Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-21T05:25:51.065Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Economy, Community, and Law: The Turnpike Movement in New York, 1797–1845

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Daniel B. Klein  and
John Majewski
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Turnpikes promised a solution to the problem of bad roads, but private management of highways was a startling innovation. Some people opposed the idea of turnpikes as exemplifying two bêtes noires of the post-Revolutionary period, the “private corporation” and “aristocracy.” Much of the controversy, however, was rooted in local disputes over legislative concessions to turnpike protesters. The legislature both expressed and responded to turnpike protest by writing laws favorable to local users and injurious to the financial viability of the companies. Partly in consequence, the turnpikes were unprofitable. Landowners, merchants, and farmers struggled to finance turnpikes, not so much in hopes of company dividends but in hopes of improved transportation, stimulated commerce, and higher land values. Many turnpike projects failed to be constructed, and those that were constructed carried on in a condition that reflected their precarious financial state.

Type
The Emergence of the Business Corporation
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , 1992 , pp. 469 - 512
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by The Law and Society Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Cartography: Christopher Baer, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware.

The authors wish to note that the research contributions of Christopher Baer in producing this article went quite beyond the cartography. For valuable discussion we wish to thank seminar participants at Northwestern University and New York University. We thank Leon J. Bienstock for contacting numerous repositories. We thank librarians and archivists for assistance at the New York State Library, the New York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, the New York State Historical Association, and numerous county and local historical societies. For generous financial assistance we thank the Transportation Center of the University of California, the Arthur H. Cole committee of the Economic History Association, the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, the Earhart Foundation, and the Hagley Museum and Library.

References

References

Albert, William (1983) “The Turnpike Trusts,” in Aldcroft, D. H. & Freeman, M. J., eds., Transport in the Industrial Revolution. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Appleby, Joyce (1984) Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s. New York: New York Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Appleby, Joyce (1986) “Republicanism in Old and New Contexts,” 3d ser., 43 William & Mary Q. 20.Google Scholar
Arthur, W. Brian (1988) “Urban Systems and Historical Path Dependence,” in Ausubel, J. H. & Herman, R., eds., Cities and Their Vital Systems. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.Google Scholar
Banning, Lance (1978) The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Banning, Lance (1986) “Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited: Liberal and Classical Ideas in the New American Republic,” 3d ser., 43 William & Mary Q. 3.Google Scholar
Bloodgood, S. DeWitt (1838) Treatise on Roads. Albany, NY: Oliver Steele.Google Scholar
Brooke, John L. (1989) The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1713–1861. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Carlos, Ann M., & Fulton, Patricia (1991) “Chance or Destiny? The Dominance of Toronto over the Urban Landscape, 1797–1850,” 15 Social Science History 35.Google Scholar
Chevalier, Michel (1961 [1837]) Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States, ed. J. W. Ward. Garden City, NY: Doubleday/Anchor.Google Scholar
Clark, Christopher (1990) The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780–1860. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Joseph Stancliffe (1917) Essays in the Earlier History of American Corporations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
De Witt, Benjamin (1807) “A Sketch of the Turnpike Roads in the State of New York,” 2 Transcript of the Society for the Promotion of Useful Arts in the State of New York; reprinted in The New American State Papers, Vol. 1: Transportation 215. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1982.Google Scholar
Durrenberger, Joseph Austin (1931) Turnpikes: A Study of the Toll Road Movement in the Middle Atlantic States and Maryland. Valdosta, GA: Southern Stationery & Printing Co.Google Scholar
Ellis, David Maldwyn (1943) “Albany and Troy—Commercial Rivals,” 24 New York History 484.Google Scholar
Evans, George Heberton (1948) Business Incorporations in the United States, 1800–1943. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Fee, Walter R. (1933) The Transition from Aristocracy to Democracy in New fersey, 1789–1829. Somerville, NJ: Somerset Press.Google Scholar
Goodrich, Carter (1948) “Public Spirit and American Improvements,” 92 Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 305.Google Scholar
Handlin, Oscar, & Handlin, Mary F. (1945) “Origins of the American Business Corporation,” 5 J. of Economic History 1.Google Scholar
Handlin, Mary F. (1947) Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy: Massachusetts, 1774–1861. New York: New York Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Hartog, Hendrik (1983) Public Property and Private Power: The Corporation of the City of New York in American Law, 1730–1870. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Hartz, Louis (1948) Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania, 1776–1860. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartz, Louis (1955) The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought since the Revolution. New York: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Harvard Law Review (1989) Note: “Incorporating the Republic: The Corporation in Antebellum Political Culture,” 102 Harvard Law Rev. 1883.Google Scholar
Heath, Milton Sydney (1954) Constructive Liberalism: The Role of the State in Economic Development in Georgia to 1860. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henretta, James A. (1978) “Families and Farms: Mentalite in Pre-industrial America,” 3d ser., 35 William & Mary Q. 19.Google Scholar
Hessen, Robert (1989) “Do Business and Economic Historians Understand Corporations?” Research Report No. 1043, Graduate School of Business, Stanford Univ.Google Scholar
Hexter, J. H. (1979) On Historians. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Hollifield, William (1978) Difficulties Made Easy: History of the Turnpikes of Baltimore City and County. Cockeysville, MD: Baltimore County Historical Society.Google Scholar
Horwitz, Morton J. (1977) The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, Robert Fleming (1957) “The Turnpike Movement in Virginia 1816–1860.” Ph.D. thesis, Columbia Univ.Google Scholar
Hurst, James Willard (1956) Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century United States. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Hurst, James Willard (1970) The Legitimacy of the Business Corporation in the Law of the United States, 1780–1970. Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia.Google Scholar
Jones, Daniel P. (1990) “Commercial Progress versus Local Rights: Turnpike Building in Northwestern Rhode Island in the 1790s,” 48 Rhode Island History 20.Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, Knetsch, Jack L., & Thaler, Richard H. (1990) “The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias” (Anomalies Column), 5 J. of Economic Perspectives 193.Google Scholar
Klein, Daniel B. (1990) “The Voluntary Provision of Public Goods? The Turnpike Companies of Early America,” 28 Economic Inquiry 788.Google Scholar
Klein, Daniel B., & Majewski, John (1991) “Promoters and Investors in Antebellum America: The Spread of Plank Road Fever,” Institute of Transportation Studies, Paper no. 91-1, Univ. of California, Irvine.Google Scholar
Kuran, Timur (1990) “Private and Public Preferences,” 6 Economics & Philosophy 1.Google Scholar
Lemon, James T. (1980) “Comment on James A. Henretta's 'Families and Farms: Mentalite in Pre-industrial America,” 3d ser., 37 William & Mary Q. 688.Google Scholar
Lincoln, Charles Z., ed. (1909) Messages from the Governors. Albany, NY: J. B. Lyon Co.Google Scholar
Lively, Robert A. (1955) “The American System: A Review Article,” 29 Business History Rev. 81.Google Scholar
Lord, Clifford (1942) “Elkanah Watson and New York's First County Fair,” 23 New York History 437.Google Scholar
Majewski, John, Baer, Christopher T., & Klein, Daniel B. (in press) “Responding to Relative Decline: The Plank Road Boom in Antebellum New York,” Journal of Economic History.Google Scholar
Martineau, Harriet (1962 [1837]), Society in America, ed S. M. Lipset. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Miller, William (1940) “A Note on the History of Business Corporations in Pennsylvania, 1800–1860,” 55 Q.J. of Economics 150.Google Scholar
Nelson, John R. Jr. (1987) Liberty and Property: Political Economy and Policymaking in the New Nation, 1789–1812. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.Google Scholar
New Jersey Highway Authority (1990) “Parkway Toll Violations Program Showing Success,” News Release, July 5.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C. (1966) Growth and Welfare in the American Past. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Parks, Roger N. (1966) “The Roads of New England 1790-1840.” Ph.D. thesis, Michigan State Univ.Google Scholar
Pawson, Eric (1977) Transport and Economy: The Turnpike Roads of Eighteenth Century Britain. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Plummer, Wilbur C. (1925) “Road Policy in Pennsylvania.” Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Prude, Jonathan (1983) The Coming of Industrial Order: Town and Factory Life in Rural Massachusetts, 1810–1860. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Reed, Nathaniel (1964) “The Role of the Connecticut State Government in the Development and Operation of Inland Transportation Facilities from 1784 to 1821,” Ph.D. thesis, Yale Univ.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, Winifred B. (1981) “The Market and Massachusetts Farmers, 1750-1855,” 41 J. of Economic History 283.Google Scholar
Scheiber, Harry N. (1975) “Federalism and the American Economic Order, 1789–1910,” 10 Law & Society Rev. 57.Google Scholar
Shirley, John M. (1881) “The Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike,” Granite Monthly 430.Google Scholar
Spafford, Horatio Gates (1981 [1824]) A Gazetteer of the State of New York. Interlaken, NY: Heart of the Lakes Publishing.Google Scholar
Szostak, Rick (1991) “Institutional Inheritance and Early American Industrialization,” in Mokyr, Joel, ed., The Vital One: Essays in Honor of Jonathan R. T Hughes. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, George Rogers (1977 [1951]) The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Taylor, Philip E. (1934) “The Turnpike Era in New England,” Ph.D. thesis, Yale Univ.Google Scholar
Tocqueville, Alexis de (1945 [1835/1840]) Democracy in America. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Watson, Elkanah (1856) Men and Times of the Revolution or Memoirs of Elkanah Watson, ed. Watson, W. C.. New York: Dana & Co.Google Scholar
White, Philip L. (1979) Beekmantown, New York: Forest Frontier to Farm Community. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Wilentz, Sean (1982) “On Class and Politics in Jacksonian America,” 10 (4) Revs. in American History 45.Google Scholar
Wood, Frederic J. (1919) The Turnpikes of New England. Boston: Marshall Jones.Google Scholar
Wyckoff, Paul L. (1990) “Parkway Sees Cheating Unchecked and Considers Gates at Toll Lanes,” Star Ledger (Newark, NJ), 26 Jan., p. 26.Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

