, they were of very limited value for long freight hauls. That they failed to change economic life to any great extent seems demonstrated by their financial failure: they "did not cheapen and stimulate land transportation sufficiently to provide satisfactory earnings from tolls" (Taylor 27).

The role of the turnpikes should not be entirely dismissed, however. As John Majewski points out, they were embraced enthusiastically in regions like the Susquehanna Valley, which lacked an easily navigable river (45–48). To such regions, they certainly brought a modest degree of commercial development. Ford notes that, despite the turnpikes' unprofitability to their owners, they brought increasing trade and passing traffic to the Upper Susquehanna Valley in New York State (62–63). This suggests that they were not without historical significance.

Nevertheless, the turnpikes made a perceptible difference only to certain regions and failed to transform the economy as a whole. For this reason, they should be regarded as a minor development rather than the major, qualitative leap that alone is capable of revolutionizing economic life. The two major developments which did constitute such a leap were, first, the successful commercialization of steamboat navigation and, second, the building of the first great canals. During the 1815–30 period, the improvements attributable to the steamboats and canals were sufficient to ensure the rapid decline of the turnpikes, which were being abandoned from as early as 1817. By 1835, half the turnpikes in Massachusetts and New York State were no longer being maintained (Taylor 28).

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