The Raging Erie - by Mark S Ferrara

About the Book

Mark S. Ferrara tells the stories of the ordinary people who lived, worked, and died along the banks of the Erie Canal, emphasizing the forgotten role of the poor and working class in this epochal transformation.

Book Synopsis

The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 was a monumental achievement. Linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, it transformed New York City into a hub of international trade, drove the rise of industrial cities in once sparsely populated areas, and accelerated the westward expansion of the United States. Yet few of the laborers who toiled along the canal shared in the prosperity it brought.

Mark S. Ferrara tells the stories of the ordinary people who lived, worked, and died along the banks of the canal, emphasizing the forgotten role of the poor and working class in this epochal transformation. The Raging Erie chronicles the fates of the Native Americans whose land was appropriated for the canal, the European immigrants who bored its route through the wilderness, and the orphan children who drove draft animals that pulled boats around the clock. Ferrara also shows how the canal served as a conduit for the movement of new ideas and religions, a corridor for enslaved people seeking freedom via the Underground Railroad, and a spur for social reform movements that emerged in response to the poverty and suffering along its path.

Brimming with vivid characters drawn from the underbelly of antebellum life, The Raging Erie explores the social dislocation and untold hardships at the heart of a major engineering feat, shedding light on the lives of the canallers who toiled on behalf of American expansion.

Review Quotes

Ferrara has written a terrific and necessary book about the deeper depths of the Erie Canal and the underside of the American Dream. With the bicentennial of the great waterway upon us, The Raging Erie uncovers the lives of the many laboring people who are often castaways in America's first transportation revolution. A must-read.--Richard S. Newman, author of Love Canal: A Toxic History from Colonial Times to the Present

Ferrara reconsiders the Erie Canal by casting a wider net than any previous study. He argues that the canal failed as a creator of progress and a mystical "bond of Union" once we consider the homes, lives, labors, and livelihoods of those people most immediately affected by it. Through wonderful, sharp chapters focusing on Indigenous communities, immigrant workers, children and families, enslaved and free peoples, fugitives from slavery, foot soldiers in nineteenth-century social justice movements (like abolitionists), vice industries, and the poor and downtrodden, Ferrara questions the very nature of progress.--Ryan Dearinger, author of The Filth of Progress: Immigrants, Americans, and the Building of Canals and Railroads in the West

About the Author

Mark S. Ferrara is professor of English at the State University of New York. His recent books include American Community: Radical Experiments in Intentional Living (2020) and Living the Food Allergic Life (2023).