VI. The Movement for a Protective Tariff

The depression of 1819 was a great tonic to the movement for a protective tariff for American industry. Domestic industry, particularly in textiles, had expanded greatly under the impetus of the War of 1812, which virtually blocked foreign trade and imports of manufactured goods. The textile industry, in particular, was hit by the impact of foreign and especially British competition in the postwar period. Leading the complainants were the cotton manufacturers, and they were joined, among others, by the woolen manufacturers, the paper manufacturers of New England, the bar iron manufacturers, and the Louisiana sugar planters.¹ Many protectionists charged that there was a British conspiracy afoot to dump their goods in the United States and crush infant American competitors.²

The tariff of 1816, adjusting American rates after the abnormal restrictions of the war period, established a moderate tariff, largely for revenue, averaging about 20 percent of value. Duties on cotton and woolen goods were set at 25 percent, but were supposed to fall in 1819. Thus, the higher rates were conceived as a temporary measure to ease the adjustment of domestic manufactures to the new competitive conditions. Probably the most protective feature of the new tariff was the adoption of a specific duty on cheap cottons.³ The effect was to exclude cheap cottons from India, and thus remove the major threat to the mass market of new plants such as the factory at Waltham, Massachusetts. The first advocate of this duty, in fact, was the Massachusetts cotton manufacturer, F. C. Lowell.

The other major victory achieved by the protectionists before the depression was an increase in the duty of bar iron in 1818, and the indefinite extension of the 25 percent duty on cotton goods in the same year.

To further their cause, the protectionists established at the end of 1816 an American Society for the Encouragement of American Manufactures.⁴ This was soon followed by affiliated subsidiary societies: the Delaware Society for Promoting United States Manufactures; the Pennsylvania Society; the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of National Industry; and others in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New York and New England. Head of the American Society was Vice-President of the United States, Daniel D. Tompkins; many leading political figures joined, including Madison, Jefferson and John Adams.

The society set its aims at making the temporarily high cotton and woolen duties permanent; the absolute prohibition of the import of cotton from India; a proviso that all government officials clothe themselves in domestic fabrics, and any other necessary protection. The first objective was soon attained; the second objective had been achieved de facto though not de jure by the minimum provisions of the Tariff of 1816. By the spring of 1818, under the impact of the boom, as well as the attainment of their goals, the protectionist movement had become more or less dormant.⁵

The advent of the depression in late 1818 came, therefore, as a particular boon to the protectionist cause. Societies for the Promotion of Industry blossomed with renewed vigor, expanded, and flourished throughout New England and the Middle Atlantic states—the relatively industrialized areas—and deluged Congress and the press with protectionist petitions and manifestos. The unquestioned leader in this drive was the energetic Matthew Carey, Philadelphia printer and leader of the Philadelphia Society.⁶ Carey and his associates were ever ready to emphasize and maximize the extent of the distress, as a prelude to the call for a protectionist remedy.⁷

Carey organized, in the winter of 1819, a Convention of the Friends of National Industry, which included protectionist leaders from nine states—Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Ohio.⁸ The delegates met in New York on November 29, with Carey as secretary and William Few, president of the New York Society, as president. The memorial that the convention sent to Congress, written by Carey, set the protectionist “line,” which they were to repeat in countless monographs, letters, and petitions.⁹ Its main proposal was an increase in duties on imported goods to protect American manufactures; two subsidiary proposals were a tax on auction sales, and the abolition of time payments on import duties. The memorial began by pointing to the nation’s great economic difficulties; in addition to the depression of manufactures, commerce and shipping were prostrated, real estate depreciated in value, and “a great portion of our mechanics and artists are unemployed.” Agricultural staples were reduced in price, and Americans were deeply indebted to foreign nations. In the midst of this distress, the cities were being filled with foreign manufactured products. Excessive importation of manufactured goods was the cause of the depression, particularly the pernicious China and East India trade in cheap cottons, which drained American specie in exchange for “worthless fabrics.” The solution to the depression was, therefore, sharply increased protective duties.

