Ohio Canal Era

Bibliographic Note, 1987

Preface 10 Ihe 1987 Edition able example of the cumulative buildup of historical knowledge." I hope that I may have extended in a persuasive and useful way the conceptual terms and boundaries ofthat literature, in addition to contributing toward an understanding of federalism as a working system, of state government as an actor in the economy, and, above all, of the wholeness of patterns of economic change in those years of hectic development. I am especially pleased and grateful to the Ohio University Press that publication of this reissue edition comes in what is not only the nation's constitutional bicentennial but also the two hundredth year of the Northwest Ordinance-·the great document that established a basic part of the legal framework for the historical developments recounted here. HARRY K SCHEIBER The University of California Berkeley, April, 1987 Bibliographic Note. 1987 The methodological issues and controversies ofthe 1970. in Ameriean economic history are discussed in Stephen Salsbury. "Economic History Then and Now," Agricultural History 53 (1979). A perceptive analysis and overview~ written when division in the field was nearly at its height. was provided by James Soltow, "American Institutional Studies: Present Knowledge and Past Trends," Journal of F.conomic History 31 (1971). See also Stephen Salsbury and Harry N. Scheiber, "Reflections on George Rogers Taylor's The Transportation Revolution ," Business History Review 51 (1977); and, for more recent analysis , see Scheiber, "Regulation, Property Rights. and Definition of'The Market:" Journal of F.conomic History 41 (1981). The emergence of legal-cconomic history and linkages (and reintegration ) with economic history are treated in Donald Pisani, "Promo· tion and Regulation: The Constitution and the American Economy," Journal ofAmerican History (1987, in press); Scheiber. "At the Borderlands of Law and Economic History,"" American Historical Review xxviii ) Bibliographic NOle, 1987 75 (1970); and Willard Hurst, "Old and New Dimensions of Research in U.S. Legal History," American Journal ofLegal Hislory 23 (1979). The full scope of the new legal history, embracing social and economic change as well as positive government in the large, is illustrated in two major scholarly works in the new genre: Lawrence M. Friedman, A History ofAmerican Law (2nd edition, New York: Simon and Schuster , 1986): and Willard Hurst. r.aw and Social Order in thi' Uniled States (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977). Since the original publication ofthis book, a number ofstudies have appeared that concern public enterprise, canal and railroad transport, and early nineteenth-century economic change in the West. They include two books on Old Northwest canal projects: Paul Fatout, fndiana Canals (Purdue University Studies: West Lafayette, Ind., 1972): and John C\I. Dickinson, To Build a Canal: Sault Ste, Marie, 1853-54 andAjier(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1981). A narrative history with abundant material in detail on Ohio and Old Northwest railroads is John F. Stover, Iron Road 10 thi' Wesl: American Railroads in the 1850s (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978). Other transport studies include my own, "The Transportation Revolution : erban Dimensionsl~' in Towards an Urban Ohio, ed, John Wunder (Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 1977): and articles by Ralph D. Gray, Ronald Shaw, and myself in the symposium volume Transportation and the Early Nation (Indiana Historical Society, 1981). The persistence of the flatboat traffic and its contributions to antebellum regional development are treated in the quantitative study by Erik F. Haites, James Mak, and Gary M. Walton, Western River Transportation: The Era ofInternal Development, 1810-1860 (Baltimore : The Johns Hopkins lIniversity Press, 1975), Trends in volume and composition ofriver commerce, and also the Hatboat trade's business structure and practices are the main themes of my essay, "The Ohio-Mississippi Flatboat Trade," The Frontier in American Development : Essays in Honor ofPaul Wallace (Jates, ed. David M. Ellis (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969). Richard 1'. Farrell, "Internallmprovement Projects in Southwestern Ohio, 1815-34; Ohio History 80 (1971), fills in some interesting detail on the history of promotional efforts in the region centering on Cincinnati. On general economic history of the West, important new publica- Bibliographic Note, 1987 xxix tions include the essays by the distinguished economic historians R