Returning to Lake Erie

Movements of the squadrons of Perry and Barclay on the morning of 10 September 1813 (from Wikipedia). 

Geographically, when it comes to control of the continent, Lake Erie was undoubtedly the hinge of North America. That is, if one single thing could be said to have been the difference between whether America would be hemmed into the Atlantic Coast (at least in the North), or would go on to expand across the continent, it was control of this lake, in particular the defense of its southern shore.**

The Ohio Country beyond the Appalachians had been given to the U.S. at the close of the Revolution in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. But this did not secure this area. In fact, the British largely ignored the terms of the treaty with a continued military occupation of the Northwest. In war, and therefore in history, all is fair in the long term. Nothing is settled until it is settled.

The Territory Northwest of the Ohio River as created by Congress in the Northwest Ordinance four years after the Treaty of Paris. The territory was admitted to the Union in 1803 (with reduced area) as the State of Ohio. The site of the Sept. 1813 Battle of Lake Erie is indicated in orange, approximately seventy miles west of present-day Cleveland.

But after the second war between the U.S. and Britain, things were different. Despite the failure and seeming folly of the American invasion of Canada that had been part of the larger war strategy, the war at least settled the boundary between the Crown and independent America in that region.* The terms of the Treaty of Ghent, signed by the two nations in late 1814 in the backdrop of the yearlong Congress of Vienna at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, had already been backed up by American arms in the North American field a way that seemed more permanently stable.

This was especially true given historical trends in the region, when after 1825, the Americans effectively began to seal control of the West courtesy of the State of New York and private investors (see The Reason for Government).

Erie Canal across New York in an 1840 map (from Wikipedia). The map shows just the eastern end of Lake Erie. The canal terminus is on the Niagara River between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The St. Lawrence  River (along upper edge flowing to the north) is the natural funnel of water traffic from Europe into North America, and would therefore seem to poise Montreal (downriver off the north edge of the map) as the natural gateway to the Great Lakes and thus to interior of the continent. But Lake Erie (and thus the upper Great Lakes) are inaccessible form Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence because of Niagara Falls (downstream from the canal terminus on the Niagara River). The canal across western New York State bypassed the falls entirely and essentially made Lake Erie, and the entire upper Great Lakes, upriver from New York City. This massive re-engineering of the North American continent is no small reason that the United States was able to solidify into a nation that spanned the entire continent to the Pacific Ocean.

Linking the lake to the Hudson by the opening of the Erie Canal did not directly change the military situation in the West in favor of the Americans. For the time being,  the Americans would still need their own fleet built and stationed on the Ohio, N.Y., and Pennsylvania coasts.

Instead the canal helped open the West with trade, and thus flooded it with people seeking a clean start, a new life and their own piece of personal and societal prosperity. By and large the people saw themselves as Americans---part of the American nation with a commonality with New York and New England especially (many of the newcomers had themselves emigrated from that region). The people of these states started finding good reasons to cooperate politically, and to promote the idea of a stronger national government as a whole.

One could say this was good timing for America, since history was about to accelerate in a huge way.

Current boundary between the United States and Canada. From Wikiepdia. Middle Island is the southernmost point of Canada.

*Much would still need to be settled between the U.S. and Britain, at least until 1848. But this was largely out in the Oregon Country.
**The only rival to Lake Erie, as far as geographically choke points on the continent, is the mouth of the Mississippi River, control of which at a critical epoch of history largely determined the extent to which America would expand into the Southwest. Ultimately both points seem equally weighted in importance towards creating the shape of the country as we now see it on the map.