In the early days of the American Republic, there was a significant need to improve the nation's transportation network.
Some of this transportation shortage had been dealt with in the early days by “post roads.” Benjamin Franklin has as one of his many accomplishments the planning of postal roads to improve the carrying of mail. However, the Constitutional concept of America as a Union of sovereign states soon began to produce questions as to how much action the federal government should be allowed to take in building transportation infrastructure.
John C. Calhoun is an interesting figure to consider when looking at this issue because he changed sides in the course of his long political career. In 1816 he was a vigorous supporter of “The Bonus Bill” designed to use profits from the Bank of the United States for funding road and canal construction to the interior. The Louisiana Purchase had practically doubled the size of the nation, and had intensified transportation challenges that were already a real difficulty. The bill found favor in Congress, and was passed. However, President James Madison vetoed the bill on the premise that it gave the national government powers in excess of those granted to it by the Constitution, and held that such projects should be undertaken and funded by the States. This is directly in keeping with his conception of America as a federal republic as expounded in the Federalist Papers. Calhoun later changed to the later view, and it is common to point to “protection of slavery” as the motivation for his and others’ support for States Rights, although the concept originates before America in the writings of Montesquieu, and was included in the ideology of the revolution as a sure check upon centralized tyranny (which Calhoun and many others would later refer to as a “consolidated national government.”
Madison’s view is, of course, the strictly constructed “States' Rights” view of the Constitution, and it held wide favor from the time of the Jefferson and the Revolution until the Civil War. Despite not being federally funded, transportation networks in the United States grew rapidly spurred by steam technology and private industry. Alexis de Tocqueville was sufficiently impressed by this on his visit to America to note that private industry effectively fulfilled this function, and many other functions which Europeans typically looked to their governments to perform. Throughout this period Presidents with strict construction or Democratic Party views vetoed attempts at federal transportation funding, while presidents with nationalist or Whig views such as John Quincy Adams were blocked by Democratic Congresses. Despite becoming a major part of the “American System” put forth by Henry Clay and adopted as Party policy by the Whigs, internal improvements remained a blocked issue right up to the Secession Crisis (see 1850’s Transportation and Politics). After secession, rail funding (and shortly thereafter railroad regulation) became federal powers to the long term detriment of the Rail Industry (see Railroads and the Market Economy).
In America today very few question the power of the federal government to construct or regulate just about anything just about anywhere they want even to the point of dictating legislation to the States by withholding federal funds if a certain law is not passed (see Interstate Highways). Internal improvements is clearly a policy that was fully adopted in the long run despite being strongly opposed for almost a century. For better or worse, America today is not the federal republic conceived by the framers of the Constitution with the States as a check upon federal power. Clearly, our lives are better in many ways due to the sophisticated systems of transportation funded by the federal government. But it may also be true that opportunities for those who would like to start transportation businesses are less than they would be without federal funds, programs, and regulations. It may be that States and citizens are less free and are more subject to nationally mandated laws and taxes than was the intention of Madison and many others. There are pluses and minuses, and in the final analysis the end result depends very much upon your point of view, but internal improvements is doubtless a historical issue and not one that would cause much of a stir if put to the people of modern America as it was put to their forefathers.
