INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS (1818-1824)
The transformation by which the slender line of the Indian trail
became the trader's trace, and then a road, superseded by the
turnpike and canal, and again replaced by the railroad, is typical
of the economic development of the United States. As the population
of the west increased, its surplus products sought outlets. Improved
means of communication became essential, and when these were
furnished the new lines of internal trade knitted the nation into
organic unity and replaced the former colonial dependence upon
Europe, in the matter of commerce, by an extensive domestic trade
between the various sections. From these changes flowed important
political results. [Footnote: For the earlier phase of internal
improvements, cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.),
chap. xv.]
Many natural obstacles checked this process. The Appalachian
mountain system cut off the seaboard of the United States from the
interior. From the beginning, the Alleghenies profoundly influenced
the course of American history, and at one time even endangered the
permanency of the Union. In our own day the railroad has so reduced
the importance of these mountains that it is difficult for us to
realize the part which they once played in our development. Although
Webster boasted that there were no Alleghenies in his politics, we
have already seen [Footnote: See chaps, iii., vi., above.] that in
the twenties they exercised a dominant influence on the lines of
internal commerce, and compelled the pioneer farmers to ship their
surplus down the Mississippi to New Orleans and around the coast,
and thence abroad and to the cities of the north. The difficult and
expensive process of wagoning goods from Philadelphia and Baltimore
across the mountains to the Ohio Valley raised the price of
manufactured goods to the western farmer; while, on the other hand,
the cost of transportation for his crops left him little profit and
reduced the value of his lands. [Footnote: Journ. of Polit. Econ.,
VIII., 36-41.]
Under these circumstances, it was inevitable that the natural
opportunities furnished by the water system of the Great Lakes and
the widely ramifying tributaries of the Mississippi should appeal to
statesmen who considered the short distances that intervened between
these navigable waters and the rivers that sought the Atlantic.
Turnpikes and canals had already shown themselves practicable and
profitable in England, so a natural effort arose to use them in aid
of that movement for connecting east and west by ties of interest
which Washington had so much at heart. New York, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Virginia, all subdivided by the mountains into eastern
and western sections, fostered roads and chartered turnpike and
canal companies. Pennsylvania was pre-eminent in this movement even
before the close of the eighteenth century, subscribing large
amounts to the stock of turnpike companies in order to promote the
trade between Philadelphia and the growing population in the region
of Pittsburgh. So numerous were the projects and beginnings of roads
and canals in the nation, that as early as 1808 the far-sighted
Gallatin made his famous report for a complete national system of
roads and canals. [Footnote: Cf. Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am.
Nation, XVI.), chap. iii.]
When New York undertook the Erie Canal in 1817 as a state
enterprise, and pushed it to such a triumphant conclusion that
before a decade after its completion its tolls repaid the cost of
construction, a revolution was effected in transportation. The
cheapness of water carriage not only compelled the freighters on the
turnpike roads to lower their charges, but also soon made it
probable that canals would supersede land transportation for heavy
freights, and even for passengers. For a time the power of
Pittsburgh and the activity of Philadelphia merchants sustained the
importance of the Pennsylvania turnpike. Until Great Lake steam
navigation developed and population spread along the shore of Lake
Erie and canals joined the Ohio and the lakes, the Erie Canal did
not reap its harvest of trade in the west. But already Pennsylvania
was alarmed at the prospect of losing her commercial ascendancy.
While New York and Philadelphia were developing canals and turnpikes
to reach the west, Baltimore was placed in an awkward position. The
attempts to improve the waters of the upper Potomac engaged the
interests of Maryland and Virginia from the days of Washington. But
the success of the Potomac Company, chartered jointly by these two
states in an effort to reach the Ohio trade, would have turned
traffic towards the city of Washington and its outlying suburbs
instead of towards Baltimore, which was already connected by a
turnpike with the Cumberland Road, so as to share with Philadelphia
in the wagon trade to the Ohio. On the other hand, Baltimore was
interested in the development of the Susquehanna's navigation, for
this river had its outlet in Chesapeake Bay, near enough to
Baltimore to make that city its entrepot; and it tapped the great
valley of Pennsylvania as well as the growing agricultural area of
south-central New York, which was not tributary to the Erie Canal.
But it was not possible to expect New York, Pennsylvania, or even
that part of Maryland interested in the Potomac to aid these
ambitions of Baltimore; and that city found itself at a disadvantage
and Maryland's interests were divided. [Footnote: Hulbert, Historic
Highways, XIII., 69 et seq.; Mills, Treatise on Inland Navig.; see
chap, xvii., below.]
Meantime, Virginia, anxious to check the western exodus from the
interior of her state, established a state fund and a board of
public works for the improvement of her rivers, including the
project of connecting the James and Kanawha. [Footnote: Babcock, Am.
Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv.; Adams, United States,
IX., 164.] North Carolina was agitating similar plans; [Footnote:
Murphy, Memorial on Internal Improvements; Weaver, Internal
Improvements in N. C., in Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, XXI, 113.]
and South Carolina made appropriations for extensive improvements.
New England devoted her attention to canals along the seaboard and
up the Connecticut Valley, to give the products of the interior of
that section an outlet on the coast. Boston was feeling the
isolation from the western trade that was enriching New York, and
some voices were raised in favor of a canal to reach the Hudson; but
the undertaking was too difficult, and the metropolis of New England
devoted its energies to the ocean commerce.
Meantime, the west was urging the federal government to construct
those interstate roads and canals which were essential to the
prosperity of that section and which could not be undertaken by
jealous and conflicting states. The veto by Madison of Calhoun's
bonus bill, in 1817, [Footnote: Cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am.
Nation, XIII.), chap. xvii.] was followed nine months later by
Monroe's first annual message, [Footnote: Richardson, Messages and
Papers, II., 18.] in which he stated his belief that the
Constitution did not empower Congress to establish a system of
internal improvements, and recommended an amendment to convey the
power. To Clay and the friends of internal improvements, these
constitutional scruples of the Virginia dynasty, although
accompanied by approval of the plan of a system of internal
improvements at federal expense, came as a challenge. In an
important debate on the constitutionality of national internal
improvements, in 1818, the House of Representatives, voting on four
resolutions submitted by Lowndes, of South Carolina, [Footnote:
Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1249] declared that Congress
had power to appropriate money for the construction of military
roads, and of other roads, and of canals, and for the improvement of
watercourses (89 ayes to 75 nays). [Footnote: By count of names; the
Journal gives ayes 90.] But after a debate which turned on the
significance of the word "establish" in the Constitution, the House
decided against the power to construct post-roads and military roads
(81 to 84); against the power to construct roads and canals
necessary to commerce between the states (71 to 95); and against the
power to construct canals for military purposes (81 to 83).
It was clear after this debate that there was not a sufficient
majority to override the veto which might be expected from the
president. On the other hand, the majority were unwilling to hazard
the rights which they claimed to possess, by appealing to the states
for a constitutional amendment. The next year Calhoun, the secretary
of war, responding to an invitation of Congress, submitted a report
outlining a comprehensive system of internal improvements requisite
for the defense of the United States. While avoiding an opinion on
the question of constitutionality, he declared that a judicious
system of roads and canals, constructed for commerce and the mail,
would be "itself among the most efficient means for the more
complete defense of the United States"; [Footnote: Am. State Papers,
Miscellaneous, 534.] and he favored the use of the engineering corps
for surveying the routes and of federal troops for the actual work
of construction.
By 1818 the National Road [Footnote: Cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality
(Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv.; Young, Cumberland Road, 15; Hulbert,
Historic Highways, X., chap. i.] had been constructed from
Cumberland, on the Potomac, across the mountains to Wheeling, on the
Ohio, and two years later Congress made appropriations for a survey
of the road westward to the Mississippi River. The panic of 1819,
however, left the treasury in such a condition that it was not until
1822 that the preservation and construction of this highway was
again taken up with vigor. In that year a bill was introduced
authorizing the president to cause toll-houses, gates, and turnpikes
to be erected on the Cumberland Road, and to appoint toll-gatherers,
with power to enforce the collection of tolls to be used for the
preservation of the road. The bill further provided for a system of
fines for violation of the laws of the road. It therefore involved
the question of the right of jurisdiction as well as of
construction.
The measure passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 87 to
68. The districts along the line of the Potomac and the Ohio, and
the regions tributary to the road in Pennsylvania and western
Virginia, were almost a unit in favor of the bill. Indeed, the whole
vote of the western states, with the exception of two members from
Tennessee, was given in the affirmative. But Pittsburgh, which
feared the diversion of her western trade to Baltimore, opposed the
bill. The area along the Susquehanna which looked to Baltimore also
voted in the negative, as did the majority of the delegation from
New York, who were apprehensive of the effect of the National Road
as a rival to the Erie Canal. The Senate passed the bill by the
decisive vote of 29 to 7.
Monroe vetoed this measure, on the ground that it implied a power to
execute a complete system of internal improvements, with the right
of jurisdiction and sovereignty. Accompanying his veto (May 4,
1822), he submitted "Views on the Subject of Internal Improvements."
[Footnote: Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 142-183; Monroe,
Writings, VI., 216; Mason, Veto Power, 85; Nelson presidential
Influence on Int. Imp. (Iowa Journal of Hist, and Politics), IV.,
29, 30.] In this elaborate disquisition, he rehearsed the
constitutional history of internal improvements, and expounded his
conception of the construction of the Constitution, and of the
relation of the states and the nation under the theory of divided
sovereignty. Although he denied to the federal government the right
of jurisdiction and construction, he asserted that Congress had
unlimited power to raise money, and that "in its appropriation, they
have a discretionary power, restricted only by their duty to
appropriate it to purposes of common defense and of general, not
local, national, not state, benefit." Nevertheless, he strongly
recommended a system of internal improvements, if it could be
established by means of a constitutional amendment. Both houses
sustained the president's veto.
