alists, affirmed such right, appealing to
Congress's power to establish post-roads, wage war, supervise
inter-state trade, and conserve the common defence and general welfare.
As a rule, the Democrats, being strict constructionists, denied such
right. Some of them justified outlay upon national rivers and commercial
harbors under the congressional power of raising revenue and regulating
commerce. Others conceded the rightfulness of subsidies to States even
for bettering inland routes. Treasury surplus at times, and the many
appropriations which, by common consent, had been made under Monroe and
later for the old National Road, encouraged the whig contention; but the
whig policy had never met general approval down to the time when the
whole question was taken out of politics by the rise of the railroad
system after 1832. The National Road, meantime, extending across Ohio
and Indiana on its way to St. Louis, was made over in 1830 to the States
through which it passed.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Daniel Webster. From a picture by Healy at the State Department,
Washington.

The Whig Party deserves great praise as the especial repository, through
several decades, of the spirit of nationality in our country. It
cherished this, and with the utmost boldness proclaimed doctrines
springing from it, at a time when the Democracy, for no other reason
than that it had begun as a state rights party, foolishly combated
these. Yet Whiggism was mightier in theories than in deeds, in political
cunning than in statesmanship. It was far too fearful, on the whole,
lest the country should not be sufficiently governed. To secure power it
allied itself now with the Anti-Masons, strong after 1826 in New
England, New York, and Pennsylvania; and again with the Nullifiers of
South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, led by Calhoun, Troup, and
White. It did the latter by making Tyler, an out-and-out Nullifier, its
Vice-President in 1840.

A leading Whig during nearly all his political career was John Quincy
Adams, one of the ablest, most patriotic, and most successful presidents
this country has ever had. He possessed a thorough education, mainly
acquired abroad, where, sojourning with his distinguished father, he had
enjoyed while still a youth better opportunities for diplomatic training
than many of our diplomatists have known in a lifetime. He went to the
United States Senate in 1803 as a Federalist. Disgusted with that party,
he turned Rep