Internal improvements - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Internal improvements is the
term used historically in the United
States for public works from the end of the American Revolution through much of the 19th century, mainly
for the creation of a transportation infrastructure:
roads, turnpikes, canals, harbors and navigation improvements. This older
term carries the connotation of a political movement that called for the exercise of
public spirit as well as the search for immediate economic gain. Improving the
country's natural advantages by developments in transportation was, in the eyes
of George Washington and many others, a duty incumbent both
on governments and on individual citizens.
Background
While the need for
inland transportation improvements was universally recognized, there were great
differences over the questions of how these should be planned, funded,
developed, and constructed.
Also, with various routes available, questions of where these improvements should be made, and
by whom, the federal government the individual states or their localities,
became the basis of political and regional contention.
Federal assistance for
"internal improvements" evolved slowly and haphazardly; it became the
product of contentious congressional factions and an executive branch generally
concerned with avoiding unconstitutional federal intrusions into state affairs.
Early project successes,
both European and pre-revolutionary, demonstrated the time and cost savings as
well as greater potential commerce and profit which these improvements created,
but the early inability of congress to develop a system of appropriations hobbled federal efforts; this threw
responsibility for internal improvements on the states, following the veto of
the Bonus Bill of 1817.
New York scored fabulous
success in 1825 with completion of its Erie
Canal, but other state programs sank in a combination of over
ambition, shaky financing, and internal squabbling.
One early government-funded
project was the Cumberland
Road, which Congress approved in 1806 to build a road between
the Potomac River and the Ohio River; it was later pressed on through Ohio and Indiana
and halfway through Illinois, as well along what is now U.S. Route 40. It
became the National Road and was the single largest project of the antebellum
era, with nearly US$7 million in federal dollars spent
between 1806 and 1841. The debates on Ohio statehood and on the Cumberland Road
apparently included no significant discussion of the Constitutional questions
involved.
The issue of government
subsidies for internal improvements was a key point of contention between the
two major political factions in America for the first sixty years of the 19th
century, specifically the mercantilist
Hamiltonian Federalists and the more-or-less laissez faire Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans.
Political support began
with Alexander Hamilton and
his Report on Manufactures at the turn of the 19th
century, and continued with the Whig Party, led
by Henry Clay from 1832 until its demise in 1852, and then by the Republican Party from
its formation in 1856. Support for internal improvements became a part of
the economic plan, and
the economic school of thought that would develop, but it would not come easily.
While the Federalist
strand of republicanism defended internal improvements as agents of the
"general welfare" or "public good", another strand
unraveled from the republican tapestry to denounce such schemes as
"corruption", taxing the many to benefit the few.
Critics of individual
improvement schemes did not have to dig deep under the veneer of "public
good" to uncover self-interest. Washington's scheme for Potomac River
improvement also happened to pass conveniently by his Mount Vernon estate and extend
westward toward some 60,000 acres (24,000 ha) of undeveloped land in his
possession.
By the end of the 1790s,
leaders of the emerging Republican Party regularly assaulted the "monied
gentry" and their improvement plans as visionary and extravagant, and
gradually eroded public confidence in government action and authority. In their
assaults on the Federalists' national agenda, Old
Republicans perfected a language of opposition
that provided the template for almost all future critiques of federal power:
fear of centralized power; burdening taxpayers; taxing one locale for the
benefit of another; creating self-perpetuating bureaucracies; distant
governments undermining local authority; and subsidizing the schemes of the
wealthy at public expense.
Early development
The federal role in
funding and constructing internal improvements was one of the most persistent
and contentious issues of American politics in the years after the revolution.
With independence, elites based in the various regional economies of the American
coastal plain did share an interest in developing the transportation
infrastructure of the country.
Unlike Europe, they were
isolated from one another by poor inland transportation links and the legacy of
their colonial trading patterns, and separated from their interior lands by formidable geographic obstacles. George Washington repeatedly pressed his vision of a network of
canals and highways to be created and overseen through the auspices of wise
leaders at the head of an active republican government.
This initial thrust for
internal improvements fell victim to what Washington considered the
narrow-minded and provincial outlook of the individual states, and federal
authority hamstrung by the Articles of Confederation to the point of impotence.
The fledgling government, however, set historic precedent and broad transportation policy in 1787
concerning new lands west
of the original colonies in the Northwest Ordinance; it established free usage of its inland waterways and their
connecting portages, and expressed this intent for any other
lands and resources in future states. While some consider that
Washington watched as rivalries between the states of Maryland and Virginia
gradually rendered his Potomac
Company null and void by withholding public
monies, out of fear that a rival state might derive greater benefit from their
own appropriations others consider these events in a different light.
The preliminary report
of the Inland Waterways Commission issued in 1908, provides a unique topical perspective on these and
other concurrent historical events on-going at the time. It notes: "The
earliest movement toward developing the inland waterways of the country began
when, under the influence of George Washington,
Virginia and Maryland
appointed commissioners primarily to consider the navigation and improvement of
the Potomac; they met in 1785 in Alexandria and adjourned to Mount Vernon,
where they planned for extension, pursuant to which they reassembled with
representatives of other States in Annapolis in 1786; again finding the task a
growing one, a further conference was arranged in Philadelphia in 1787, with delegates from all the
States.
There the deliberations resulted in the framing of the Constitution, whereby the thirteen original States were united primarily on a
commercial basis —the commerce of the times being chiefly by water."
Although the country
already had an extensive coastline, inland river systems, and the largest
freshwater lake system in the world, the 1803 Louisiana Purchase greatly
enhanced the area claimed, as well as the need for developmental improvement.
The acquisition brought the combined lands of the Missouri, Ohio,
and Mississippi River basins
all under federal control.
Many Americans also
shared the belief that increased inter-regional communications would strengthen
the fragile union by fostering shared economic interests. The case for
federally funded internal improvements was thus strong, because such a program
could serve both local and national economic interests as well as a critical
nation-building role.
Promoters furthermore
made a convincing case that only the federal government could affect the
desired projects, since the federal budget typically operated in surplus while
the states lacked adequate resources, and the states faced difficult
coordination problems best solved through national political
institutions. Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin's
1808 Report on the Subject of
Public Roads and Canals was one such early plan.
Later efforts
Henry
Clay's American
System, devised in the burst of nationalism that
followed the War of 1812,
remains one of the most historically significant examples of a
government-sponsored program to harmonize and balance the nation's agriculture,
commerce, and industry.
This "System"
consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote
American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies
for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop
profitable markets for agriculture.
Funds for these
subsidies would be obtained from tariffs and sales of public lands. Clay argued
that a vigorously maintained system of sectional economic interdependence would
eliminate the chance of renewed subservience to the free-trade, laissez-faire
"British System." In the years from 1816 to 1828, Congress enacted
programs supporting each of the American System's major elements.
After the 1829 inauguration of Andrew Jackson's
administration, with its emphasis on a limited role for the federal government
and sectional autonomy, the American System became the focus of anti-Jackson
opposition that coalesced into the new Whig Party under
the leadership of Henry Clay.
After
that, Congress accelerated their funding of local infrastructure by horse
trading and bringing home the bacon. The casualties of this raffle are the bad
laws that are slipped into these Bills and are set to explode down the road.
Bringing home the bacon is unfortunately a high priority with members of
Congress. This creates a natural
head-wind against any moves to reform the system. This is an adrenaline-fueled
Hasty Pudding Club.
We are
well beyond the point where the US federal government exercises any restraint
with spending. The anti-federalists are rolling over in their graves and the
federalists are dancing on them.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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