As late as the middle forties men did not in the least grasp the commercial situation which now confronted the Northwest nor could they foresee that the land behind the Great Lakes was about to deluge the country with an output of produce and manufactures of which the roads, canals, ships, wharfs, or warehouses in existence could handle not a tenth part.They did not yet understand that--this trade was to become national.It was well on in the forties before the Galena lead mines, for instance, were given up as the terminal of the Illinois Central Railroad and the main line was directed to Chicago.The middle of the century was reached before the Lake Shore was considered at Cleveland or Chicago as important commercially as the neighboring portage paths which by the Ordinance of 1787 had been created "common highways forever free." The idea of joining Buffalo, Cleveland, and Chicago with the interior--an idea as old as the Indian trails thither--still dominated men's minds even in the early part of the railroad epoch.Chicago desired to be connected with Cairo, the ice-free port on the Mississippi; and Cleveland was eager to be joined to Columbus and Cincinnati.The enthusiastic railway promoters of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois drew splendid plans for uniting all parts of those States by railway lines; but the strategic position of the cities on the continental alignment from New York to the Pacific by way of South Pass never came within their horizon.The ten million dollar Illinois scheme did not even contemplate a railway running eastward from Chicago.But the future of the commerce of the Great Lakes depended absolutely upon this development.There was no hope of any canals being able to handle the traffic of the mighty empire which was now awake and fully conscious of its power.The solution lay in joining the cities to each other and to the Atlantic world markets by iron rails running east and west.
This railroad expansion is what makes the last decade before the Civil War such a remarkable series of years in the West.In the half decade, 1850-55, the Baltimore and Ohio and Pennsylvania railways reached the Ohio River; the links of the present Lake Shore system between Buffalo and Chicago by way of Cleveland and Toledo were constructed; and the Pennsylvania line was put through from Pittsburgh to Chicago.The place of the lake country on the continental alignment and the imperial situation of Chicago, and later of Omaha, came to be realized.The new view transformed men's conceptions of every port on the Great Lakes in the chain from Buffalo to Chicago.At a dozen southern ports on Ontario, Erie, Huron, and Michigan, commerce now touched the swiftest and most economical means of transcontinental traffic.
This development culminated in the miracle we call Chicago.In 1847 not a line of rail entered the town; its population then numbered about twenty-five thousand and its property valuation approximated seven millions.Ten years later four thousand miles of railway connected with all four points of the compass a city of nearly one hundred thousand people, and property valuation had increased five hundred per cent.The growth of Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit during this period was also phenomenal.
When the crisis of 1861 came, the service performed by the Walk-in-the-Water and her successors was seen in its true light.
The Great Lakes as avenues of migration had played a providential part in filling a northern empire with a proud and loyal race;from farm and factory regiment on regiment marched forth to fight for unity; from fields without number produce to sustain a nation on trial poured forth in abundance; enormous quantities of iron were at hand for the casting of cannon and cannon balls; and, finally, pathways of water and steel were in readiness in the nick of time to carry these resources where they would count tremendously in the four long years of conflict.
