Editing Internal improvements (section)

{{Short description|Historical term for public works in the US}}
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[[File:Cumberland_Road_(National_Road)_in_Illinois_and_Indiana.jpg|thumb|left|Cumberland Road ([[National Road]]) through Illinois and Indiana, mapped 1904]]
'''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, [[Toll road|turnpikes]], canals, harbors and navigation improvements.<ref name="Down-Lars">Review by Tom Review of John Lauritz Larson's ''[http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=6907 Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States]'', University of North Carolina Press, 2001. {{ISBN|978-0-8078-4911-8}}.</ref> 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.<ref>Carter Goodrich, ''[https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100695027 Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800-1890] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120224210853/https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100695027 |date=2012-02-24 }}'' (Greenwood Press, 1960)</ref>