Been ~3 months, time to bring ye backe from thee dead.
I commented further on Crawford and the kind of president he would have been at
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/3Se75U753uU/HMZb20eXfE8J
***
Crawford as Secretary of the Treasury wanted more economical government;
this involved clashes with the then-nationalist Calhoun, who as Secretary
of War feared that toom much retrenchment might hurt the national defense.
However, curiously for someone with the reputation as a states-rights-
southerner (who had the backing of the "Old Republicans" in 1824), Crawford
was a staunch defender of the consitutionality and expedience of the Bank
of the United States. Even on issues like internal improvements and the
tariff, he does not seem to have been very negative, according to Chase C.
Mooney, *Wiliam H. Crawford: 1772-1834*:
p. 167: "Crawford's annual and special reports as secretary of treasury.
his recommendations, and his letters, indicate that he did not look with
disfavor on the tariff as a means of revenue--though he and many others
recognized the uncertainty of the source and the consequent difficulty of
making reasonably accurate estimates of the return from such duties. Nor
did he object to a degree of protection incidental or otherwise, which
would permit and promote the growth of domestic manufacturing. On several
occasions he recommended a change in the duties both for revenue and
protection purposes. He was later vigorously opposed to protection for its
own sake, but while he was in the national government he would classify as
an economic nationalist."
https://books.google.com/books?id=juceBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA167
On internal improvements, Mooney writes (p. 170) that "Crawford may not
have been an advocate of internal improvements, but nothing indicates he
was opposed to using federal funds for the building of roads and canals. He
would throw all the initiative for such projects on Congress; he saw the
signifcant political implications of the problem; he recognized the
economic value of the roads; he expected a system of internal imrpovments
to come; and he was well attuned to Monroe's sensitivities on the subject--
and at time he may have attuned Monroe to his position."
https://books.google.com/books?id=juceBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA170 Anyway, Crawford
as Secretary of the Treasury did not deal much with internal improvments
after 1819; and the government already had too many financial problems.
"Whether an abundance of funds would have led Crawford to increasingly
stronger support for internal improvements can only be conjectured, but at
no time did he actively oppose the federal governent's participation in
this area. He never raised--in this period--the question of
constitutionality; he accepted the congressional sentiment on the issue and
felt certain that a national system would be instituted. After he left
Washington he felt the Constitution should be amended, either to deny the
power or to expressly grant it. He did not wish powers to be usurped, for
there was no limit to usurped powers."
https://books.google.com/books?id=juceBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA171
Interestingly, some years after he returned to Georgia, Crawford denounced
nullification:
"I have observed with some mortification that the Legislature of South
Carolina has adjourned without passing a resolution requiring the call of a
Federal convention. In Europe fundamental institutions can only be changed
by revolution, violence and bloodshed. In the United States, where such
changes can be peaceably and constitutionally made, judging from the past,
we are determined to pursue the example of our European ancestors and
change our fundamental institutions only by the same means. I hold that
no state will stand justified in the sight of Heaven who shall resort to
revolutionary measures to change the existing order of things until it has
exhausted all constitutional methods of obtaining redress. That
nullification and seceding from the Union are revolutionary measures
cannot, I think, admit of a rational doubt. The strongest objection I have
to the Carolina doctrine is that its authors have deceitfully and
hypocritically represented both measures to be constitutional
and peaceable. They must have known better, and therefore acted
dishonestly."
https://books.google.com/books?id=_w1_NDy9xeAC&pg=PA208&lpg=PA208
(Crawford evidently viewed Calhoun as a bit too nationalist in the early
1820's and much too anti-nationalist a decade later.)
One final note: As Robert Pierce Ford observed in *The Missouri Comproise
and Its Aftermath* it is curious that the two times the presidential
elections went into the House (1800 and 1824), the cast of characters had
much in common: a dour Adams, a military chieftain suspected of
Bonapartist tendencies (Burr/Jackson), and a states-rights southern
Republican (Jefferson/Crawford).
https://books.google.com/books?id=lPR28UNIXgEC&pg=PA175