The early nineteenth century also became the era of canals. They were quieter, smoother, and more reliable than roads. The challenge was to get goods from the Midwest to the East Coast—quickly and inexpensively. Now it happens that the Great Lakes are an inland waterway that stretches from Minnesota to Wisconsin to New York state . If you could build a canal from Buffalo on Lake Erie to Albany on the Hudson River, why you could float goods and people from New York all the way to Chicago and beyond . But it meant digging a ditch 363 miles across the wilds of New York. No canal that long had ever been built . Connecting the ends would be no easy job; Lake Erie is 568 feet higher than the Hudson. The engineers who took on the task had never even seen a canal. They didn't know they weren't qualified. They just got to work. The job took eight years and $7 million. And it required eighty-three locks to raise and lower boats, and an aqueduct to carry them across the Mohawk River. Somehow it all got done .

The Erie Canal was the nation's pride . It was four feet deep and forty feet wide—a manmade river, an engineering marvel! But you couldn't steam up and down it—steamboats were just getting perfected and it wasn't deep enough for them anyway. What you did was hitch your barge to a mule and let her pull away. Soon canal barge drivers were singing this song:

I've got a mule and her name is Sal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
She's a good old worker and a good old pal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
Low bridge! Everybody down.
Low bridge! We're a-coming to a town.
You'll always know your neighbor,
You'll always know your pal
If you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal.