““This encouraged Grant to revive a proposal he had floated a year earlier to connect American canals and rivers into a national network, lowering transport costs and stoking business. He also wanted to revive American shipbuilding, which had been badly damaged during the war, by paying “ample compensation” to American ships that carried mail domestically and abroad. Grant expanded this vision by again endorsing a canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and he had surveys conducted to locate the most feasible site. Quite visionary about this pathway, Grant maintained that “it would add largely to the wealth of the Pacific coast, and, perhaps, change the whole current of the trade of the world.””
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