Massachusetts.Google Scholar
General Turnpike Law, Mass. Gen. L. ch. 79 (1805).Google Scholar
New York.Google Scholar

NOTE: For the period covered in this article New York statutes regarding highway appropriations and matters relating to toll bridges and turnpikes (including charters, land acquisition, maintenance, location/relocation, shunpiking, and rates) are cited in text and notes only by legislative session, chapter, and year. All may be found in the appropriate year in N.Y. Laws. An Act to Regulate Highways, 1797 N.Y. Laws ch. 43 (“general highway law of 1797”).

An Act to Regulate Highways, 1801 N.Y. Laws ch. 186 (“general highway law of 1801”).Google Scholar
An Act Relative to Turnpike Companies, 1807 N.Y. Laws ch. 38; amended 1836 N.Y. Laws ch. 284, 1838 N.Y. Laws ch. 262 (“general turnpike law”).Google Scholar
An Act Relative to Incorporations for Manufacturing Purposes, 1811 N.Y. Laws ch. 67 (“general manufacturing law”).Google Scholar

Cases Cited

Bates v. Sutherland, 15 Johns. Cas. 510 (1818). Benedict v. Goit, 3 Barb. Ch. 459 (1848).Google Scholar
Carrier v. Schoharie Turnpike Rd., 18 Johns. Cas. 56 (1820).Google Scholar
Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, 24 Mass. (7 Pick.) 344 (1829); affirmed 36 U.S. (11 Pet.) 420 (1837). Chestney v. Coon, 8 Johns. Cas. 150, 8 Johns. Cas. 116 (2d ed. 1811).Google Scholar
Conklin v. Elting, 2 Johns. Cas. 410 (1807).Google Scholar
Croton Turnpike Rd. v. Ryder, 1 Johns. Ch. 611 (1815).Google Scholar
In re Flatbush Avenue of the City of Brooklyn, 1 Barb. Ch. 286 (1847).Google Scholar
Griffen v. House, 18 Johns. Cas. 397 (1820).Google Scholar
Hearsey v. Boyd, 7 Johns. Cas. 183 (1810).Google Scholar
Hearsey v. Pruyn, 7 Johns. Cas. 179 (1810).Google Scholar
Jones v. Estis, 2 Johns. Cas. 379 (1807).Google Scholar
Newburgh & Cochecton Turnpike Co. v. Belknap, 17 Johns. Cas. 33 (1819).Google Scholar
Newburgh & Cochecton Turnpike Rd. v. Miller, 5 Johns. Ch. 101 (1821).Google Scholar
New-Windsor Turnpike Rd. v. Wilson, 3 Cai. R. 127 (1805).Google Scholar
Norval v. Cornell, 16 Johns. Cas. 73 (1819).Google Scholar
People v. Denslow, 1 Cain. 177 (1803).Google Scholar
People v. Kingston & Middletown Turnpike Rd. Co., 23 Wend. 193 (1840).Google Scholar
Stratton v. Herrick, 9 Johns. Cas. 356 (1812). Stratton v. Hubbel, 9 Johns. Cas. 357 (1812).Google Scholar