2d Session.

No. 128.

ENLARGEMENT OF THE LOCKS OF THE ERIE AND OSWEGO CANALS.

MESSAGE

FROM THE

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,

TRANSMITTING

A memorial in behalf of the State of New York on the subject of the enlargement of the locks of the Erie and Oswego canals.

JUNE 13, 1862 -Laid on the table, and ordered to be printed.

Fellow-citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives :

I herewith transmit a memorial addressed and presented to me, in behalf of the State of New York, in favor of enlarging the locks of the Erie and Oswego canals. While I have not given, nor have leisure to give the subject a careful examination, its great importance is obvious and unquestionable. The large amount of valuable statistical information which is collated and presented in the memorial will greatly facilitate the mature consideration of the subject, which I respectfully ask for it at your hands.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, June 13, 1862.

MEMORIAL.

To his Excellency Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States:

The legislature of the State of New York, on the 22d of April, 1862, passed an act to adapt the canals of the State to the defence of the northern and northwestern lakes. Their joint resolution, of the same date, requested the governor of the State "to take such measures as he shall deem necessary and proper for inviting the attention of the general government to the measures proposed in the act, and their great importance to the national interests."

Pursuant to that resolution, the governor, having transmitted to the President of the United States a copy of the act duly authenticated, specially delegated the undersigned, as having been officially connected for several years with the canals of the State, to present the subject proposed in the law to the consideration of the general government. In the execution of that duty, the principal facts necessary to be understood have been verbally communicated to the President, but, under his permission, they are now respectfully laid before him in writing, and somewhat more in detail.

They fall under the two general heads of the NATIONAL DEFENCE and the NATIONAL COMMERCE.

I. The practicability of employing canals as engines of national defence mainly arises from the recent unexpected but very important discovery that impregnable mail-clad vessels, comparatively small in size, are capable of effectually resisting vessels of vastly greater dimensions; and further, that one such impregnable vessel would be able, in a few hours, to destroy a whole squadron of vessels-of-war of the description heretofore in use. This striking truth, so signally demonstrated by the recent achievement of the Monitor upon the waters of the Chesapeake, almost within the hearing of the national capital, must inevitably work a radical revolution in naval warfare. Among its other singular and immediate results, is the greatly increased importance which it imparts to canals of moderate volume, heretofore supposed to be useful only for carrying vessels. of commerce. As carriers of impregnable vessels-of-war, they assume at once a new dignity. They rise to the rank of naval channels, and become necessary parts of the machinery of war.

The interesting question then arises, What dimensions are required for a canal to enable it to pass impregnable vessels adequate to the defence of our national waters, and especially the great chain of lakes!

On this point testimony is at hand of the highest authority, derived from a source no less reliable than Ericsson himself, the inventor of the Monitor. A letter herewith transmitted from that distinguished engineer and mechanician states: That an impregnable war vessel of 25 feet wide, and 200 feet long, with a shot-proof turret, carrying a gun of 15-inch calibre, with a ball of 450 pounds, and capable of destroying any hostile vessel that can be put on the lakes, will draw, without ammunition, coal or stores, but 6 feet and 6 inches water; and, consequently, will need only a canal wide and deep enough to float a vessel of those dimensions, with locks of sufficient size to pass it.

the

The Erie and the Oswego canals of the State of New York, respectively connecting the Hudson river with Lake Erie at Buffalo, and Lake Ontario at Oswego, are 70 feet wide and 7 feet deep; but their present locks are too small for the purpose in question. The cubic contents of a lock required to pass impregnable iron vessel above described are about 38,500 feet. The present Erie and Oswego locks, which are but 18 feet wide, 110 feet long, and 7 feet deep, contain but 13,800 cubic feet. If enlarged to 26 feet wide, and 220 feet long, (to admit the swing of the gates) they would contain 39,900 cubic feet.

In point of capacity, the canals of Canada far exceed those of the State of New York. The locks of the series of canals around the rapids of the St. Lawrence, within the British dominions, which afford direct and easy access from

the Atlantic into Lake Ontario, are 45 feet wide, 200 feet long, and 8 feet deep, and have a cubic capacity of 72,000 feet. The present locks of the Welland canal, which opens a similar passage from Lake Ontario into Lake Erie, are 26 feet wide, and 150 feet long, with a cubic capacity of at least 31,200 feet, which may be readily increased to the full amount required by lengthening the locks. The Rideau canal, which connects Montreal with Kingston, on Lake Ontario, through an interior route by way of the Ottawa river, is only 5 feet deep, but its locks are 33 feet wide and 142 feet long. Their present cubic capacity is 23,430 feet, but if lengthened to 220 feet would be 36,600. The greater width of the lock would measurably compensate for the shallow draught, and permit the passage of war vessels of dangerous dimensions.

