The National Politics of Internal Improvement
Polk’s veto was just the latest episode in a larger debate over internal improvements that centered, in part, on distinctive conceptions of political and economic space. Inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s ideals of limited federal power and local self-governance, Polk believed that congressional authority to improve rivers and harbors depended on a geographic assessment of the shape of the market. If a river or harbor carried interstate or foreign commerce, it possessed a “national” character, and Congress could allocate money for improvements. If, on the other hand, a river or harbor carried primarily intrastate commerce, improvements were merely a “local” matter, and Congress could not fund them without breeching the constitutional limits of its power. Thus, Polk’s 1846 veto hinged on his determination that “Some of the objects of appropriation contained in this bill are local in their character, and lie within the limits of a single State.”72
Polk’s language parroted that of Andrew Jackson’s famous veto of the Maysville Road Bill. In 1830, Jackson had denied federal funding to build a road between Maysville and Lexington, Kentucky, the home of political rival Henry Clay, on the basis that the project was of a “purely local character.” Jackson’s veto rejected the integrated approach to internal improvements championed by Whigs such as Clay. Rooted in a Hamiltonian vision of centralized government and economic institutions, Clay’s “American System” advocated funding internal improvements that, even if confined within one state, would function as parts of an integrated, national transportation network.73
Polk and Jackson’s positions on internal improvements proved geographically problematic, but politically astute. It was difficult to distinguish between improvements of a local versus national character as rivers, harbors, or roads in one state might nonetheless handle national commerce.74 Polk, moreover, linked his critique of federal support for local improvements to yet another muddy geographic distinction. He suggested that the federal government could improve “natural,” but not “artificial” waterways.75
A key problem with the 1846 Rivers and Harbors Bill, Polk noted, was that it made harbors out of some waterways “at the expense of the local natural advantages of another in its vicinity.”76 Polk’s position begged the question: How was a statesman to draw the distinction between a natural harbor and an artificial one if both needed improvement? These geographic distinctions, local versus national and natural versus artificial, made little environmental or economic sense, but their malleability made them politically potent. Democrats could claim to stand for limited government and justify spending federal dollars on improvements projects by pointing to, either cynically or earnestly, the national or natural characteristics of the waterway.
Even under Democratic presidents in the 1830s and 1840s, the federal government had poured money into improvement projects. Jackson, for instance, authorized more than sixteen million dollars of federal expenditures between 1830 and 1837 on roads, canals, rivers, and harbors.77 Democrats’ previous willingness to fund internal improvements raised doubts as to whether several of Polk’s stated objections to the 1846 bill—the local character of the improvements, the artificiality of some of the waterways, and a desire to limit federal power—could be taken entirely at face value.
Polk’s critics were also deeply skeptical of the president’s claim that he sought to discourage sectional rivalry with his veto. Polk maintained that limiting appropriations for improvements would discourage “combinations of local and sectional interests” from forming in Congress to compete in a “disreputable scramble for public money.”78 Without federal spoils to fight over, there could not be sectional rivalries. But, the president’s critics could not accept that logic at the same time he was leading a war against Mexico to acquire the proslavery Republic of Texas. The Whig Chicago Daily Journal, for instance, chaffed at Polk’s exhortations of fiscal restraint, asking: “Are not the treasury doors unbarred whenever the ‘open sesame’ is whispered by the slave-driver?” The president’s “real hostility to the Bill,” charged the paper, owed to the fact that “the objects of improvement lie north of Mason and Dixon’s line.” Polk, the paper concluded, had denied Chicago an effective harbor for commerce not out of political principle, but “because he wants the money for the Mexican War!”79 The veto had enflamed the very sectional tensions Polk wished to avoid.
Polk’s veto also drove a wedge between the northern and southern wings of the Democratic Party. Jackson’s views on Indian removal, public lands, and the virtue of the common man had helped the party consistently carry Illinois in presidential elections from 1824 to the 1844 run of Polk.80 Polk’s 1846 veto created tensions between the party’s southern leaders and Illinois Democrats like congressmen John Wentworth and Stephen Douglas.
Illinoisans required infrastructure for economic development. Wentworth and Douglas had therefore thrown their considerable political weight behind the effort to pass the 1846 Rivers and Harbors Bill. When Polk vetoed the bill, Douglas and Wentworth found themselves in a difficult position. The congressmen neither wanted to accede to the veto nor reject outright the principles of their party’s leader. Congressman Douglas accepted Polk’s argument that the constitution forbade federal appropriations for local improvements, but he maintained that many improvements called for in the bill were significant to the nation. Wentworth, on the other hand, denied that the veto rested on constitutional grounds. Rather, he charged Polk with sectional prejudice, noting that “this harbor question is one between north and south.”81
Frustration over Polk’s veto stirred political action. Shortly after Polk’s veto, an agent of the Lake Steamboat Association, William Hall, called on politicians to assemble in protest at a national rivers and harbors convention. Through their attendance, speeches, and resolutions, the delegates would make their message clear: The federal government should pay for internal improvements in the north and west.82
The 1847 Chicago River and Harbor Convention
Many Chicago boosters eager to showcase their growing city clamored to host the event. Political and personal rivals like Democratic Congressman Wentworth and Whig attorney Scammon worked together to organize what came to be known as the 1847 Chicago River and Harbor Convention.83 The two men maintained that their city, with a canal and an accessible harbor, would become the hub of a commercial corridor stretching from New York to New Orleans along the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds. “These great waters, for whose safe navigation this Convention is called,” noted Wentworth and Scammon in a promotional statement, “are soon to be united by … the Illinois & Michigan Canal.” That union of waters, they argued, would bind the nation together in a common political economy: “The commerce of Boston, of Philadelphia, of Baltimore, of New York, of New Orleans … indeed of the whole country, thence becomes in a great measure connected. It has common interest.”84
It was far from clear to all Chicagoans, though, that paying for the convention was in their best interests. As city leaders planned for the convention, some citizens and aldermen hesitated over shouldering the costs of the event. Their concerns echoed the national debate over internal improvements. They wished to pin the costs of the convention on those who stood to benefit. To do so, Chicagoans needed to determine whether the convention served the entire city’s interests or those of a few citizens.
In May, a convention organizing committee of 110 citizens asked the Chicago Common Council to help pay for the River and Harbor Convention. The Council’s Whig Finance Committee chairman, Levi Boone, made a five hundred dollar appropriation, noting that the convention was of an