Carey’s theory of prosperity and depression was simple: free trade caused depression, protection would bring prosperity.¹⁰ Summing up his position in a comparative “table,” he asserted that the results of free trade were, in turn: immense imports; bargain purchases of foreign goods; a drain of specie abroad; decay of national industry; discharge of workmen; growth in unemployment and poor relief; bankruptcy of manufactures; failure of merchants; agricultural distress and decline in prices of staples; stoppage of specie payments by banks; and sacrifice sales of property. Full protection, on the other hand, would lead to: imports in moderation only; a prosperous industry; full employment for every person able and willing to work; disappearance of bankruptcies; rising property values; a secure home market for such agricultural products as cotton and wool; and prosperity to merchants. Carey contended that the distress among the merchants was due to their excess number, caused by free trade. Lack of protection deprived many young men of employment opportunities in manufactures, forcing them into overemployment in the merchants’ field. Protection would shift the excessive number of merchants into manufacturing, thereby benefiting manufacturing as well as the remaining merchants who would face less competition.¹¹

To Carey, the condition of the United States was empirical evidence of the evils of nonprotection and the alleged adoption of the pernicious maxims of Adam Smith, while France and other European countries exemplified the benefits of protection. Carey brusquely dismissed arguments of critics that many fully protected countries of Europe were at that moment suffering also from depression. Their depression, he asserted, followed from wartime exhaustion of resources. Carey did not explain why this “exhaustion” required several years after the war to bring about a depression.¹²

Carey’s chief associate, Dr. Samuel Jackson, developed a particularly significant facet of the protectionist argument. Jackson stressed that protection was necessary to bring about full employment. During the Napoleonic wars, he declared, American commerce was active enough so that “the labor-power of the country . . . was employed to the full.” Now this source no longer existed, and a growing portion of the population was unemployed. The development of domestic manufactures was necessary to absorb the growing class of now surplus producers. Not only idle labor but also idle capital could become employed.¹³ Similarly, a leading Pennsylvania protectionist, Peter S. Du Ponceau, countered the opposition argument that subsidized manufacturing would withdraw capital from the more profitable field of farming. He declared that idle capital, as well as unemployed textile workers, would enter manufacturing.¹⁴

To the contention of free traders that free trade would not cause unemployment, since labor would shift from the inefficient to the efficient industries, Carey replied that people were generally idle and lax, hence immobile in their occupations. Therefore, they required protection wherever they were situated. Carey did not see that this concession shifted much of the blame for unemployment from the free trade system to the unemployed themselves.¹⁵

To the free trade assertion that unemployed workers in manufacturing should return to the soil, Carey countered with an interesting argument: that manufacturing employees were largely women and children, who were unsuitable for farm work and would thus remain unemployed. Another Carey argument held that low agricultural prices demonstrated an agricultural overproduction, just as failures of merchants proved an oversupply in trade.¹⁶

An interesting argument was developed by the protectionist journal, Patron of Industry, in commenting on inflationist proposals to increase the quantity of money.¹⁷ The proponents assumed, declared the Patron, that the root difficulty was scarcity of money. There was, however, a much more significant problem: the impossibility of employing money in a safe and profitable manner. The very fact that people were in such straits as to clamor for governmental loans indicated that they could not employ the money to advantage. In other words, there was an absence of productive employment, for money as well as labor. Protection was the remedy to bolster industry and give confidence to the economy. An article with a similar point of view, by “Plain Truth,” printed in the Pittsburgh Gazette, stated that there was an abundance of idle money capital which would be available for lending, except that no profitable employment could be found.¹⁸

An influential voice for protection was raised by the prominent New England Presbyterian clergyman, the Reverend Lyman Beecher. In a Thanksgiving sermon in 1819, later reprinted in pamphlet form, Beecher called for protection as the chief “means to national prosperity” and recovery.¹⁹ Beecher was one of the most lucid of the protectionists. He included the general arguments: that protection would provide employment for the idle and a steady home market for depressed agriculture. He laid particular stress on the monetary drain caused by an adverse balance of trade and the use of protection in ending this drain. Beecher also stressed, far more than Carey and his groups, that American manufactures as infant industries specifically needed protection. Beecher was one of the few protectionists to take cognizance of the charge that tariffs might promote domestic monopoly and tyrannize over consumers. His answers to the argument were thoughtful. In the first place, consumers could repeal the tariff if this result ensued. Furthermore, Beecher declared, tariffs would not insure an entire domestic monopoly for all products—just partial protection for some products. Finally, Beecher asserted that any rise in the prices of manufactured goods would only be temporary, that new firms would be attracted to the industry and old firms would expand, until the prices fell.

