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demonstration of national progress. It enables us to understand the immense importance attached in John Quincy Adams's time to a phrase now commonplace and almost meaningless-"internal improvements." It is true that during his term of office more commercial treaties were negotiated than under all his predecessors; but this, after all, was a minor benefit. The foreign commerce of the United States is now of itself, comparatively speaking, subordinate; it is our vast internal development that makes us a nation. It is as the great epoch of internal improvements that the four years from 1825 to 1829 will forever be momentous in the history of the United States.

In 1825 the nation was in the position of a young man who has become aware that he owns a vast estate, but finds it to be mostly unproductive, and hardly even marketable. Such a person sometimes hits upon an energetic agent, who convinces him that the essential thing is to build a few roads, bridge a few streams, and lay out some building lots. It was just in this capacity of courageous adviser that John Quincy Adams was quite ready to offer himself. On the day of his inauguration the greater part of Ohio was yet covered with forests, and Illinois was a wilderThe vast size of the country was still a source rather of anxiety than of pride. Monroe had expressed the fear that no republican government could safely control a nation reaching so far as the Mississippi; and Livingston, after negotiating for the purchase of Louisiana, had comforted himself with the thought that a large part of it might probably be resold. At that time this enormous annexation was thought to endanger the very existence of the original thirteen States.

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This was perhaps nowhere more frankly stated than by an able Fourth-of-July orator at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1813, Benjamin R. Nichols. He declares, in this address, that to admit to the Union new States formed out of new territory is "to set up a principle which, if submitted to, will make us more dependent than we were as colonies of Great Britain. If a majority of Congress have a right of making new States where they please, we shall probably soon hear of States formed for us in East and West Florida; and, should it come within the scope of the policy of our rulers, of others as far as the Pacific Ocean. all this be right, the consequence is that the people of New England, in case of any disturbances in these newly created States, may, under pretences of suppressing insurrections, be forced to march, in obedience to the Constitution, to the remotest corner of the globe." In other words, that which now makes the crowning pride of an American citizen, that the States of the Union are spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was then held up by a patriotic Federalist as the very extreme of danger. The antidote to this deadly peril, the means of establishing some communication with these "remotest corners of the globe," had necessarily to be found, first of all, in internal improvements. At least, under these circumstances of alarm, a highway or two might be held a reasonable proposition; and the new President, in his inaugural address, approached the subject with something of the lingering stateliness of those days:

"The magnificence and splendor of their public works are among the imperishable glories of the ancient republics. The roads and aqueducts of Rome have been the admiration of all after-ages, and have survived thousands of years,

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THE UNITED STATES, 1783

Showing Claims of the States

after all her conquests have been swallowed up in despotism or become the spoil of barbarians. Some diversity of opinion has prevailed with regard to the powers of Congress for legislation upon subjects of this nature. The most respectful deference is due to doubts originating in pure patriotism, and sustained by venerated authority. But nearly twenty years have passed since the construction of the first national road was commenced. The authority for its construction was then unquestioned. To how many thousands of our countrymen has it proved a benefit? To what single individual has it ever proved an injury?"

It has already been pointed out that when John Quincy Adams became President the nation had been governed for a quarter of a century by Democratic administrations, acting more and more on Federalist principles. The tradition of State rights had steadily receded, and the reality of a strong and expanding nation had taken its place. The very men who had at first put into the most definite shape these State rights opinions had, by their action, done most to overthrow them, Jefferson above all. By the purchase of Louisiana he had, perhaps unconsciously, done more than any President before him to make national feeling permanent. Having, by a happy impulse, and in spite of all his own theories, enormously enlarged the joint territory, he had recognized the need of opening and developing the new possession; he had set the example of proposing national appropriations for roads, canals, and even education; and had given his sanction (March 24, 1806) to building a national road from Maryland to Ohio, first obtaining the consent of the States through which it was to pass. To continue this policy would, he admitted, require constitutional amendments, but in his closing message he favored

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