He also drew a general law to be passed by all State
Legislatures rendering legitimate all national money previously spent
within the State. Its adoption would have been a singular confession
of unconstitutional action. Several State Legislatures in the South
resolved to protest. Their representatives in Congress were resisting
national appropriations, while the Northern and Western States were
getting the advantage of them. Thus did political theory supplement
the work of nature in directing the larger portion of these
appropriations to the northern part of the country. Years after, this
unequal distribution was to constitute a Southern grievance.
This internal improvement contention, arraying the Eastern and Western
States against each other, partly nullified the permanent sectionalism
between the North and the South, and so made for unionism. Louisiana
and Ohio, uniting for improvement appropriations, forgot their
differences of opinion upon constitutional powers, upon home rule or
nationalism, upon freedom or slavery. South Carolina and Massachusetts,
joining hands to prevent these drains upon the treasury for public
works far removed from their borders, forgot for the nonce their
differences upon the question of a tariff.
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