Antiques.(influence of rivers and canal systems in American history)

 
And empires rising where the sun descends!-- 
The Ohio soon shall glide by many a town 
Of note; and where the Mississippi stream, 
By forests shaded, now runs weeping on, 
Nations shall grow, and states not less in fame 
Than Greece and Rome of old! 
Philip Freneau and Hugh Henry Brackenridge, "On the Rising Glory of 
America," 1771 

George Washington's first surveying expedition parceled out what was then Virginia's northwesternmost territory, and he went on to become, in effect, the surveyor general of the nation. As the patron saint of civil engineering in the United States he favored a system of canals that would make the Potomac River navigable to its headwaters.

The great network of natural waterways in the center of the continent--the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers--were blocked from access to the oceans by mountain ranges on the east and west. In addition, the free movement of shipping on the great rivers was impeded by falls and swift currents. If canals were the solution to land barriers, steamboats provided the solution to swift currents. Focusing on the Potomac, which flowed by the porch of his Virginia house, Mount Vernon, Washington championed canals that would bypass its falls, and he backed the developers of stcamboats to accelerate upstream navigation.

Both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson also saw the country's rivers as agents of national unity. Franklin declarcd "the great country back of the Apalachian mountains, on both sides [of] the Ohio ... to be one of the finest in North America," not only for its natural resources but also for "the vast convenience of inland navigation or water-carriage by the lakes and great rivers, many ...