From this brief summary it will be seen at once that the British government, whether designedly or not, has secured to itself means of naval access to the lakes far exceeding those the United States now possess, and that the only appropriate and certain remedy for this evil is the adequate enlargement, without delay, of the locks of the American canals leading into that important chain of waters. On this point the opinions of our intelligent and loyal citizens are very decided. Numerous petitions have already reached Congress from the inhabitants of the cities adjacent to the lakes, (including, among other eminent individuals, a former President of the United States,) in which they forcibly and truly state that "the United States have no impediment to offer, if, during the season of navigation, a fleet of British gunboats from the Atlantic shall propose to take possession of the entire chain of lakes and connecting rivers," and earnestly solicit the government to adopt measures for their defence, without delay, by the enlargement of the locks of the Erie and Oswego canals, expressing their opinion that "the immense national interests involved in the military possession of these waters can be secured in no other mode at so small a cost of time and money."

The country has learned, with much gratification, that the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of Representatives in Congress have already had this subject under attentive examination, as forming part of a general system of defence. In the comprehensive and truly national report recently made to the House by that committee, they express their earnest conviction that "a small fleet of light-draught, heavily-armed, iron-clad gunboats could, in one short month, in despite of any opposition that could be made by extemporized batteries, pass up the St. Lawrence, and shell every city and village from Ogdensburg to Chicago. At one blow it could sweep our commerce from that entire chain of waters. Such a fleet would have it in its power to inflict a loss to be reckoned only by hundreds of millions, so vast is the wealth thus exposed to the depredations of a maritime enemy." The vivid language of their report utters but the truth in declaring that the wide-spread cities and commerce of these great inland seas "are now as open to incursion as was Mexico when invaded by Cortez."

It is no sufficient answer to assert that these canals of Canada, affording facilities of access so dangerous, were constructed only for commercial purposes. Nor, indeed, would it be true. Taught by the experience of the war of 1812, the attention of the most eminent British statesmen and commanders has long been occupied with the importance of these canals, not merely as commercial, but as military channels. Their struggles in that war to secure the naval command of Lake Ontario, together with the conflicts on Lake Erie and Lake Champlain, are well remembered. In 1814 the Duke of Wellington declared to the British ministry "that a naval superiority on the lakes is a sine qua non of success in war on the frontier of Canada." The treaty of peace in 1815 was followed, in 1817, by the "diplomatic arrangement," by which Great Britain and the United States mutually agreed to dismantle their vessels-of-war on the lakes and reduce their naval force on each side "to one vessel of one hundred

tons burden on Lake Ontario, and one on Lake Champlain, each armed with one 18-pound cannon, and on the upper lakes to two such vessels, armed with like force."

In 1819, but two years after that pacific arrangement, the Duke of Richmond, then governor general of Canada, transmitted to the secretary of state for the colonies a report from Lieutenant General Cockburn in favor of a line of water communication, unquestionably intended as a military work, leading from Montreal, by way of the Ottawa river and the interior chain of minor lakes, of which the Rideau is one, to Kingston, on Lake Ontario. In 1823 it was determined that the cost of the work should be wholly defrayed by the mother country. In 1825 a commission, of which Major General Sir J. Carmichael Smith was president, reported the estimated expense to the Duke of Wellington, then a member of the British government, whereupon the canal, with connecting works on the Ottawa, was constructed, openly and avowedly as a military work, by the royal engineers, under the direction of the ordnance department. completed in or near the year 1831 at a cost exceeding a million sterling. The preamble of the act of the local parliament in Canada, authorizing the taking of lands for the purpose, passed in February, 1827, expressly recites that "his Majesty has been pleased to direct measures to be immediately taken, under the superintendence of the proper military department, for constructing a canal connecting the waters of Lake Ontario with the river Ottawa, and affording a convenient navigation for the transport of naval and military stores."

It was

In 1831 Colonel Durnford, of the royal engineers, in his testimony before a committee of the British Parliament, stated that provision was made for blockhouses at several of the locks of the canal, and that the work being intended as a military communication, it was necessary that fortifications and works of defence should be erected at the entrance of the canal, and in its immediate vicinity at Kingston. A fortress of very considerable strength was accordingly erected, and is now the most important military work on Lake Ontario.

