Internal Improvement

by Larson, John Lauritz

• ISBN13: 9780807825952
• ISBN10: 0807825956
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

When the people of British North America threw off their colonial bonds, they sought more than freedom from bad government: 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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction An Experiment in Republicanism	1	(8)
Designs of the Monied Gentry	9	(30)
Toward a National Republican Alternative	39	(32)
The Problems with State Initiatives	71	(38)
The ``Progress'' of Consolidation	109	(40)
Spoiling Internal Improvements	149	(46)
State Initiatives Again	195	(30)
Into the Railway Age	225	(32)
Epilogue Designs of a New Monied Gentry	257	(8)
Notes	265	(30)
Bibliography	295	(24)
Index	319