At the same time, many of these papers lamented the fact that the hands
of the Union were thus bound, while a few suggested that the obligation
to "provide for the general welfare" would have been fulfilled better
by building roads and canals than by creating a bank and placing upon
the people the burdens of a protective tariff. Having engaged in the
war, they must abide by the compulsion which the war produced.
The few conservative Republicans who clung to the old doctrines of the
party realised with dismay that the financial adjustments following
the war were bound to drag them still farther into the former field
of the enemy. The Jeffersonian commercial war, which had begun with
the embargo of eight years before, had practically cut off the United
States from the European sources of supply. In a crude way her people
began to set up manufactories to supply needed goods. The waterfalls
distributed so abundantly over the Northern States were harnessed for
this purpose. Unconsciously the United States was coming into a
commercial independence even more valuable than the political or
navigation right for which she had contended in two wars.
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