they petitioned the federal government for
financial support of the project.
President Thomas Jefferson expressed
some interest in using surplus federal
funds for that purpose. But the man who
found the constitutional authority to pay
$15 million for the Louisiana Purchase did
not detect that document’s permission to
honor the Canal Company’s request. Several
years later, the President responded
to growing interest in the establishment
of better roads to the west by authorizing
the construction of the Cumberland
Road to connect the Potomac River at
Cumberland, MD with the Ohio River at
Wheeling, VA (now West Virginia). To
avoid an argument over his constitutional
authority, Jefferson approved the project
only after obtaining the consent of the
states through which the road would pass.
In 1807, Congress directed Secretary of
the Treasury Albert Gallatin to prepare a
report to guide the legislators as they considered
their support of internal improvements.
Gallatin’s April 1808 Report on the
Subject of Public Roads and Canals detailed
a comprehensive network of roads and
waterways he believed the government
should build to connect towns, rivers and
lakes in every section of the country. The
report sparked a new wave of interest in
turnpikes, roads, bridges and canals.
During the next two years, legislatures
and private businessmen throughout the
country’s 17 states and half a dozen territories
financed and constructed their own
internal improvement projects. All of them
were important to a particular locality;
some were supposed to have broader significance
for a wider geographic region, but
none were presented as part of a Gallatintype
national system of internal improvements.
President James Madison appeared
sympathetic to some requests for federal
funding. But even before being forced to
deal with another war with Great Britain in
1812, he found it impossible to encourage or
support federal financing of even the most
well-intentioned internal improvement.
With peace restored in 1815, Congress
again took up the question of the federal
role in establishing a coherent system of
transportation linkages. It approved New
York State’s request to provide funding
for a canal connecting the Hudson River
with Lake Erie; but President Madison
vetoed the bill. As construction of the
One share of stock in the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, dated August 24, 1792.
Cumberland Road proceeded westward
in 1816, Representatives John Calhoun
and Henry Clay introduced a bill that
purported to advance the type of plan
described in the Gallatin report. It would
use the anticipated bonus of $1.5 million
the Bank of the United States would pay
to the US Treasury to establish a fund
to finance the construction of yet-to-bedetermined
roads and canals. But the
fourth President shared his predecessor’s
concern over the lack of constitutional
authority to establish the type of funding
mechanism the so-called “Bonus Bill”
envisioned. To the disappointment of
many, Madison vetoed the bill on his last
day in office.
Congresses and Presidents continued
to debate the issue. In 1818, President
James Monroe celebrated the completion
of the Cumberland Road, but four years
later he vetoed a bill that would create a
toll system on that road. In his veto message,
however, this President suggested
that Congress did indeed have the right to
appropriate money for internal improvements—as
long as it did not attempt to
establish or control an integrated national
transportation system.
In 1823, President Monroe approved
a bill appropriating money for muchneeded
repairs to the Cumberland Road.
In April 1824, he signed the General Survey
Act, which authorized the Army Corps of
Engineers to conduct surveys and evaluate
potential routes of roads, canals and
the earliest railroads. Around the same
time, the President found the authority
for Washington to make an investment in
the reorganized Chesapeake and Delaware
Canal Company.
Under President Monroe’s leadership,
the government also began distributing
federal land grants to enable the construction
of specific roads and canals. By the end
of his eight years as President, the federal
government had spent almost $3 million
on internal improvements. That amount
exceeded by almost 50% the $2.1 million
spent during President Madison’s four
years in office and was double the amount
spent from 1789 to 1809 under Presidents
Washington, Adams and Jefferson.
State legislatures and private investment
groups had never let the uncertainty
over the federal role in financing internal
improvements prevent them from enhancing
their local and regional transportation
networks. As noted, since 1790 many states
and private companies had been building
roads and canals without any federal
money. After the twin shocks of the War
of 1812 and the Panic of 1819, most of the
Union’s 21 states experienced a new wave
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