Protectionists, of course, had little use for laissez-faire theories. A particularly clear example was presented by “A Manufacturer” of Philadelphia. Lamenting over the depressed conditions, he asserted that the government had the duty as well as the power under the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution to regulate trade and commerce. For the “government is the national physician.” Furthermore, since the welfare of the manufacturer was clearly identical with the nation’s welfare, permanent and full protection was required in the interest of the nation as a whole. And “if our manufacturers shall become wealthy, they will circulate and retain the precious metals in this country.”²⁰

Congress was of course the focal center for protectionist agitation, since the state legislatures were constitutionally prohibited from erecting tariffs. All that a state government could do, in fact, was to join in the agitation. There was little controversy on the state level since it was not an issue there.

The outstanding protectionist leader in Congress was Representative Henry Baldwin, from Pittsburgh. It was Baldwin who headed the newly formed House Committee on Manufactures, which the protectionists were able to split off from the traditional Committee on Agriculture and Manufactures, during the 1819–20 session. This new committee became the fountainhead of future protectionist measures. In the 1820 session, Baldwin promptly introduced the Baldwin Bill for a protective tariff. The bill passed the House by a substantial margin and lost in the Senate by only one vote.

Baldwin came from one of the very strongest points of the new protectionism—western Pennsylvania, centering in Pittsburgh. This was one of the leading industrial areas, not only in textiles but also in iron and glass production. Pittsburgh was now an area of heavy unemployment. For his efforts on behalf of protection from 1819 to 1821, Baldwin was feted by a citizens’ meeting in Pittsburgh, and later affectionately dubbed Father of the American System.²¹ Baldwin himself was an important iron manufacturer, who owned three large rolling mills, including the largest one in the Pittsburgh area. His interest in a protective tariff was quite immediate, and he did not neglect iron in his proposed tariff increases.²² He also admitted that the cut glass industry and others centering in Pittsburgh received very large relative increases of protection in his bill.²³

As might be expected, Pittsburgh was one of the first areas to memorialize Congress for protection. Typical was the memorial written by a committee of manufacturers in October, 1818, and again at the end of December. Further petitions were sent by the newly formed Allegheny County Society for Protecting Agriculture and Domestic Manufactures. Pittsburgh, in fact, went further than other communities by attempting to establish a cooperative marketing association for the whole town—this was the Pittsburgh Manufacturing Association, founded in 1819.²⁴ Not only manufacturers but also farmers from the area were seemingly impressed by the arguments and anxious to secure a home market in the face of falling foreign markets; they petitioned Congress for tariff protection for industry.²⁵ Many of the petitions signed “practical farmers” or “impartial farmers,” however, were written by industrialists, like Alexander McClurg, an associate of Baldwin, and secretary of the new Society for Promotion of Agriculture and Domestic Manufactures of Allegheny County.²⁶

Pennsylvania support for protection was indicated by the pleas for Congressional relief issued simultaneously by Representative Richard Povall of Philadelphia, head of the Pennsylvania House Committee on Domestic Manufactures, and by Senator Charles Shoemaker from Berks and Schuylkill Counties, of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Manufactures.²⁷ In addition to the standard tariff arguments, Povall asserted that free trade favored the rich at the expense of the poor, since it brought about depression and sacrifice sales to the rich. Shoemaker stressed the importance of a tariff on iron. Representative William Duane’s report as head of the select Committee on Domestic Economy stated that adequate national protection to all branches of industry was indispensable to recovery.²⁸

Pennsylvania contributed its mite to the protection battle by levying a special duty on retailers of foreign merchandise and by requiring new licenses from retailers of foreign goods.²⁹

