For a clearer version of the map on pp. xviii–xix, click here.
1. According to the introduction, what is the book about? What does it not address? What makes the story the book tells significant?
2. What aspirations and hopes lay behind the planning and building of the
Erie Canal? Why build a canal, anyway? How did it connect with republican
values?
(A correction, p. 25: "improvement" was already being used to mean
moral and intellectual betterment by about 1600, by Puritan ministers
originally.)
3. What about the Erie Canal made its construction an "extraordinary feat"? How did New Yorkers view the relationship of art, nature, and republicanism in the canal? Describe the people who built the canal. Who participated in canal-related festivities and what were they celebrating?
4. How did the Erie Canal "reduce distance and time"? Who used it, and why? What was traveling on the canal like? What did people praise about the canal? What did they dislike? How did nature itself cause problems?
5. What sort of issues with property owners along the route were caused by the construction, maintenance, and enlargement of the canal? How did landowners try to bolster their claims for redress to the state? How did the two political parties view canal issues differently? What misdeeds was the state accused of?
6. How did New Yorkers try to use the canal to boost their own prosperity? What economic opportunities did the canal create? Whom did the canal benefit most? How did businessmen try to influence the canal's route and tolls? How did the state take private interests into account? How did businessmen justify their desire for profit?
7. What sort of workers were necessary to keep the canal in operation? In what ways did they appear to threaten civilized society? What role did the Second Great Awakening play in the movement to reform canal workers? How successful were reform efforts? How did worries about desecration of the Sabbath play a role? How did businessmen respond to efforts for moral reform?
8. How did development of railroads affect the Erie Canal at first, and then in the long term? How did free-labor ideology seem to solve social and economic issues raised by the canal?
