> The Erie Canal, and the rest of the entire navigate-able water system is relatively unknown
What? It's taught in american schools. Who hasn't hear of the erie canal?
> but is a huge huge reason why we have a United States of America, and not 50 different countries with fractured cultural, military and social histories.
If that was the case, the civil war wouldn't have occurred. The Erie Canal was about making western expansion easier. Plans for the erie canal was developed decades before independence. The federal government, single currency, civil war, etc were the binding force, not the erie canal.
The federal government as a binding force was not really that effective until after the civil war. See the repeated failure to build the transcon railroad which the south blocked fearing the entrapment of the south by another transportation system.
What? It's taught in american schools. Who hasn't hear of the erie canal?
> but is a huge huge reason why we have a United States of America, and not 50 different countries with fractured cultural, military and social histories.
If that was the case, the civil war wouldn't have occurred. The Erie Canal was about making western expansion easier. Plans for the erie canal was developed decades before independence. The federal government, single currency, civil war, etc were the binding force, not the erie canal.