
10/11/2025
“It was the largest expenditure for a civil project in the history of the U.S. to that date, and it was state funds only,” Clifford Brown, a retired Union College professor and canal history expert. “They issued bonds and they became very successful. It was on that basis that the center of American finance moved from Philadelphia to New York City.”
There had been, however, plenty of opposition to the notion of a 363-mile waterway between Albany and Buffalo. Even Thomas Jefferson — a man with a scientific mind and an eye for what the future could hold — felt it wasn’t practical.