Internal improvements

New York scored fabulous success in 1825 with completion of its Erie Canal, but other state programs sank due to a combination of excessive ambition, shaky financing, and internal squabbling.

[5] The issue of government subsidies for internal improvements was a key point of contention between the two major political factions in America for the first sixty years of the 19th century, specifically the mercantilist Hamiltonian Federalists and the more-or-less laissez faire Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans.

Washington's scheme for Potomac River improvement also happened to pass conveniently by his Mount Vernon estate and extend westward toward some 60,000 acres (24,000 ha) of undeveloped land in his possession.

By the end of the 1790s, leaders of the emerging Democratic-Republican Party regularly assaulted the "monied gentry" and their improvement plans as visionary and extravagant, and gradually eroded public confidence in government action and authority.

[7] George Washington repeatedly pressed his vision of a network of canals and highways to be created and overseen through the auspices of wise leaders at the head of an active republican government.

This initial thrust for internal improvements fell victim to what Washington considered the narrow-minded and provincial outlook of the individual states, and federal authority hamstrung by the Articles of Confederation to the point of impotence.

This "System" consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture.

After the 1829 inauguration of Andrew Jackson, with his administration's emphasis on a limited role for the federal government and sectional autonomy, the American System became the focus of anti-Jackson opposition that coalesced into the new Whig Party under the leadership of Henry Clay.