The completion and defence of this interior line of water communication has been followed by the construction of a series of short canals, of much greater size, along the St. Lawrence river and around its rapids. Their capacity very far transcends any commercial necessity which can reasonably be expected on that line of communication for a long time to come. In point of fact, the descending trade of the St. Lawrence (necessarily preponderating, like that of the Erie canal, largely over the ascending) is not one-third of that of the Erie canal. Nevertheless, the existing locks of the Erie canal are adequate to pass a descending trade double of that it now enjoys; while, again, the locks on the St. Lawrence canals, 45 feet by 200, have double the capacity of those on the Erie-from which three elements, it is arithmetically evident, that the locks of the St. Lawrence have at least twelve times the capacity really required for any purpose of existing commerce.

It was the deep conviction of danger in this inequality between the canals of the two countries for the purposes of national defence, and the absolute necessity of regaining, without delay, that equality of naval access and condition intended to be secured by the treaty stipulation of 1817, which led the legislature of New York to pass the act of the 22d of April last. That such were the views of the legislature fully appears from the reports on the subject made in their senate and assembly. The report of Mr. Ogden, chairman of the canal committee of the assembly, substantially confirmed by that of Mr. Cook, in the senate, truly asserts that these large dimensions of the Canadian locks, “so far beyond the meagre wants of Canadian commerce at the time, suggest that the higher object of military defence was not lost sight of by far-seeing British statesmen in their construction; and they will not complain if, on a subject of so much moment, we follow their example. A preparation for defence and provision for the rapid concentration of military and defensive power in time of

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need could not be construed, by any logical or fair course of reasoning, into hostile intent; nor would it provoke criticism from a nation so careful as Great Britain in placing herself in defensive position.

"Defensive measures are always pacific measures; their bearing and tendency are towards peace; they avert rather than provoke war; induce caution on the part of rivals and antagonists, and never provoke hostilities on the part of friends. It is submitted with entire confidence that the means of placing gunboats speedily and certainly on the border lakes will tend greatly to prevent war with our northern neighbor. She would respect us more, and surely not fear us less, if we stand on a perfect equality with herself in the particular referred to."

In opposition to these sensible and patriotic views, it has been asserted that no real necessity exists for enlarging the channels of our American canals for the passage of gunboats, but, on the contrary, that the safety of our cities and commerce on the lakes may be fully and surely provided for, either by accumulating and storing materials for gunboats at points on the canals near the lakes, or, in case of war, by marching a military force into Canada to seize and destroy its canals.

In respect to the first of these expedients, it may be observed that even if it could be lawfully and wisely adopted under the provisions and true intent of the existing treaty, the very materials thus to be stored for any adequate number of vessels (estimated at $200,000 each) and probably destined only to decay through a long course of years, would cost very nearly, if not quite, as much as the whole expense of enlarging the 90 locks on the Erie and Oswego canals; and, furthermore, that we should much underrate the resolution and activity of our vigorous adversary in assuming that, with his large and powerful fleet of gunboats, ready at any moment to be precipitated into the lakes, he would give us time to complete our vessels before the mischief would be done.

In respect to the proposed seizure and destruction of the Canadian canals, it may in like manner be observed, and that, too, in a spirit of perfect amity, that our British brethren, sharing with ourselves a descent from common ancestors, inherit, at least, a reasonable amount of courage, if not of obstinacy; that the matter of seizing and destroying their canals, however trifling it may seem, would hardly go by default; and, at any rate, that their numerous and swiftsailing gunboats could ascend and ravage the whole coast of the lakes before our military columns of adequate force could be put in motion.

Such, too, seems to be the present opinion of the British people, as manifested through their public journals. The leading article in the London Times of the 7th of January last, in reference to the disturbing affair of the Trent, then pending, declares :

"That as soon as the St. Lawrence is opened again there will be an end of our difficulty. We can then pour into the lakes such a fleet of gunboats and other craft as will give us the complete and immediate command of those waters. Directly the navigation is clear, we can send up vessel after vessel without any restrictions, except such as are imposed by the size of the canals. The Americans would have no such resource. They would have no access to the lakes from the sea, and it is impossible that they could construct vessels of any considerable power in the interval that would elapse before the ice broke up. With the opening of spring the lakes would be ours."

It was after a careful examination of this important matter in both houses of the legislature of New York, and taking into view not only the greatly exposed condition of her northern water frontier, but the immense stream of lake commerce pouring into her territory and through her canals and railways, not only from the mineral and grazing districts of northern Pennsylvania and Ohio, but from the truly imperial group of agricultural States adjacent to the upper lakes, that the act of the 22d of April was passed by large majorities both in the senate and assembly, placing all the State canals connected with the lakes at the