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Article: Canals
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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CANALS
CANALS.
Even before the Revolutionary War gave New impetus to American expansionism, the colonial political and economic elites were deeply interested in the improvement of inland transportation. Vessels that plied offshore waters, small boats and rafts on the streams down to tidewater, and local roads and turnpikes served the immediate commercial needs of farmers and townspeople in the Atlantic coastal area. But the loftier dreams of planters, merchants, and political leaders
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as well as of the common farmers who constituted by far most of the free population in British America
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looked beyond the "fall line" that separated the rivers flowing to the coast from those ...