| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States. By John Lauritz Larson. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. xviii, 324 pp. Cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8078-2595-6. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8078-4911-1.)

Internal improvements stood center stage in the postrevolutionary political economy. Statesmen from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay rhapsodized over the glories of a national transportation system. They saw the winning of independence and the establishment of federal authority as preludes to realizing America's republican potential. Promoted by a people's government in the people's own interest, commerce and communication would secure Americans' liberty, cement their nationality, enliven their enterprise, and elevate their condition. "Let us bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals," said John C. Calhoun in 1817. John Lauritz Larson's Internal Improvement tells how this dream was waylaid. 1

The nationalists envisioned a grand design. High-minded leaders would decide routes and allocate resources, consulting only the common good. Yet, from the first, local interests and jealousies intervened to spoil central planning. Genuine system required sacrifice, yet popular control promoted selfishness. Even Washington, the paragon of disinterested statesmanship, championed a route to the interior that ran past his own plantation. Devolving into an unseemly scramble for benefits, the activist program was further undercut by what Larson calls "neo-Antifederalist" fears of central authority. Nurtured by the Jeffersonians in opposition, these remained to cripple national energies long after the Federalists were overthrown. . . .

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