Maysville Road Veto - Debate in Congress

Debate in Congress

Supporters of the bill insisted on the project’s national significance. This particular project was intended to be a part of a much larger interstate system extending from Zanesville, Ohio to Florence, Alabama. If the highway as a whole was of national significance, they argued, surely the individual sections must be, as well. They looked to the Supreme Court decision handed down six years before in Gibbons v Ogden, in which the court confirmed the power to regulate commerce among the states including those portions of the journey which lay within one state or another. Additionally, the road connected the interior of Kentucky to the Ohio river, and therefore served as the main artery for the transportation of goods. Kentucky Representative Robert Letcher made this argument regarding the road’s connection to the rest of the nation:

The road designed to be improved is intended to intersect the great national road in the State of Ohio. It connects itself also on each side with the Ohio River. These two connections most certainly and justly entitle it to the appellation of a national work.”

Moreover, the federal government had provided funding for other intrastate projects when they benefited the rest of the nation. As Representative Coleman stated:

But gentlemen say, every inch of the Maysville road is in the State of Kentucky. How can it be national? I answer, every inch of the Delaware Canal, sixteen miles in length, is in the State of New Jersey; and every inch of the Louisville Canal is in one county; nay, I believe in one city. How can they be national? Yet, Congress have subscribed for stock in both of them.”

These arguments were all intended to illustrate the road’s overwhelming national significance. Opponents responded that this line of argument would establish every road a national road; there would be no limit to federal power.