Other states in the West joined in the protectionist movement. In Ohio, Governor Thomas Worthington called for a tariff to promote a shift in resources from overproduced agriculture to manufactures and to stop the specie drain. He advocated self-sufficiency and stressed a very popular exhortatory theme: calling on all good citizens to patronize domestic products. One of his major addresses for protection was delivered before the Scioto Agricultural Society, in 1819, perhaps an indication that many Ohio farmers were convinced by the home market argument.³⁰ In his 1819–20 message to the legislature, Governor Worthington recommended the encouragement of woolen manufactures. A joint committee of the legislature was established in the next session to inquire into possible aid to Ohio manufactures by the state government. The report of Representative Joseph Vance (from Champaign County) recommended a state loan to a Steubenville woolen factory.³¹

General William Henry Harrison ran for the Ohio State Senate in 1819 on a pro-tariff as well as an anti-bank platform. As chairman of the Board of Supervisors of Tioga County, General Harrison spurred a series of resolutions to alleviate the hard times. The sponsors agreed to abstain from the use of any imported goods, and to give preference to domestic articles.³² Successfully elected, Harrison moved a resolution in the state legislature to support increased tariffs to bring about recovery of domestic manufactures.³³

Kentucky was also enthusiastically protectionist, as typified by the Speaker of the House in Washington, Henry Clay, and this sentiment was accompanied by a widespread campaign for voluntary preference for domestic products. Ladies’ hats made of local grass were recommended as being as good as the finest wool, while roasted barley was used in many cases as a substitute for imported coffee.³⁴

Many Missourians were eager for protection for Missouri’s lead, iron, and salt industries. The protectionist cause was particularly taken up by the St. Louis Enquirer and the St. Charles Missourian.³⁵

Delaware is an interesting example of the swell of protectionist sentiment. At the beginning of the crisis, in 1819, the Delaware Senate passed a resolution declaring that manufactures were a great national concern, in the public interest, and hence required protection. The resolution passed the Senate, but lost in the House by a vote of 7 to 10.³⁶

Delaware, however, became one of the prime centers of the protectionist movement. E.I. du Pont, from Wilmington, the nation’s leading powder manufacturer, was one of that movement’s original sponsors.³⁷ By the next session, sentiment had changed. Representative Whitely reported from the House Committee on Agriculture and Manufacturing of Delaware that the origin of the distress was the present commercial system, aiding as it did foreign manufactures at the expense of domestic manufactures. The distress of domestic manufactures had thrown agriculture into depression for lack of a home market. Whitely’s concluding resolution asking Congress for protection was adopted unanimously.³⁸ By a slim margin, and after a sharp battle, the Delaware legislature took supplemental measures to aid their manufactures, exempting all owners of cotton and woolen machinery from either taxes or the debt-paying execution process.³⁹ A proposed blow at imports was defeated, however, when a bill narrowly failed to pass which provided that peddlers must acquire a license under the condition that they sell no foreign goods.⁴⁰ Supposedly “free-trade” North Carolina, however, doubled its tax on peddlers who sold goods imported into the state. Kentucky debated a similar measure.⁴¹

Neighboring Maryland boasted two of the nation’s leading protectionists: Hezekiah Niles, who worked tirelessly for protection in his Weekly Register; and Daniel Raymond, whose Thoughts on Political Economy strongly backed a protective tariff and was a treatise particularly designed to be a counterweight to the free trade position of the classical economists.

New York was the site of one of the main organs of the protectionist movement, the New York Columbian, a paper reflecting De Witt Clinton’s views.⁴² The Columbian pursued the cause through letters and editorials and reprinted Carey’s Addresses of the Philadelphia Society. The emphasis in New York was on the cotton manufacture. One letter stressed that protection to cottons would be particularly useful to the state. Further, protection would inspire confidence and thus “would produce capital” and remedy the depression.⁴³

One of the most interesting protectionist writings was an article in the Columbian stressing that protection would furnish “constant employment.” As a remedy the writer, “H.B.”, further suggested that the state establish a woolen and cotton factory, state owned, to teach the youth of New York City the “useful art of spinning and weaving—the state to furnish the raw material and receive the proceeds as it is finished for the consumer.” He also suggested a state owned cotton and woolen warehouse to sell the cloth wholesale and retail.⁴⁴ Everyone was urged to wear only domestic clothing, and the clergy were particularly requested to set the proper example.

