In January 2017, Melina Carnicelli stood among 10,000 people in Seneca Falls, New York, at the Women’s March she helped organize. On streets where Elizabeth Cady Stanton once fought for equality, Carnicelli saw a connection: the same soil that nurtured the women’s suffrage movement was still inspiring activists nearly two centuries later.
“I call it sacred ground,” said Carnicelli, the first female mayor of Auburn, New York. “Because that kind of fervor, that kind of passion, that kind of impetus toward civil rights, human rights, women’s rights, personal rights, has been part of this soil forever. Forever, really.”
As the Erie Canal approaches its 200th anniversary, its legacy as more than a trade route comes into focus. Along its waters, abolitionists and suffragists launched movements that reshaped the nation. Today, in places like Seneca Falls, Auburn and Syracuse, modern activists continue to draw inspiration from the Canal’s history.
“The Erie Canal is crucial,” said Coline Jenkins, the great-great-granddaughter of Stanton, “and really important for ideas, for travel of goods, for transportation of humans.”
Conduit for reform, spreading ideas
The Erie Canal reshaped 19th-century transportation, connecting towns and cities across New York with a reliable route, historian Judith Wellman said. The Canal replaced winding rivers and inefficient roads, providing a vital network for moving goods.
It contributed to the development of towns like Seneca Falls, Syracuse and Rochester as centers of commerce.
“People came to Seneca Falls because it was a bustling Canal city,” Wellman said.
The Canal’s design allowed for the quick movement of ideas, too. Newspapers, pamphlets and books could be transported at a speed and scale previously unheard of. Frederick Douglass’s The North Star, printed in Rochester, could reach Albany within a day, spreading abolitionist messages to a wider audience. The same networks of communication helped suffragists, who drew heavily from abolitionist strategies, to further their own movement.
“News just began to travel much quicker and much more efficiently along the space,” said S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate, a professor of religious studies at Hamilton College.
These towns attracted reformers, where movements such as abolition, temperance and women’s suffrage began to take shape, supported by the flow of ideas along the Canal’s route, Wellman said.
Abolition, suffrage and temperance dominated the discourse of the early 19th century. Rodriguez-Plate said these groups were mutually supportive, “mingling with each other” in ways that were not seen anywhere else.
“It’s sort of the inner-mixing of all these groups that really makes things move, that inspires people,” Rodriguez-Plate said.
The women’s rights movement grew from abolitionism, as activists like Stanton and Susan B. Anthony saw parallels between enslaved people’s oppression and the societal restrictions of women, said Derrick Pratt, a museum educator at the Erie Canal Museum.
For Stanton, the overlap between abolition and suffrage was not only practical but deeply personal. Her abolitionist work in Seneca Falls shaped her suffrage efforts, preparing her with the essential skills and connections to lead the women’s suffrage movement, Jenkins said.
“A lot of these women … take their skills that they learn in (abolition) and then go forward and apply it to the suffragist movement,” said Steph Adams, interpretations director at the Erie Canal Museum.
Canal provides opportunities for activists
The intersection of movements went beyond shared ideas — the Canal served as a literal and symbolic path to freedom. Freedom seekers traveled its waters on the Underground Railroad, supported by abolitionist networks in towns like Utica, Syracuse and Rochester. In Utica, Black residents of Post Street — just blocks from the Canal — offered shelter and guidance to those escaping slavery, said Jan DeAmicis, co-chair of the Oneida County Freedom Trail Commission.
The Canal linked people and opportunities. Mixed-race neighborhoods like Post Street became centers for both refuge and economic activity, DeAmicis said. While Black residents offered shelter to freedom seekers, they also found work in Canal-related businesses such as hotels, restaurants and stables, supporting its thriving economy.
“This is part of where the American dream comes from, this land of opportunity,” Rodriguez-Plate said. “The Erie Canal really makes … opportunity for, of course, those white Europeans traveling across voluntarily, but also gave opportunity to former enslaved people.”
The Canal provided the infrastructure for these movements to grow, holding key conventions such as the first meeting of the New York Anti-Slavery Society in Utica in 1835. It allowed reformers from across the region to gather, strategize and spread their ideas. Leaders like Harriet Tubman in Auburn, Jermain Loguen in Syracuse and Frederick Douglass in Rochester relied on the Canal.
Although the communities along the Canal have a strong history of resistance, they were not exempt from the national support for slavery, a system that fueled much of the state’s economy.
Pratt emphasized that companies operating along the Canal still profited off enslaved labor through cotton textiles, much like cotton mills in the South.
“While we often present this kind of the abolitionist side of the story, there’s also a firm pro-slavery sentiment throughout New York as well, which was kind of surprising,” Pratt said.
The early efforts of the abolitionist movement had shaped Stanton’s approach to activism by the time she organized the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. These principles, Jenkins said, reinforced her belief that equality, namely for women, was more than a moral argument — it was a fight for legal rights.
“Elizabeth Cady Stanton is an unbelievable person that does not come out of spontaneous combustion,” Jenkins said. “She connects women and law. It was not a moral argument to do the right thing, be nice to women, give them the vote. No, no, no. She said these are legal rights and inalienable rights.”
The convention was the beginning of a suffrage movement that spread quickly along the Canal. Within weeks, Wellman said similar conventions took place in Rochester and Syracuse, with the Canal helping to spread early activism throughout the state and beyond.
“The world connected to Seneca Falls and Seneca Falls connected to the world,” Jenkins said.
Erie Canal legacy still provides inspiration
Modern activists continue to draw on this intertwined legacy. Carnicelli founded First Amendment, First Vote in 2017 to empower young women to see themselves as future leaders. The program connects their activism to that of the women’s rights movement, using the past as a framework for the present, she said.
Carnicelli said she sees today’s women’s movement as the next phase of activism, continuing the work of those who have fought for gender equality for generations.
Yet despite the progress made, obstacles persist.
Carnicelli acknowledged that “the general population still isn’t ready for an effective, qualified woman to lead the country.” But she said she remains optimistic, encouraged by the drive of young women in her program.
“These are girls that have fire in the belly already around social justice,” Carnicelli said. “They are self-motivated to make a difference. They accept the challenge.”
Jenkins shared a similar hope, inspired by the growing number of women in leadership roles.
“On my tombstone, I’m going to engrave, ‘I saw the first female president,’” Jenkins said.
The tangible reminders of these movements remain vital, said Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor education program manager Patrick Stenshorn. Sites like Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, now part of the Women’s Rights National Historical Park, and Post Street in Utica, designated by the National Park Service as an Underground Railroad location, offer physical connections to history.
“When you’re trying to inspire a current or future generation, being able to connect that to a tangible story, a tangible site, is powerful and motivating,” Stenshorn said.
As the Erie Canal reaches its bicentennial anniversary, its legacy continues to resonate. From abolition to suffrage to today’s struggles for equality, the Canal remains a symbol of progress, Carnicelli said.
But still, even 200 years later, Black residents in central New York continue to fight for equal rights. In June 2020, about 2,000 demonstrators marched in a Black Lives Matter rally to protest the death of George Floyd — nearly one block from the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse.
Mary Hayes-Gordon, co-chair of the Oneida Freedom Trail Commission, imagines that the lessons learned from the Canal are still playing into activism today.
“People have been fighting against certain structures for a long time,” Hayes-Gordon said. “I would say (the Canal) continued lessons that humankind have been putting forth and building on for millennia, of how to do the work, make the change.”
As the former Auburn Mayor Melina Carnicelli said, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her girlfriends would challenge us to keep on keeping on,” she said. “Don’t ever stop making progress, even if it’s inch by inch.”
