the 19th century, specifically the mercantilist Hamiltonian Federalists and the more-or-less laissez faire Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans. Political support began with Alexander Hamilton and his Report on Manufactures at the turn of the 19th century, and continued with the Whig Party, led by Henry Clay from 1832 until its demise in 1852, and then by the Republican Party from its formation in 1856. Support for internal improvements became a part of the economic plan, and the economic school of thought that would develop, but it would not come easily. While the Federalist strand of republicanism defended internal improvements as agents of the "general welfare" or "public good", another strand unraveled from the republican tapestry to denounce such schemes as "corruption", taxing the many to benefit the few. Critics of internal improvement schemes did not have to dig deep under the veneer of "public good" to uncover self-interest. Washington's scheme for Potomac River improvement also happened to pass conveniently by his Mount Vernon estate and extend westward toward some of undeveloped land in his possession. By the end of the 1790s, leaders of the emerging Democratic-Republican Party regularly assaulted the "monied gentry" and their improvement plans as visionary and extravagant, and gradually eroded public confidence in government action and authority. In their assaults on the Federalists' national agenda, Old Republicans perfected a language of opposition that provided the template for almost all future critiques of federal power: fear of centralized power; burdening taxpayers; taxing one locale for the benefit of another; creating self-perpetuating bureaucracies; distant governments undermining local authority; and subsidizing the schemes of the wealthy at public expense. Early development The federal role in funding and constructing internal improvements was one of the most persistent and contentious issues of American politics in the years after the revolution. With independence, elites based in the various regional economies of the American coastal plain did share an interest in developing the transportation infrastructure of the country. Unlike Europe, they were isolated from one another by poor inland transportation links and the legacy of their colonial trading patterns, and separated from their interior lands by formidable geographic obstacles. George Washington repeatedly pressed his vision of a network of canals and highways to be created and overseen through the auspices of wise leaders at the head of an active republican government. This initial thrust for internal improvements fell victim to what Washington considered the narrow-minded and provincial