In 1803, Clay began his political career by getting elected into the Kentucky General Assembly. Clay …show more content…
It also acted as a catalyst to the start of the Industrial Revolution in the United States as America became less dependent on European manufactured goods and started making their own. The Embargo Act of 1807 and The Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 also acted as catalysts toward the start of the Industrial Revolution and sparked nationalism, because Americans were no longer importing manufactured goods and started making their own.
After the war, Americans surged with nationalism. They celebrated the fact that they survived two wars with Great Britain. Numerous factories opened as America started manufacturing its own goods. In 1816, to protect these young American manufactures from the inflow of British goods after the War of 1812, the Tariff of 1816 was passed. This tariff was the first protective tariff in American history. Tariffs are designed to make American made goods more appealing by raising the price on imported goods from different …show more content…
Clay saw the importance of a transportation network, roads, canals, and later on, railroads that connected the country and made it easier for goods to be transported. However, President Madison vetoed a bill to give states aid for infrastructure, deeming it unconstitutional. The Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans were opposed to using federal money to support interstate improvements. Some members of the Democratic-Republican party believed that internal improvement projects would only benefit the state where the project is being constructed and not the whole nation. Therefore, they advocated that the state itself should fund the project.
Despite efforts against federally funded internal improvement projects, the inevitable happened: Clay’s dream of a transportation network came true. In 1816, Congress ordered construction of a federally funded national road to link the Chesapeake with the Trans-Appalachian West. Soon, the boom in canal and road construction led to a transportation revolution, which drove the costs of moving people and goods down even