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During the 19th century, a young America saw huge advancements in mobility and trade. These advancements in mobility fueled an expansion of commercialism in free and enslaved people alike. The Artificial River by Carol Sheriff and The Interesting Narrative by Olaudah Equiano give a prospective on the “progress” in trade and mobility in the 18th and 19th centuries that leaves the reader wondering whether or not America was really experiencing progress at that time. By focusing on these two novels, it will be shown that the increase in commercialism brought both valued benefits as well as unwanted repercussions to free and enslaved people alike, and that determining progress is not so straightforward. The objective then is to make sense of the ambiguities of progress rooted in mobility and trade for these two groups of people, and come to some assessment of whether or not America was indeed experiencing progress during that time period. The Artificial River covers the history of the Erie Canal from the digging of the first spadeful of Erie Canal dirt in 1817, through it’s successes and failures up to the year 1862. The construction of the Erie Canal brought many valued benefits that could be considered progress to the people involved at the time. The Erie Canal opened up new jobs, established a new mercantile class, reduced distance and time for transportation, increased tourism, expanded commercial agriculture, and in some cases became the source of great personal success and financial freedom for those who played their cards right. For some people, the building of the Erie Canal, and the resulting expansion of trade and mobility that came with it, produced the opportunity to become independent, or “free” if you will. Although it was not the same type of freedom an enslaved person sought after, it was freedom from debtors or creditors. One such a person, who sought this type of financial independence, was Mary Ann Archbald. Through the building of the Erie Canal, Archbald and her family were able to sell their surplus of goods (i.e. cloth and wheat) to a greater market. The selling of goods to a broader market proved to be the key to the Archbald family’s financial success, for it was not long after the construction of the canal that Archbald was able to boast that she was rich (in the sense that, to her, rich meant out of debt) (Sheriff, p. 13). Much like the Erie Canal helped Archbald gain her freedom from debtors, enslaved peoples sometimes were able to capitalize on the expanding trade economy during the 18th and 19th centuries to gain their freedom. Olaudah Equiano was one such a slave that was lucky enough to be put in a situation where he could trade a few goods here and there, in order to make enough money to buy his freedom from his master. Reflecting on a trading voyage to Montserrat in 1764, Equiano states: “I sold my goods well (there); and in this manner I continued trading during the year… I worked with double alacrity, from the hope of getting enough money to buy my freedom” (Equiano, p. 124). On July 10, 1766, Equiano was successful in purchasing his freedom from his master Robert King for the price of 40 pounds sterling (Equiano, p. 137). Of course progress in mobility and trade did not always favor both free and enslaved. A benefit that came through the building of the Erie Canal, that was limited solely to freemen, was the massive amount of jobs available. For one, the building of the Erie Canal meant a massive demand for laborers to clear forests, shovel dirt, blast rock, and mold the canal bed. With foreigners coming steadily to America’s shores, and most without prospect of work, many took up work on the Erie Canal to fill their immediate job needs (Sheriff, p. 41). One might think that an abundance of jobs equals progress, but here it must be noted that even though “canal work paid comparatively well, laborers found to their disappointment that their earnings did not buy them a better way of life” (Sheriff, p. 43). The Erie Canal then was a provider, although what little it did provide to the poor and working class was often not enough for them to advance themselves in society. Complimenting the vast need for common laborers to build the canal was a need for the boat captains, horse pullers, lock tenders, and repair workers who did the everyday work on the canal. These people, unlike the canal diggers who moved on after the work was done, became part of the towns that bordered the Erie Canal. Originally, canal supporters repeatedly reassured the population at large that “economic development need not result in the class divisions that plagued Europe” (Sheriff, p. 26). However, before the canal was even completed, these “common workers and laborers” were already being noted as lower class citizens. This was in part the result of the view in nineteenth century America that “canal work… merited the use of the most degraded unfree labor”(Sheriff, p. 40), but there was also something more. Most of the thousands of men, women, and children involved with the running of the canal did not fit the ideal of a “republican free man.” To be considered a “republican free man” one could not work for wages or be subordinate to someone else. Thus these semiskilled workers that operated the Erie Canal for the good of the “republican free men,” were viewed in much the same way as the canal diggers they replaced (as lower class citizens). “By the late 1830s, it became obvious that… the artificial waterway had helped bring into being a more divided society” (Sheriff, p. 98). The construction of the Erie Canal did, as earlier noted, bring about progress in a number of important ways. Among the many positive benefits the canal brought, it not only significantly reduced the distance and time to move goods, mail, and travelers from one place to another, but it also formed a merchant class, and linked communities to one another that had never been connected before. Of course these signs all point to progress, but what must be considered here is that all of these examples of benefits made the people who used the canal regularly dependent on it. Therefore, when winter came and the canal iced over as it often did for several months out of the year, or one of the locks failed, people grew impatient, and ultimately dissatisfied with the canal. The majority of the complaints about the canal “stemmed from the irregularity of the compression of distance, from the failures to triumph over nature” (Sheriff, p. 77). This growing dissatisfaction with the canal became one of the many reasons more and more people switched to using the railroad. “By the 1850s the New York Central was steadily draining the canal of business” (Sheriff, p. 173). After looking at different events that seemingly should be indicative of American progress during the 18th and 19th century, it is understandable why such progress has been referred to as “ambiguous”. On the surface, an event such as the building of the Erie Canal looked like it was for the good of all, but by looking through the obvious, it is clear that what started out with intentions of being for the good of all quickly developed into a means of the middle and upper class to gain something for themselves at the expense of others. This suddenly resembles the slavery in the south in that everyone wanted something for themselves, but few were looking out for the public good (the supposed Republican ideal). However, the big question that should be answered by all this is whether or not “progress” came to the United States between the American Revolution and the Age of Jackson. My belief is that yes, America did experience progress during that time period, because advancements were made both in technology and in the unifying of groups of Americans during that time frame. By definition, progress is moving forward, and though it may have been a little at a time, the United States was moving forward slowly but surely. Bibliography: Word Count: 1466
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