Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/58

46 emigrant coming from the East worked his way to the fertile western fields. The necessity of making the navigation of the Ohio safe and easy came home to his neighbors and constituents. But he did not confine his efforts to that one measure. He earnestly supported the project of government aid for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which, in the language of the report, was to serve “as the basis of a vast scheme of interior navigation, connecting the waters of the Lakes with those of the most southern states;” and if he was not, as some of his biographers assert, the mover, — for as such the annals of Congress name Senator Worthington, from Ohio, — he was at least the zealous advocate of a resolution, “that the Secretary of the Treasury be directed to prepare and report to the Senate at their next session, a plan for the application of such means as are within the power of Congress, to the purposes of opening roads and making canals, together with a statement of undertakings of that nature, which, as objects of public improvement, may require and deserve the aid of government,” etc., a direction to which Gallatin, then Secretary of the Treasury, responded in an elaborate report. Thus Clay marched in large company, but ahead of a part of it; for while Jefferson and his immediate followers, admitting the desirability of a large system of public improvements, asserted the necessity of a constitutional amendment to give the government the appropriate power, Clay became the recognized leader of