Chicago, the completion of the
Illinois and Michigan and St. Mary's canals, and the new railways.
This second period was marked by the building of such steamers as the
Michigan, the Great Western, and the Illinois. These were the first
boats with an upper cabin and were looked upon with marked suspicion by
those best acquainted with the severe storms upon the Great Lakes. The
Michigan, of 475 tons, built by Oliver Newberry at Detroit in 1833, is
said to have been the first ship of this type. These boats proved their
seaworthiness and caused a revolution in the construction of lake craft.
Later in this period freight transportation saw an equally radical
advance with the building of the first propellers. The sloop-rigged
Vandalia, built by Sylvester Doolittle at Oswego on Lake Ontario in
1842, was the first of the propeller type and was soon followed by the
Hercules, the Samson, and the Detroit.

One very great handicap in lake commerce up to this time had been the
lack of harbors. Detroit alone of the lake ports was distinctly favored
in this respect. The harbors of Buffalo, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and
Chicago were improved slowly, but it was not until the great Chicago
convention of 1846 that the nation's attention was focused on the needs
of Western rivers and harbors, and there dawned a new era of lighthouses
and buoys, breakwaters and piers, and dredged channels. Another handicap
to the volume of business which the lake boats handled in the period
just previous to the Civil War was the inadequacy of the feeders, the
roads, riverways, and canals. The Erie Canal was declared too small
almost before the cries of its virulent opponents had died away, and the
enlargement of its locks was soon undertaken. The same thing proved true
of the Ohio and Illinois canals. The failure of the Welland Canal was
similarly a very serious handicap. Although its locks were enlarged in
1841, it was found by 1850 that despite the improvements it could not
admit more than about one-third of the grain-carrying boats, while only
one in four of the new propellers could enter its locks.

As late as the middle forties men did not in the least grasp the
commercial situation which now confronted the Northwest nor could they
foresee that the land behind the Great Lakes was about to deluge the
country with an output of produce and manufactures of which the roads,
canals, ships, wharfs, or warehouses in existence could handle not a
tenth part. They d