Syracuse University Library
Special Collections Research Center
Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Fulton Wins!

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

Digital Edition.

This digitization project was supported by Regional Bibliographic Databases and Interlibrary Resources Sharing Program funds, awarded by the New York State Library.

Call number: Smith 547

FULTON WINS!

To the People of Volney:

Some of you are unwilling to have your Town bonded to help build the Midland Rail Road. Is not this strange? The time has now come for determining whether the Great East and West Thorough-Fare between Lakes Ontario and Oneida shall pass through Oswego or through Fulton. It will, of course, pass through Fulton, if the Midland Road is built on the adopted route. And yet, amazing fact! some of you are opposed to this bonding of your Town. The Midland Road, if built from Fulton to the East end of Oneida Lake, will, immediately, be connected with the Rome and Watertown Rail Road over the short intervening space of four miles. There will, then, be a direct Road from Utica and Rome to Fulton, which will, without delay, be extended to Rochester. Branches there will be from this extension to Big Sodus and Little Sodus. That to Little Sodus will be but some half dozen miles long. So, too, there will be a direct Branch from Fulton to Little Sodus, the length of which will be about the same as the length of the Road from Fulton to Oswego. Oswego has no natural harbor: and, its artificial one being very small and very expensive to maintain, its wharf charges must, consequently, be very high. On the other band, the natural harbor of Little Sodus, being a very capacious as well as safe one, its wharf-charges will be comparatively very low. How attractive to the trade of Albany and New York, Troy and Boston will be Little Sodus does not need to be argued.

But, because the building of the Midland Road, as now laid out, will give to Fulton, instead of Oswego, this Great East and West Thorough-Fare, some of you are apprehensive that Oswego will, finally, refuse to pay her six hundred thousand dollars. She has, however, voted to bond herself for it; and her nice sense of honor will not suffer her to violate this vote. Moreover, she is in favor of building the Midland Road, as now laid out. What may be her reasons for thus building it, or what may be her interests at work to this end, is not for you to inquire into or concern yourselves about. Sufficient for you to know, at this point, is that Oswego resigns to Fulton this Great East and West Thorough-Fare, and consents to pay six hundred thousand dollars of its cost.

Be not afraid, then, that Oswego will fail you! Trust in her honor for her paying the promised six hundred thousand dollars. Believe, too, that, though you may not be capable of discerning it, she, nevertheless, has a sublime vision of her abundant reward for her self-sacrifice in letting Fulton have this Great Thorough-Fare and six hundred thousand dollars also. We repeat - be not afraid of Oswego ! It is true that, here and there amongst her aged citizens, are those, who would still have the Midland Road built, as originally contemplated, on the dozen-miles-shorter and far leveller route, and who believe that, if built as now laid out, it will be in no sense an Oswego Road. But the day of their influence is gone by. Her Bronsons, Platts, Wrights, Carringtons and Doolittles are no longer of much account. One live man, like her DeWolf, or like her former citizen Littlejohn, counts more than a hundred of these "Old Fogies:" - and, happily, both DeWolf and Littlejohn are, "tooth and nail," for the Midland, as now laid out. So "Hurrah for Fulton !" and "Thanks to Oswego !"

X.

MARCH 13 1868.