Internal Improvement
Internal Improvement

Author: John Lauritz Larson

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2002-11-25

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 0807875643

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When the people of British North America threw off their colonial bonds, they sought more than freedom from bad government: most of the founding generation also desired the freedom to create and enjoy good, popular, responsive government. This book traces the central issue on which early Americans pinned their hopes for positive government action--internal improvement. The nation's early republican governments undertook a wide range of internal improvement projects meant to assure Americans' security, prosperity, and enlightenment--from the building of roads, canals, and bridges to the establishment of universities and libraries. But competitive struggles eventually undermined the interstate and interregional cooperation required, and the public soured on the internal improvement movement. Jacksonian politicians seized this opportunity to promote a more libertarian political philosophy in place of activist, positive republicanism. By the 1850s, the United States had turned toward a laissez-faire system of policy that, ironically, guaranteed more freedom for capitalists and entrepreneurs than ever envisioned in the founders' revolutionary republicanism.

Shipbuilding in North Carolina, 1688-1918
Shipbuilding in North Carolina, 1688-1918

Author: William N. Still Jr.

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2021-05-15

Total Pages: 790

ISBN-13: 0865264953

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In their comprehensive and authoritative history of boat and shipbuilding in North Carolina through the early twentieth century, William Still and Richard Stephenson document for the first time a bygone era when maritime industries dotted the Tar Heel coast. The work of shipbuilding craftsmen and entrepreneurs contributed to the colony's and the state's economy from the era of exploration through the age of naval stores to World War I. The study includes an inventory of 3,300 ships and 270 shipwrights.

Troubled Waters
Troubled Waters

Author: Paul F. Paskoff

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0807133876

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In Troubled Waters, Paul F. Paskoff offers a comprehensive examination of the federal government's river improvements program, which aimed to reduce hazards to navigation on the great rivers of America's interior during the early and mid-nineteenth century. Danger on the rivers came in a variety of forms. Shoals, rapids, ice, rocks, sandbars, and uprooted trees and submerged steamboat wrecks lodged in river beds were the most common perils and accounted for the largest number of steamboat disasters. As such, improving the safety and efficiency of the nation's waterways was consistently at the forefront of political and economic discussions of the day.