Acting upon Monroe's intimation of the power to appropriate money,
and following the line of least resistance, the next year an act was
passed making appropriations for repairs of the Cumberland Road. On
March 3, 1823, also, was signed the first of the national acts for
the improvement of harbors. [Footnote: U. S. Statutes at Large,
III., 780.] The irresistible demand for better internal
communications and the development of a multitude of local projects,
chief among them a new plan for uniting Chesapeake Bay with the Ohio
by a canal along the Potomac, resulted, in 1824, in the introduction
of the general survey bill, authorizing the president to cause
surveys to be made for such roads and canals as he deemed of
national importance for commercial, military, or postal purposes.
The evident intention of the bill was to prepare a programme for
appropriations for internal improvements on a national scale, and
for subscription to the stock of companies engaged in these
enterprises. The discussion of the general survey bill brought out
the significance of the problem of transportation, and revealed the
sectional divisions of the nation in clear light.
Henry Clay made an earnest effort to commit Congress to the exercise
of the power of construction of interstate highways and canals which
could not be undertaken by individual states or by combinations of
states, and which, if built at all, must be by the nation. He
recounted the attention given by Congress to the construction of
public buildings and light-houses, coast surveys, erection of sea-
walls in the Atlantic states--"everything on the margin of the
ocean, but nothing for domestic trade; nothing for the great
interior of the country." [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1
Sess., I., 1035.] "Not one stone," he said, "had yet been broken,
not one spade of earth removed, in any Western State." He boldly
claimed that the right to regulate commerce granted as fully the
power to construct roads and canals for the benefit of circulation
and trade in the interior as it did the power to promote coastwise
traffic. His speech was a strong assertion of the right of the west
to equality of treatment with the old sections of the country. "A
new world," said he, "has come into being since the Constitution was
adopted. Are the narrow, limited necessities of the old thirteen
states, of, indeed, parts only of the old thirteen states, as they
existed at the formation of the present Constitution, forever to
remain the rule of its interpretation?" [Footnote: Annals of Cong.,
18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1315; Colton, Private Corresp. of Clay, 81.]
In contrast with the united attitude of the west upon internal
improvements, which Henry Clay voiced with such lofty accent, the
south showed divisions which reflected opposing economic interests
in the section. Not only were the representatives of Maryland almost
a unit in support of the bill, but also the western districts of
Virginia and North Carolina, as well as a considerable fraction of
the representatives from South Carolina and Georgia, supported the
cause of the west on this occasion.
The opposition in the south found, perhaps, its most inflexible
expression in the speech of John Randolph, [Footnote: Annals of
Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1296-1311.] who, with characteristic
recklessness and irresponsibility, dragged from its closet the
family skeleton of the south, and warned his fellow slaveholders
that, if Congress possessed power to do what was proposed by the
bill, they might emancipate every slave in the United States, "and
with stronger color of reason than they can exercise the power now
contended for." He closed by threatening the formation of
associations and "every other means short of actual insurrection."
"We shall keep on the windward side of treason," said he. [Footnote:
Cf. Macon's identical views in 1818 and 1824, Univ. of North
Carolina, James Sprunt Hist. Monographs, No. 2, pp. 47, 72.]
On the other hand, McDuffie, of South Carolina, the friend and
protege of Calhoun and a later leader of the nullification forces,
supported the measure and spoke as earnestly in favor of a liberal
construction of the Constitution as any of the most enthusiastic
supporters of the bill. He declared that the constitutional
convention "did not regard the state governments as sentinels upon
the watch-towers of freedom, or in any respect more worthy of
confidence than the general government."
When the bill came to the final vote in the House of
Representatives, New England gave 12 votes in favor and 26 against;
the middle states, 37 to 26 (New York, 7 to 24); the south, 23 to
34; the west, 43 to 0. Thus the bill carried by 115 to 86. As the
map shows, the opposition was chiefly located in New England and New
York and in a fragment of the old south. The entire west, including
the southwestern slave states, with Pennsylvania and the Potomac
Valley, acted together. In the Senate, the vote stood 24 to 18. Here
New England gave an almost solid vote against the bill.
Thus by the close of Monroe's administration the forces of
nationalism seemed to have triumphed in the important field of
internal improvements. It was the line of least resistance then, as
it had been in the days of the Annapolis Convention. [Footnote:
McLaughlin, Confederation and Constitution (Am. Nation, X.), chap,
xi.]