Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States

by John Lauritz Larson

When the people of British North America threw off their colonial bonds, they sought more than freedom from bad most of the founding generation also desired the freedom to create and enjoy good, popular, responsive government. This book traces the central issue on which early Americans pinned their hopes for positive government action--internal improvement.

The nation's early republican governments undertook a wide range of internal improvement projects meant to assure Americans' security, prosperity, and enlightenment--from the building of roads, canals, and bridges to the establishment of universities and libraries. But competitive struggles eventually undermined the interstate and interregional cooperation required, and the public soured on the internal improvement movement. Jacksonian politicians seized this opportunity to promote a more libertarian political philosophy in place of activist, positive republicanism. By the 1850s, the United States had turned toward a laissez-faire system of policy that, ironically, guaranteed more freedom for capitalists and entrepreneurs than ever envisioned in the founders' revolutionary republicanism.

Genres: American History, Politics, Class

342 pages, Paperback

First published March 26, 2001

About the author

John Lauritz Larson is Professor of History at Purdue University.

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book deals with government funded infrastructure in the early 1800s. Two years ago this couldn't have seemed less relevant. Now, with terms like "shovel ready" obnoxiously insinuating themselves into press releases and news reports, it offers some surprising revelations about the nature of US infrastructure and the continuities of the debates over its funding.

Most surprising to me was the variety and inventiveness of government support in that era. By the first decade of the century there were already government set-aside funds for road and canal improvements (that could either be appropriated by Congress or distributed by an executive officer), special grants to state governments for their own funding projects, generalized revenue sharing plans, and stock subscriptions to private companies. There was even the full panoply of regulations of private contractors working on these projects. These old time canals had practically every contemporary fed requirement outside Maintenance of Effort.

Yet one difference this book does highlight between their era and our own is their ceaseless debate on constitutional interpretation. Now confined mainly to the courts and the press, in this era every congressman and every president took upon themselves the task of interpretation, and Presidents and Congressmen invoked the constitution and its original intent in almost every bill. The field was still wide open, and Marshall and his court had not yet monopolized this task.

I completely disagree with the book's conclusions (that federal planning would have saved the canals), but that doesn't mar the work of the rest of the book.

[David Bates · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his 2001 work Internal Improvement John Lauritz Larson picks a fight with present day “strict constructionists” who argue that the United States was founded on principles of laissez-faire economics and circumscribed federal authority. Later in the nineteenth century advocates of those principles triumphed almost completely, so much so that educated persons today are unaware that there was ever a contest, or “that any but communists and ne’er-do-wells ever supported economic planning and social design.” Nevertheless, there was a hard fought contest over the proper sphere of the federal government, and it was the period from the Civil War to the Great Depression which was the aberration. Larson focuses his study on the first two generations of the American republic, when leading statesmen put forward successive proposals for a federally designed, funded and constructed system of canals and roads to aid westward expansion and knit the nation politically and economically together into a stronger union. Success proved elusive, much to the detriment of the American people, sabotaged by local, state and sectional jealousies, insufficient expertise and an ideological opposition. Nevertheless, the strength of the repeated attempts, and its support among citizens, remind us that there was a republican past in which the positive use of government power was considered well within the legitimate authority of the federal government. As George Washington said, “[n]o man is a warmer advocate for proper restraints and wholesome checks in every department of government than I am; but I have never yet been able to discover the propriety of placing it absolutely out of the power of men to render essential Services, because a possibility remains of their doing ill.”

[Zachary Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Larson looks at a very important phenomenon in the early republic, although it's kind of boring on the surface. This book argues that positive use of government for constructive purposes was an assumed power. Internal Improvements charts how this assumption transformed during the nineteenth century into a myth that the US government was always laissez faire. This argument is very much a reaction against Reagan era politics.

The issue of positive government hit the rocks because the federal government was unable to overcome initial expectations about a virtuous republic. As Wood discusses, American politicians learn the hard way that self-interest has more staying power in politics. Those who wanted positive government vs those who wanted more of a protector of market forces didn't win any political arguments, but the failure of certain canal projects scandalized later ones. Ultimately by the 1820s Americans increasingly fall back on market forces to determine the "natural" or "inevitable" result. Probably the most important part of this process was Madison's rejection of the Bonus Bill which would have created a permanent fund for Internal Improvements. Politicians saw the necessity for such an institution, they were (rightly) afraid that such a permanent fund would inevitably be corrupted, enlarged, and upset the nation's tenuous sectional balance. By the Civil War the meaning of the Revolution had basically become a defense of property rights (really? Horowitz) and entrepreneurial freedom. The ultimate consequence was a post-bellum system where railroad barons like Jay Gould (White-Railroaded) could put the entire nation at its feet, which was certainly not the intention of the founders.

Ultimately forwards the argument that the Federal Government is necessary for order and that people like Madison are good.

[Michael Grizer (He-Him) · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting insight into the first 100 years of canal and railroad building in the US. I disliked his over-use of quotation marks on single words.

[Sean Chick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent book. I was scared it would be a bore, but Larson's passion and analysis carry this work.