The Middle Period, 1817-1858. John William Burgess
declare himself emperor, and make the military and naval officers his dukes and counts, had vanished in the smoke of the burned Capitol, and, in place of this silly terror of crowns and diadems, a thoroughgoing confidence in the national Government had established itself in the brain and heart of the people and of their leaders.
These great national measures occupied the attention of Congress to such a degree, during the session of 1815–16, as to delay the consideration of the question of a system of national internal improvements to the second session, that of 1816–17.
| The Bill for National Improvements. |
At the opening of this session, Mr. Calhoun, again, came forward with a motion for the appointment of a committee, which should consider the question of setting aside the bonus to be paid by the United States Bank to the Government for its charter, and the net annual proceeds received by the Government upon its shares in the Bank, as a permanent fund for internal improvements. The motion was quickly carried, and the committee, consisting of two members from the North and two from the South, with Mr. Calhoun for chairman, was appointed. This was December 16th, 1816. In a week from this date the committee presented a bill providing for the setting apart of the funds above indicated for the construction of roads and canals.
| Mr. Calhoun's advocacy of this Bill. |
Mr. Calhoun opened the debate upon the bill, and his speech abounded with the same national ideas and patriotic sentiments which characterized his arguments in support of the Bank and Tariff measures. After asserting that the moment was most opportune for the consideration of the question, on account of the fact that all party and sectional feelings had given way to "a liberal and an enlightened regard for the general concerns of the nation," Mr. Calhoun again pronounced his warning concerning the greatest danger to which the country was exposed, namely, disunion, and declared it to be the highest duty of American statesmen so to form the policies of the Government as to counteract all tendencies toward sectionalism and disunion. He contended that from this point of view nothing could be more necessary or more advantageous than a large national system of internal improvements, establishing the great lines of commerce and intercourse for binding together all the parts of the country in interests, ideas, and sentiments.
No part of his argument, however, is so instructive to the student of American constitutional history as the observations upon the question of the constitutionality of the bill. He said that he was no advocate of refined reasoning upon the Constitution; that "the instrument was not intended as a thesis for the logician to exercise his ingenuity on; that it ought to be construed with plain good sense; and that when so construed nothing could be more express than the Constitution upon this very point." The clause to which he referred was that which confers upon Congress the power "to levy and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States." Mr. Calhoun claimed that these words were to be interpreted as vesting in Congress the power to appropriate money for the common defence and general welfare of the country at its own discretion, both as to object and amount. He insisted that a generous interpretation of the power to raise and appropriate money was absolutely required, in order to avoid the necessity of placing a forced construction upon other powers. It was all in his best strain, and showed Mr. Calhoun still as the chief advocate of national union and national development. No other person seemed to equal him in breadth of view and purity of patriotism.
| The opposition to the Internal Improvements Bill. |
The measure met, however, with more opposition than the Bank Bill or the Tariff Bill had experienced. Two years of peace had cooled the ardor of the national spirit somewhat, and the people were dropping back into the narrow spheres of ordinary life and business routine.
Moreover, the great hue and cry raised by the demagogues and the press over the bill, passed at the previous session, changing the pay of the members of Congress from a per diem of six dollars during attendance to an annual salary of fifteen hundred dollars, had made the members timid about the appropriation of money, and disinclined to obligate the Treasury to anything beyond absolutely necessary expenses.
| Passage of the Bill by Congress. |
Nevertheless, the great power and earnestness with which Mr. Calhoun addressed himself to the task of carrying the bill through its different stages were crowned with success. It finally passed both Houses, in a slightly modified form, during the last week of the Fourteenth Congress and of President Madison's second term.
| Veto of the Bill by the President. |
To the great surprise of the friends of the measure, the President returned the bill to Congress on March 3rd, with his objections. These were, summed up in a single sentence, that there was no warrant in the Constitution for the exercise of the power by Congress to pass such a bill. The President held that Congress could appropriate money only to such objects as were placed by the Constitution under the jurisdiction of the general Government. He, therefore, repudiated Calhoun's latitudinarian view that Congress was referred to its own discretion merely in the appropriation of money for the advancement of the general welfare. He acknowledged the desirability of attaining the object contemplated by the bill, and indicated that an amendment to the Constitution, expressly conferring upon Congress the power in question, was the proper way to deal with the subject. He had, as we have seen, recommended the consideration of the question of internal improvements in both of his annual messages to the Fourteenth Congress, and it was chiefly for this reason that the veto was so unexpected. It is true that, in both of these messages, he had expressed some doubt in regard to the power of Congress over the subject, but it was supposed that this was only his cautious way of approaching a new thing, and that he would certainly defer to the views of the Congressional majority.
It must be remembered, however, that Mr. Madison belonged to the first generation of the Republicans, and that the principle of the party, in the period of its origin, was strict construction of the Constitution in regard to the powers of the general Government. He had been driven by the younger men into the War, and into the national policies which it occasioned and produced, and it is at least intelligible that he returned to his earlier creed as the country settled down again into the humdrum of ordinary life.
| The failure of Congress to override the veto. |
The national Republicans looked upon his act, however, as an apostasy, and the House of Representatives repassed the bill by an increased majority and with considerable feeling. The majority was still, however, not sufficient to overcome the veto, and thus the first earnest attempt to commit the nation to a general system of internal improvements failed, failed through the resurrection of a spirit in the retiring President, which was destined soon to take possession of many who denounced it then as mean and narrow, and to lead the whole country back into those cramping tenets of particularism from which war and bloodshed alone could deliver it.
CHAPTER II.
THE ACQUISITION OF FLORIDA
The Influence of Physical Geography upon Political Development—Defect in the Southern Boundary of the United States before 1819—