Editing Internal improvements (section)

==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 local jurisdictions), 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.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20101106065621/http://www.usace.army.mil/History/Documents/Brief/03-transportation/transport.html Improving Transportation], [[United States Army Corps of Engineers]] (USACE)</ref>

Late 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 due to a combination of excessive ambition, shaky financing, and internal squabbling.<ref name="Fell-Lars">Review by Daniel Feller of John Lauritz Larson's [https://archive.today/20130415154404/http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/content/88/4/1513.full Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States].  [[Journal of American History]], Volume 88, Issue 4, pp. 1513-1514. (2002)</ref>  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.<ref name="Mini-IntImp1">Stephen Minicucci, [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=6&fid=275166&jid=SAP&volumeId=18&issueId=02&aid=275165&bodyId=&membershipNumber=&societyETOCSession=&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0898588X04000094#fn20 Internal Improvements and the Union, 1790–1860], [[Studies in American Political Development]] (2004), 18:2:160-185 Cambridge University Press.</ref>

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 [[Federalist Party|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 (United States)|Whig Party]], led by Henry Clay from 1832 until its demise in 1852, and then by the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]] from its formation in 1856.<ref name="Dilor-Mises">Thomas J. DiLorenzo, [https://mises.org/journals/scholar/internal.pdf The Roll of Private Transportation in America's 19th-Century "Internal Improvements" Debate ] [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]]</ref> Support for internal improvements became a part of the [[American System (economic plan)|economic plan]], and the [[American School (economics)|economic school of thought]] that would develop, but it would not come easily.{{citation needed|date=December 2015}}

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 internal 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 {{convert|60,000|acre}} of undeveloped land in his possession. By the end of the 1790s, leaders of the emerging Democratic-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 Republican]]s 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.<ref name="Down-Lars"/>