John Quincy Adams Frontpage

American President Frontpage

The "American System"

John Quincy Adams wholeheartedly supported the role of the federal government in the sponsorship of projects and institutions designed to improve the conditions of society. He had no constitutional doubts about the authority of the President and Congress to construct a system of internal improvements, ranging from roads and canals to harbors and rivers. In this, he supported the "American System" first proposed by Henry Clay while Clay was Speaker of the House. The general plan rested upon the notion of a self-sufficient, but regionally specialized, national economy. Both Adams and Clay believed that a factory-based northern economy would provide markets for southern cotton and western foodstuffs. In exchange, the South and West would purchase northern manufactured goods. Alexander Hamilton had proposed a similar idea in the 1790s, only to be blocked by southern opponents who believed that such a national economic network of interdependent parts would enhance the power of the federal government.

In his first annual message to Congress, Adams presented an ambitious program for the creation of a national market that included roads, canals, a national university, a national astronomical observatory, and other initiatives. Many congressmen, even his supporters, had trouble with his proposals. His critics challenged the arrogance of a President who had been narrowly elected by only one vote in the House. In their minds, Adams was not entitled to act as though he had received a national mandate for action. They mockingly criticized his observatories as Adams's "lighthouses of the skies." Others pointed out that the President's internal improvements would benefit specific parts of the nation over other parts and bring the federal government into regional affairs. Nevertheless, through the use of military engineers for survey and construction operations, public land grants, and governmental subscription to corporate stock issues, the administration achieved considerable progress in support of harbor improvement and road and canal development -- specifically the extension of the Cumberland Road into Ohio with surveys for its continuation west to St. Louis, the beginning of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the construction of the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal and of the Portland to Louisville Canal around the falls of the Ohio, the connection of the Great Lakes to the Ohio River system in Ohio and Indiana, and the enlargment and rebuilding of the Dismal Swamp Canal in North Carolina.


The Tariff of Abominations

Henry Clay's ardor in support of protective tariffs was well known, but there was considerable uncertainty regarding Adams's views. His New England constituency was divided between long-standing concern for promotion of foreign commerce and newly developing interest in protection of domestic industry. A further complication was the fact that administration supporters had lost control of Congress in the election of 1827. Martin Van Buren, a senator from New York, had supported William H. Crawford for the presidency in 1824, opposed Adams's election, and remained hostile to the administration throughout Adams's tenure. By 1828, Van Buren was a leader of the opposition and an ardent supporter of Andrew Jackson. Recognizing the divisions which marked the administration's position on the tariff, he led a campaign shaped to set high tariffs to protect mid-Atlantic and western agricultural interests -- levies on raw wool, flax, molasses, hemp, and distilled spirits.

The new rates were particularly restrictive of textile imports and damaging to a market of British manufacturers upon whom southern planters were dependent. One southern legislature after another denounced the tariff as unconstitutional, unjust, and oppressive. The Virginia legislature called it the "Tariff of Abominations." (See Jackson biography, Domestic Affairs section, for a more detailed discussion of this tariff, which required implementation after Adams's term of office had ended.) It prompted Vice President Calhoun to condemn the tariff and to draft the South Carolina Exposition, asserting the right of a state to nullify federal laws that were obviously harmful to state interests.