Themes in American History

When the Dutch arrived in Manhattan in the early 1600s, they had envisioned it to be one of the more popular and prominent ports in America. This was always the case thru the 17th and 18th century, but with the completion of the Eerie Canal, the ports in NYC was taken into a completely different level. Trade was such an integral  and wide spreading part of NYC at that moment, that it could not restrict itself to Manhattan and soon started spreading out into Brooklyn. Merchants started building warehouses and counting houses in Brooklyn along the East River. Building of the Erie Canal reduced the prices of transportation of goods from places like Chicago by 90 percent and reduced the time by 50 percent.

Almost around this same period the Erie Canal was completed , there were a couple of canals build in Pennsylvania  as well. Canals extending the use of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers were chartered before 1815, and the Lehigh Canal was completed in 1838. But these canals did not do the same wonders that Erie Canal did for NYC. Although this system linked the east to the west, its expense made the state nearly bankrupt.

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The difference between New York City and Cincinnati is that while NYC is a trend setter, Cincinnati is not. Cincinnati sought out council for plans to construct a sewer system from NYC to improve their city (Chudacoff 47).  Although it would be wise to seek out advice from other developed cities, it denies Cincinnati to be considered as a truly independent city. In some circumstances, certain ideas may only work for certain areas which could also lead to many drawbacks because it may hinder more than help the city.

What could be considered a similarity between New York City and Cincinnati is that both cities heavily rely on water transportation for their commercial success. While New York City had the transatlantic connection and the Erie Canal, Cincinnati had the Ohio River and Mississippi River to conduct majority of its business. Both cities found great success through their ports, which also helped them boom in both population and wealth. Just as New York City is considered to be the best city of the east coast, Cincinnati was coined the “Queen of the West” (Chudacoff 37-38).

Cincinnati

New York City

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During the period of 1800 and 1865, the Erie Canal was built because of the in need of the trading in west coast. That was the first transportation system between New York City and the west coast. It made transportation much easier at that time. As the result, the Central Pacific Railroad Company was established in San Francisco in 1863 and they would like to construct the Pacific Railroad from Council Bluffs, Iowa to Oakland, California to increase trading. These two projects both faced one problem: the lack of labors. In the case of New York City, as the increase of the immigrants, more and more immigrants were hired to do the work. Almost the same as the case of San Francisco, however, the company hired labors from China. In both cases, many workers died during the construction because of the harsh and dangerous working condition. At last, the Erie Canal was not supported by the federal government. President Jefferson rejected the project and called this “a little short of madness”, but the New York governor, Dewitt Clinton, supported this idea. The Pacific Railroad was supported and funded by the Congress.

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Most of American great cities were built near waterfront, which were true to both Philadelphia and New York. The completion of Erie Canal in 1825 created connection for New York City to the western markets. It linked the Hudson River to the Great Lake (Chudacoff 44). On the other hand, as a response to New York City, Philadelphia started its construction of transportation. The Pennsylvania railroads were built. One similarity of the two cities is that they were both the most populated cities from 1830 to 1860, and their population increased dramatically during the years (Chudacoff 60).

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