One of the most ambitious efforts of the protectionists in this period was the establishment of a semi-weekly newspaper in New York, The Patron of Industry, to serve as the bellwether of the movement. It ran a brief course in 1820 and 1821, at the height of this wave of tariff agitation. The Patron was published by the National Institute for the Promotion of Industry.⁴⁵, ⁴⁶

The two major groups in New York State politics were the followers of Governor Clinton and the bitterly opposed Tammany faction of the Democratic-Republican party. That the two groups were not very far apart on the tariff as well as on monetary questions may be seen in the famous Tammany Address of John Woodward. One of Woodward’s many proposed remedies for the crisis was the absolute prohibition against importing any article that could be manufactured domestically “on tolerable terms.” To supplement these legal measures, all citizens and governments were expected to give preference to American products.⁴⁷

New England was a more difficult field for protectionists to plow. New manufacturers in New England were largely in the cotton industry, and tariff agitation from this area centered on this commodity. An interesting development was the use of the Washington Insurance Company of Providence, insurer for most of the Rhode Island cotton mills, as lobbyist for protection of the cotton industry. The protectionists also established a Manufacturers’ and Farmers’ Journal in Rhode Island during 1819.

By May, 1820 (when the Baldwin Bill came to a vote in Congress), seven state legislatures had passed resolutions urging Congress to pass the bill. These states were Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Ohio.⁴⁸ The heavy investments in cottons and woolens were stressed in the Pennsylvania declarations, and the textiles were stressed by New York Governor De Witt Clinton, in his advocacy of protection.⁴⁹ Under Clinton’s leadership, New York extended subsidies to woolen manufactures in the state.

Many minor industries, in addition to the major ones of cotton, wool, and iron, asked for protection. Typical was the petition of the Society of Paper Makers of Pennsylvania and Delaware. They pointed to the extent of paper manufacture and the number employed in the industry, and advocated protection to remedy its distress and to keep the profit of its manufacture in the country.⁵⁰ Even the book printers demanded protection, headed by Matthew Carey, a leading Philadelphia printer.⁵¹ The protectionists, while concentrating on the major industries, were generally quite willing to include numerous industries under the protection umbrella. “An Agriculturist” advocated absolute prohibition of all imports of foreign industry, in order to build up a home market for American grain produce.⁵² Hezekiah Niles, though a staunch protectionist leader, balked at this trend. He stated emphatically:

most of these manufacturers are prostrated not for want of protecting duties, but in consequence of general impoverishment of the country arising principally from want of protection to the great leading branches of cotton, wool, and iron.⁵³

Emphasis on cotton and wool and the lure of a home market for agriculture were, in fact, the features of a typical “grass roots” tariff petition. Thus, some citizens of Middletown, Connecticut, in a petition to Congress, stressed the advantage to agriculture of domestic manufactures.⁵⁴ Using an “infant industry argument,” they declared that

adequate protective duties . . . would soon create or revive such a number of manufacturing establishments, that ere long their rivalry would probably reduce the price of their fabrics below the present standard of those imported.

On the other hand, if we now permitted American manufactures to die of neglect, we would have to buy only European goods at an exorbitant advance and reimburse manufacturers for their present losses. In essence, this was a forerunner of the classic argument that a firm undercuts prices in order to crush its rival and later extract a monopoly price.

Protection reached a peak in Congress late in the 1819–20 session, with the battle over the Baldwin Bill.

The heart of the Baldwin Bill was a rise in tariffs on cottons and woolens from 25 percent to 33 percent duty, plus a minimum for cheap cottons, the total increase in cotton duty being 50 to 70 percent. Tariffs were also to be increased on a variety of manufactured goods.

Mr. Baldwin began the debate on the bill in the House, stressing the depression, the decline in property values, and unemployment.⁵⁵ Debate in the Senate was led by Senator Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey, chairman of the Committee of Manufactures which reported the bill. He stressed the dominant theme of the protectionists—the great distress of the country and protection as the remedy. Protection would provide a home commerce and a home market for agriculture, raise property values, cure unemployment, eliminate the unfavorable balance of trade and the specie drain. Also speaking for protection was Senator James J. Burrill, Jr., of Rhode Island. The Baldwin Bill passed the House by a considerable majority, 90 to 69. It failed in the Senate by only two votes, 20 to 22.⁵⁶ Geographically, taking both Houses into consideration, the pattern of the voting was as follows:

Voting on the Baldwin Tariff Bill

	For	Against
New England	24	18
Middle Atlantic	64	7
West	19	12
South (including Southwest)	3	54
	—	—
	110	91

In the Middle Atlantic states, Maryland supplied almost the entire anti-tariff vote. The bulk of the protectionist majority was supplied by four states (House figures only): New York (25–0); Pennsylvania (22–1); New Jersey (6–0); Ohio (6–0).

