These hopes assumed shape in the next session in "An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements," which pledged the proceeds of the "bonus" for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of watercourses. It was passed by a close vote in each branch of Congress, after a long debate in the House upon the powers of the General Government. This debate showed Calhoun, the future spokesman of State rights, in favour of extended expenditures in the various States without constitutional restriction, and Timothy Pickering, former member of John Adams's Cabinet, in the attitude of denying the right of the National Government under the implied powers to expend a dollar without the consent of the State in which the improvement lay. Neither would he admit that the regulation of commerce included more than waterways. It was an additional evidence of the reversal of parties.
The Representatives from the Eastern States generally wished to use the money to relieve the ordinary burdens of taxation, realising that the larger part of these improvements would lie beyond the Alleghenies and, presumably, of no benefit to them. Individual members may have held great expectations of the gratitude to be gained from their constituents by securing a share of the bank money. Madison rudely shattered these in the closing hours of his administration by vetoing the bill. It was a heroic duty. To such a distance had the party gone from the confines of strict construction, so resistless had been the hand of compulsion in the sixteen years of Republican administration, so powerfully had this internal improvement system affected the cupidity of the people, so careless had Congress grown of the difference between the reserved and expressed powers, that Madison felt it necessary to recall his party to its first principles. In his veto message, he spoke the almost forgotten language of the old days when he said that the power to regulate commerce did not extend to enterprises conducted within the several States; that the efforts of the Union should be confined to foreign commerce; that any expenditure of the bonus proceeds under the plea of the common defence would be to give Congress a general power of legislation. It was the first reaction after the compelling days of the war. It was not an agreeable or popular task, but it was done heroically. It was love's labour lost, because it was impossible for Madison or his successor long to hold in check the demands of the people for means of communication as they spread toward the West over the inviting public lands.
Partisan newspapers denied that Madison's action was inconsistent with prior recommendations of Presidents, with the report of Gallatin, and with the appropriations for the Cumberland Road. Gallatin's report, they said, was only a recommendation. The Cumberland National Road was the result of a bargain between the Federal Government and the State of Ohio and involved no violence to the Constitution. As for prior messages, Jefferson, in 1806, had suggested an amendment to cover internal improvements, and Madison had been careful in 1816 to locate his proposed national university inside the District of Columbia, which was entirely under national control. Internal improvements, he had said in two different messages, should be authorised by an amendment. At the same time, many of these papers lamented the fact that the hands of the Union were thus bound, while a few suggested that the obligation to "provide for the general welfare" would have been fulfilled better by building roads and canals than by creating a bank and placing upon the people the burdens of a protective tariff. Having engaged in the war, they must abide by the compulsion which the war produced.
The few conservative Republicans who clung to the old doctrines of the party realised with dismay that the financial adjustments following the war were bound to drag them still farther into the former field of the enemy. The Jeffersonian commercial war, which had begun with the embargo of eight years before, had practically cut off the United States from the European sources of supply. In a crude way her people began to set up manufactories to supply needed goods. The waterfalls distributed so abundantly over the Northern States were harnessed for this purpose. Unconsciously the United States was coming into a commercial independence even more valuable than the political or navigation right for which she had contended in two wars. The world's peace of 1815 released the carrying trade; European goods poured into America; and the infant manufactures were undersold and threatened with ruin. As many as twenty vessels arrived in New York during one day in 1815, hurrying British goods to the reopened American market.
[Illustration: THE PRESIDENT'S TEMPORARY RESIDENCE, 1815. This "octagon" house in Washington was occupied by President Madison while the White House was being rebuilt after being burned by the British in the War of 1812. It is now used as a club house.]
Instantly the public thought turned to a protective tariff, not only to save the manufactures, but as a retributive measure against England. "It is now a little more than a year," wrote a correspondent to Niles's Register, "since we closed a contest in arms with Great Britain in glory. A new struggle has already commenced with the same nation in the arts as connected with agriculture, commerce, and manufacture." Another contributor urged the necessity of protecting and cherishing the manufacture of everything—from a toothpick to a ship, from a needle to a cannon, a thread of yarn to a bale of cloth—unless we could exchange some commodity for them. "You spread too much canvas," was the reason reported to have been given an American by an Englishman for certain restrictive measures on American commerce.
"Americanism" showed itself in the press as well as in congressional debates. Writers contrasted the probable happiness of an imaginary "Anglo-American province," located on the Atlantic coast-plain, dependent upon the Old World for its straw hats, boot, shoes, cotton, linen, and cloth, with an "Economic Republic," located as far inland as the banks of the Ohio, and depending entirely on home industries. A rumour that the rebuilt Executive Mansion was to be furnished with articles from Europe brought an indignant denial from the Administration. Only porcelain, mirror plate, carpets, and a few minor articles, such as were not produced in the United States, had been imported. It was announced that President Monroe had given orders to use home manufactures as far as possible in furnishing all public buildings in Washington. The American Society for the Advancement of Domestic Manufactures was favoured by ex-Presidents Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, as well as by President Monroe. The Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Domestic Industry issued addresses to the people.
Under the influence of the embargo the census of 1810 had been made to include a survey of American manufactures. It showed that nearly two hundred million dollars' worth of goods were manufactured annually in the United States. Undoubtedly this sum had been greatly increased during the two years of war. Newspapers printed accounts of the large output of woollen mills in New England, of the starting of glass and iron factories, of new methods for weaving, of looms to be operated by steam power, of the discovery of lead, copper, asbestos, and other mines. The frontier city of Cincinnati reported the establishment of manufactories of tools, implements, ground mustard, and castor oil. It was said in 1816 that not less than nineteen million dollars' worth of woollen goods alone were being produced in the United States, which must suffer from European competition unless protected. A steam vessel, so it was reported, built at New York, was about to attempt to cross the Atlantic to Russia, where Fulton had been given a monopoly of steam navigation for twenty-five years.
So completely had the New England States alienated themselves from the Administration by their conduct during the war that an appeal from them for protecting manufactures in which they were most largely interested would have had small influence, unless the general condition of the country had demanded action, as shown above. The Southern States, which dominated Government, could afford to be magnanimous. They had permanent protection in their cotton, tobacco, and sugar exports as the means of their commercial salvation. "Let us be charitable toward the Hartford conventionists; let us make them feel that they have a country," said a member of Congress, in discussing the impost bill of 1816, which partook somewhat of the nature of a tariff bill along Hamiltonian lines, although framed by Jeffersonians. Few speakers showed a tendency to discuss the proposition from a party standpoint. "The duty of a paternal government" was referred to as freely as if the Hamilton days had come again.
As usual in a tariff debate, expediency and self-interest ruled. The difficulty of reconciling the varied interests in a common measure seemed at times insurmountable. The South wanted a high duty upon sugars and a low duty upon coarse cloth. The New England delegates insisted upon the contrary.