The Erie Canal hauled more than people and products! The purpose of the construction of the Erie Canal
was economic benefit, but the secondary benefit of cultural change has lasted for the Canal’s 200 years!
The Erie brought ideas from The East to the Mid-West. New religious notions fostered individual self-
empowerment and the ability to control one’s own destiny vs. a fatalistic Life pre-determined by original
sin.
This revival was so hot that the western region along the Erie Canal was called the Burned Over
District. One of the hot topics was the anti-slavery issue. The idea that the country had not yet risen to its
freedom heritage drove the abolition movement.
The first meeting of New York State abolitionists happened, in part, due to travel on the canal when
104 abolitionists, threatened by violent mobs in Utica, rode from Utica to Canastota on the canal and
then walked nine miles up nine hundred feet of elevation to meet 400 other delegates in Peterboro to
form the New York State Antislavery Society on October 22, 1835 in the Presbyterian Church, which
now the Town of Smithfield/Hamlet of Peterboro municipal building, and the home of the National
Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum.
The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum invites all to participate in a reenactment of those
abolitionist first steps walking from “the brink of the Canal” in Canastota to Peterboro for the first
meeting of the New York State Antislavery Society October 22, 1835! The sheriff-escorted Abolition
Walk begins at 102 South Peterboro Street in Canastota NY with registration at 8:00 a.m., a brief program
at 9:00 a.m., and the walk launch at 9:30 a.m.. Walkers arrive in Clockville at about 10:30 a.m. and return
to Canastota at Erie Canal Brewing for a party at approximately noon. Folks can also ride a bus for the
walk, and the bus is available for brief rests for walkers.
