...canalturnpike program in 1808. Secretary of war John C. Calhoun famously declared in 1816: "Let us bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space." The centerpiece of Henry Clay's American System was a national transportation program. But these schemes...

...the most imperious obligations to counteract every tendency to disunion," he declared. "Let us, then, bind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space."'3 The conquest of space beckoned to the American spirit in Madison's day no less than in John...

...course; the more strongly we are bound together, the more inseparable are our destinies.... Let us then bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space." Calhoun's nemesis, however, House Speaker Henry Clay, amended the bill so that in addition to appropriating...

...break the sympathies of our nature. Nothing * * * tends more to estrange man from man. Let us, then, bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals." 2 Secondly, roads and canals would be instrumental in increasing • Principally Harry L. Case, Harold...