Presidents James Madison and James Monroe had agreed on the need for a better transportation network, but neither believed that the internal improvement bills they received from Congress were constitutional. By the 1820s the federal government opted out of funding improvements, with the exception of the National Road and few other modest efforts. Even the maintenance of the National Road became a heated issue. John Quincy Adams's massive plans, outlined in his 1825 inaugural address, went nowhere, and his Jacksonian opponents ensured that Henry Clay's American System would not get out of Congress. In 1830 Congress passed the Maysville Road Bill, to construct a road from Maysville, Kentucky, to Lexington, in order to link the National Road at Cincinnati with the interior. Jackson vetoed the bill, perhaps because it enriched his rival Clay's home state of Kentucky, but mainly because he doubted the constitutionality...