*need to format and insert sources properly...
New Yorkers had reconciled a puzzling combination of sensibilities in their construction of the Erie Canal by at once working with nature and triumphing over it. Erie was a celebrated as the continuations of God’s work, art’s victory – the physical and moral progress of society. It was chiefly important to, contrary to modern sensibilities, to not mar God’s natural gift and maintain the Republic’s image as civilization spread over regions that had been previously regarded as “wild” as this was the physical representation of the ideas that followed. Progress, claimed as from the Anglo enlightened mind, had better look as natural as the water it sailed on. (Sherrif 36)
However, receiving waters from the distant Hudson and the still more distant Atlantic is no minor endeavor. The fact that the most intricate and impressive engineering...(bad sentence)…would rather than imposing as the roman aquaducts were could seemingly be meandering through the country side was not only amazing but important as promised to fence sitting critics. The canal, amazingly, looked unremarkable. Insert stats on the “long sections”, Utica, and Rochester to Lonckport…unimpressive looking Sherrif pg 30, Juxtaposed with impressive stats of elevation, descent, and first to use so much stone in era dependent on wood which would have rotted pg. 30.
The decimation of space and time drove millions to upstate New York, as would the railways do for the country, on holiday and business marking the canal’s success. However, canal systems as a whole even with a steady flow of travelers met natural and economic limitations. By the mid nineteenth century it was clear that canals, however well-built or aptly financed, had easily exploitable issues especially if one were arguing the superiority of rail transport. Not only were the transport of high-value commodities such as coal and manufactured good the most viable ways of profiting but, as in the case of the Erie, weather inevitably corroded the canals main assets – regularity and reliability. (McKay 109-111)
While commerce had customarly and regularly dealt with inclement weather and the annual freezing of natural rivers those who had modeled there businesses and daily lives around the promised predictability of the canal had expected more. The building of canal systems never insured or promised that natural law would be overcome however the celebrated extravagance of the perceived perfecting of nature came with a sense that what had always been was now a marked inconvenience. The beauty and technological advancement of the great system of locks as well as the elevation of engineering feats mad the impediments of winter feel as harsh as a failure. Aggravation and frustration with the shipping companies and those whom operated and advocated for the system mounted and was perceived as a managerial failure.
Closing the Canal on Sundays Bill opponents say…1858…argued it ceased to be ward of the state, it was successful in its construction sharing more with lakes and rivers that it cannot be shut down just as seafaring wouldn’t even be considered regulated on the Sabbath. “Artificial River” shift from Artificial to River from man made to natural. (Shaw 228 / Sherrif 173)
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Bvester01 (talk) 02:25, 3 May 2016 (UTC) Peer Review Bvester01 (talk) 02:25, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
You have a lot of solid facts but I feel like you could improve by paying your argument and reason for creating the article more attention in the article. Also possibly mention a couple more examples of canal success before letting it be known that railroads end up becoming the main form of transportation.