If the Jeffersonians had gotten their way, would the increasingly energetic government of the nineteenth century been instead a quietly stagnating government? Without federally imposed tariffs, would the nation have swelled with the building of roads, canals, and railroads? By the time the century ended, the union had undergone a devastating Civil War, the aftermath of which would be characterized by federal initiatives, many of which invested powers in Congress that had previously been the domain of states. Could a deeply wounded postwar America have been revived any other way?