XVII

THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH

HE four years' administration of John Quincy

THE

The four years only spoken of as a very unin

teresting period, but it was in one respect more important than the twenty years that went before it or the ten years that followed. For the first time. the inhabitants of the United States began to learn in how very large a country they lived. From occupying a mere strip of land on the Atlantic they had spread already through New York and Ohio; but it was by detached emigrations, of which the nation was hardly conscious, by great single waves of population sweeping here and there. After 1825, this development became a self-conscious and deliberate thing, recognized and legislated for, though never systematically organized by the nation. When, between 1820 and 1830, Michigan Territory increased 260 per cent., Illinois 180 per cent., Arkansas Territory 142 per cent., and Indiana 133 per cent., it indicated not a mere impulse but a steady progress, not a wave but a tide. Now that we are accustomed to the vast statistics of to-day, it may not seem exciting to know that the population of the whole nation rose from nearly ten millions (9,633,822) in 1820 to nearly thirteen (12,866,020) in 1830; but this gain of one-third was at the time the most astounding

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.

ness.

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. If 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,

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

such alterations. It was but a step from favoring constitutional amendments for this purpose to doing without them; Jefferson, Madison, Monroe had done the one, John Quincy Adams did the other.

Of course it took the nation by surprise. Nothing astonishes people more than to be taken at their word and have their own theories energetically put in practice. Others had talked in a general way about internal improvements; under President Monroe there had even been created (April 30, 1824) a national board to plan them; but John Quincy Adams really meant to have them; and his very first message looked formidable to those who supposed that because he had broken with the Federalists he was therefore about to behave like an old-fashioned Democrat. In truth he was more new-fashioned than anybody. This is the way he committed himself in this first message:

"While, foreign nations, less blessed with that freedom which is power than ourselves, are advancing with gigantic strides in the career of public improvement, were we to slumber in indolence, or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence, and doom ourselves to perpetual inferiority? In the course of the year now drawing to its close we have taken, under the auspices and at the expense of one State of this Union, a new university unfolding its portals to the sons of science, and holding up the torch of human improvement to eyes that seek the light. We have seen, under the persevering and enlightened enterprise of another State, the waters of our Western lakes mingle with those of the ocean. If undertakings like these have been accomplished in the compass of a few years by the authority of single members of our confederation, can we, the representative authorities of the whole Union, fall behind our fellow-servants in the exercise