Karin Abarbanel

As mayor of New York City and later as governor of New York State, De Witt Clinton crusaded so zealously for a canal connecting Albany to Buffalo that the project became known as “Clinton’s Ditch.” It was a dream of pharaonic proportions—a 363-mile-long artificial waterway that most people considered impossible.

Editor's Note: Over his sixty-year career, the legendary Gay Talese helped define contemporary literary journalism and is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism, along with Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, and Hunter S. Thompson. Portions of this essay appeared in his new book, Bartleby and Me: Reflections of an Old Scrivener, just published. Rising within the city of New York are about one million buildings.

The rather astounding narrative which appears here is contributed by a British historian who enjoys poking about in the vast Public Record Office in London. There, “in a dusty corner,” he recently found a mass of correspondence, and especially one letter, which casts new light on an almost forgotten episode in American history, yet one fraught with vast implications.