When the Canal Age began, land-rich America was capital poor. State governments created new financing methods such as property and income taxes. In fact, canals set the precedent for the federal government's use of eminent domain, fueling the controversy over the right of the new regime to make internal improvements across state lines. Eventually, such improvements and industrialization helped unite West and North against the slave-holding South in the Civil War. Railroads, still unproven technology at the time, eventually eclipsed this era in America's rush to industrialize.
Canals are human creations that reflect a simple yet efficient level of technology.
Primitive surveying advanced into an exact science, while hydraulic cement and suspension and tunneling techniques eased the way for other engineering enterprises. Benjamin Wright, a country lawyer, was chief engineer of the Erie Canal at a time when West Point was the nation's sole engineering college. Canal construction led to the training of more engineers. By 1850, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Michigan, and Harvard, Yale, Union, and Dartmouth colleges offered technical degrees. The Canal Age produced 5,000 miles of a watery web stretching across the nation, connecting the era of Jeffersonian agrarianism with the Industrial Age.