manufactures from England, and must, by the establishment of manufacturing industries at home, give rise to a non-agricultural population that would consume the redundant supplies of meat and grain. The problem of attracting capital to manufacturing enterprises, the farmers proposed to solve by the creation of a system of protective tariffs that would check importations and encourage investment in mills and factories at home. Manufacturing industries already in existence were in no apparent need of protection and the shipping interests of Boston and New York and the cotton planters of the South strenuously opposed the protective policy. But the agricultural interests were not to be denied. Under the leadership of Henry Clay, the tariff of 1824 was enacted and the "American System" was inaugurated. In 1828, in response to an appeal, emanating from the woolen manufacturers and seconded by the agricultural interests, still further encouragement was given to home manufactures.

While the country was being agitated by the tariff controversy and exceptionally bitter political contests, the New York canals were opened for traffic throughout their entire length (October, 1825). No other single work in the United States has ever had a more beneficial effect on the prosperity of internal trade. The opening of the canals brought to an end what had been the bane of internal commerce for half a century—the excessive cost of freight transportation. Freight rates between Albany and Buffalo were at once reduced 90 per cent and the day of the freighter on the Genesee road was ended. The new canal wrought a complete change in all the rural districts of western New York. Lumber, staves, ashes, grain and vegetables, hitherto unmarketable, were now shipped to the markets of the East; farm values doubted and quadrupled; a stream of people poured into the fertile farming regions around Lake Erie. Not less valuable was the new waterway to the district at its eastern terminus. The laboring population of the growing manufacturing towns reaped immense benefits from the cheaper and better means of subsistence they could now secure, while the shipments of merchandise westward on the canal exceeded in value the receipts of raw produce at tide-water. New York had achieved economic unity at a single stroke.

The success of the Erie Canal and the rapid growth of internal trade which followed the adoption of the "American System" caused a demand everywhere for more roads and canals and a widespread agitation in favor of government aid to internal improvements. The federal government gave extensive aid to private and state enterprises in the way of land grants and stock subscriptions, though it did not engage directly in the construction of commercial highways. The individual states embarked in schemes of canal and turnpike building which involved them in debts of millions of dollars. Ohio and Indiana began to construct canals joining the Ohio River to Lake Erie in order to secure the advantage of the new outlet to the East. Pennsylvania, awakened to the danger of the total loss of western trade through the state by the fact that shipments of merchandise to the West were abandoning the wagon roads from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York in favor of the cheaper route by way of the Erie Canal, began, in 1826, an extensive system of canals to connect the Delaware River with the Ohio River and the Great Lakes. Not to be outdone by their rival states, Maryland and Virginia agreed upon the construction of a canal from Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River, and on July 4, 1828, President Adams dug the first spadeful of earth to signalize the beginning of the undertaking. Some financiers of Baltimore, dubious of the success of an effort to build a waterway over the difficult route adopted by the promoters of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, withdrew their support from that enterprise, and putting their confidence in a new and almost untried transportation device, which they believed would prove superior to canals, just as canals had proved superior to turnpikes, they boldly inaugurated the plan of a railroad from their city across the mountains to the Ohio, and Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, placed the stone that commemorated the beginning of its construction on the same day that President Adams officiated at the rival celebration that marked the beginning of the canal.

Thus by 1830, the future of the internal commerce of the United States was assured. The adoption of the "American System" could have but one result—a tremendous expansion of domestic trade. That this expansion had already commenced was evident from the fact that notwithstanding the vast growth in wealth and population from 1820 to 1830, the imports of the United States had exhibited but little increase. "The nation was building an empire of its own with sections which took the place of kingdoms."³ New England, New York and Pennsylvania were manufacturing the clothing and iron utensils for the West and South. The people of the South were absorbed in cotton raising. They relied upon the West for much of their food and live stock; they bought their clothing and machinery from the North Atlantic States; and their exports brought in the specie which facilitated the commerce of all sections. The West was becoming a vast granary. Its new factories were drawing artisans from the East and taking laborers from the country to swell the demand for flour and grain that had recently been seeking in vain for a market. The volume of shipments of food and merchandise down the Mississippi was larger than ever and the manufacturing population of the East, already too large to be fed by the agricultural produce of New England, New York and Pennsylvania, was beginning to draw subsistence from the western farms.

Means of cheap transportation, the lack of which had been so great an obstacle to internal development, had been or were being supplied to meet the requirements of the new conditions. The steamboat arrivals at New Orleans numbered a thousand each year. Water communication between the Atlantic Ocean and the very center of the United States was established when the Erie Canal connected the Hudson River to the waterway afforded by the series of great inland seas. There were 1,343 miles of canals in operation in all the United States, and 1,828 miles more were in the process of construction. Louisville was rejoicing in the completion of a canal around the falls of the Ohio; Ohio and Indiana were rapidly pushing the work on the canals that were to tap the regions hitherto tributary only to the Mississippi; the construction of the Pennsylvania Canal was being hurried forward to enable Philadelphia to recover the trade lost to the Erie; Maryland and Virginia were persistently going on with the building of the waterway westward from Chesapeake Bay. And meanwhile 44 miles of railway had been completed and were in operation, and to show that confidence in the new device was not lacking, 422 miles were in the process of construction and 697 miles more were already projected.

II

1830-1860

The years between 1830 and 1860 witnessed a remarkable expansion of the United States in area, population and wealth. By the annexation of Texas and by treaties with England and Mexico, nearly a million square miles of territory were added to the national domain and the western boundary was pushed to the Pacific Ocean. The total number of people increased in the thirty years from 12,866,020 to 31,443,321; the total wealth from about $2,000,000,000 to more than $16,000,000,000. It was a period of great prosperity for all branches of industry. As the tide of settlers swept over the fertile lands drained by the Mississippi River and Great Lakes, the agricultural production of the country increased with amazing rapidity. The production of corn in 1859 was almost 1,000,000,000 bushels; of wheat and oats 175,000,000