Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1884 — The Great Epoch of Internal Improvements. [ARTICLE]

The Great Epoch of Internal Improvements.

The four years’administration of John Quincy Adams is commonly spoken of as a very uninterestmg 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 find out how very large a country they lived in. From occupying a mere strip of land on the Atlantic they had spread already through New York and Ohio; but it was by detached emigrat ons, 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’ time to a phrase now commonplace and almost mean ingless—“internal improvements. ” It is true that under John Quincy Adams more commercial treaties were organized than under all his predecessors; but this, after all, was a minor benefit. The foreign commerce of the United States is now, 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 becomes aware that he owns a vast estate, but finds it to bo mostly unproductive, and hardly'even marketable. Such a person sometimes hits upon a very 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 p irt of Ohio was yet covered with forests, and Illinois was a wilderness. The 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 control a nation reaching as 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 be resold. At that time this enormous annexation was thought to endanger the very existence of the original thirteen States. We must remember that when John Quincy Adams became President the nation had been governed for a quarter of a century under a succession of Democratic administrations, acting more and more on Federalist principles. The tradition of States-rights had steadily receded, and the reality of a strong and expanding nation had taken its place. The very statesmen who had at first put into the most definite shape these States-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 to build up national feeling than any President before him. Having, by a happy impulse, ahd in spite of all his own theories, enormously enlarged the joint territory, he had recognized the need of opening and enlightening 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, 180 o) 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 just these changes. 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.— T. W. Higgin--Bon, in Harper’s Magazine.