Editor’s Note: We are rerunning this story about the Augusta Canal at the request of a reader who wondered if the canal history might tie in with the history of Black Augustans. It does, and we are happy to share this story a second time.
Henry Cummings and his Commission found themselves with a terrible dilemma. Who would build the canal for them?
When Henry Cummings and his Commission started to build the Augusta Canal in 1845, they contracted with the Georgia Railroad to provide the labor force. Almost all of the men they hired were of Irish descent.
Those Irishmen were unprepared for Augusta’s hot summers, in the age before sunscreen and air conditioning, and so they walked off the job when conditions got too intense for them.
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Twelve sections of the canal were to commence with simultaneous construction, but Cummings had no men to put to work.
The late Augusta historian Ed Cashin could only document a handful of slaves working on two sections of the project. Instead, a group of free Black businessmen, likely from the Springfield Village area, approached Cummings and offered to take on the construction project if Augusta would pay them the same wage their counterparts were paid.
The city readily agreed, and work commenced with the new workforce that was almost entirely Black. Quite a few Chinese laborers came from the North to participate in the digging. No records exist of slaves being involved after that point.
What is really interesting is that the project to expand St. Sebastian Way a decade ago required an archeological survey of the area that was a part of the Springfield Village. In former trash pits throughout the area, the archeologists found something intriguing.
They began to unearth empty ink wells, and they found a ton of them.
The archeologists were puzzled as it assumed that the majority of the people who lived in the area were illiterate (they weren’t, but that’s another story for another day). So, what were the Springfield residents writing, and why do none of the documents they wrote survive to present?
A theory emerged that it is possible that the Augusta Canal project could have been tied to the Underground Railroad. Those discarded ink wells could be evidence of document forging for escaped slaves trying to get to freedom in the North.
It just might be that a technique Augusta’s Black community used to help slaves escape was to hide them in plain sight among the large work force of free Blacks who were digging the canal.
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While it is only a theory and it likely will never be proven, another interesting hint is that the women of Springfield Village were known for their quilts. In the days of the Underground Railroad, quilts were naturally used for bed covers, but many also contained maps embedded in the quilt pattern.
Another fascinating fact is that the “president” of the Underground Railroad, Levi Coffin, visited Augusta after the Civil War to hand out shoes and clothes to the newly freed slaves. Why did he choose Augusta?
It is a great theory to think that Augusta might have been a hub in the great endeavor that was the Underground Railroad. But it is, and remains, a theory.
What we do know is that the Augusta Canal was built primarily by free Black men.
The Augusta Canal is the only canal in the United States that continues to serve its original purpose. The gradient of the canal is so precise that it carries tons of water over seven miles at roughly 6 knots, which is fast enough to prevent silt build up and provide power generation, and it is all controlled by gravity.
The city’s Black businessmen certainly knew what they were doing. The canal has continued to provide water and electricity to Augusta for 176 years.
And that is something you might not have known.
Scott Hudson is the Managing Editor of The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
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