The Baldwin Bill was reintroduced in January, 1821, but with little success. The beginnings of business recovery were becoming apparent, and protectionist ardor cooled considerably. It was finally able to succeed three years later.⁵⁷

Not all protectionists confined their doctrines to the national level. Every once in a while, a protectionist writer would accept the challenge of his opponents and push protection doctrine near to its logically absurd limit. Thus, Matthew Lyon of Eddyville, Kentucky, advocated a state law prohibiting imports into Kentucky of all “foreign” cotton goods and other foreign manufactured products.⁵⁸ “Plain Truth” in the Pittsburgh Gazette suggested a western tariff to prevent a continued specie drain from the West, and to develop its own manufactures to provide a home market for western expenditures. He advocated western secession if necessary for this purpose.⁵⁹ “Mechanic of Detroit” went even further. He attributed the economic difficulties of the Detroit artisans to the merchants of the town importing large quantities of goods that could have been made in Detroit. Merchants, he asserted, should only purchase the product of local, rather than of “foreign,” mechanics.⁶⁰ One Pennsylvanian evolved an ingenious scheme reminiscent of later American development, to exclude imported manufacture by using the state power of quarantining commerce ruinous to morals, industry, and “political” health.⁶¹ “A Pennsylvanian” suggested that every retailer in the state be forced to take out a state license, and that the condition of the license be the retailers’ agreement not to sell any imported goods on credit to anyone, except tools for manufacturers or mechanics.⁶² This would prevent people from running into excessive debt and help out domestic manufactures.

The protectionist movement encountered formidable opposition that was able to defeat its proposals, although four years later protection was to triumph in the Tariff of 1824. Effective opposition came from the Monroe administration. The Washington National Intelligencer, known as reflecting administration views, strongly opposed higher tariffs. Ardent opposition came, as is well known, from the South. Strongly agricultural and relying on export markets for their staples of cotton and tobacco, the South opposed the protectionist measures vigorously. Southern opposition in the Congressional tariff vote was virtually unanimous.

Particularly active opposition to the tariff came from John Taylor of Caroline, who wrote many memorials for Agricultural Societies of Virginia, attacking the tariff. The focal point of opposition in Congress was the House Committee on Agriculture, which prepared comprehensive anti-tariff reports based primarily on the Taylor memorials. Also actively opposed to an increased tariff were merchant groups in the North—particularly Salem, Massachusetts—and the Chamber of Commerce of Philadelphia, which sent opposition memorials to Congress.⁶³ Whereas the protectionists devoted a great deal of attention to the depression, the “free traders” in opposition devoted little space to the depression, since they could not counter with a simple remedy of their own. Free traders generally concentrated on general political or economic questions such as, the benefits of international trade and the division of labor, the danger of monopoly, the injustice of special privilege, and the morals of factory life.

Some free traders undertook, however, to rebut the depression argument. Counters took two general forms: (1) denying the depression was caused by lack of protection and that the tariff could provide a remedy, and (2) asserting a tariff would aggravate rather than relieve the hard times. On the first point, the free traders argued that the depression was universal and strong in the leading European countries. Yet, they were heavily protected; therefore, a protective tariff in the United States could offer no cure. This was a leading argument of the House Agriculture Committee.⁶⁴

Condy Raguet, only of late a protectionist himself,⁶⁵ in his 1820 report on the depression to the Pennsylvania Senate, brought up the point that if the protectionists were right, the manufacturing towns should have been the hardest hit by the depression, whereas hard times were universal throughout the nation.⁶⁶

The positive argument against the new tariff was that it would worsen the depression rather than improve it. It would largely do so by increasing the depression of agriculture and commerce, which would be taxed for the benefit of possible new industries. Thus, the merchants of Portland (Maine) warned that higher tariffs would destroy their maritime commerce and also the nation’s agricultural markets abroad.⁶⁷ The Portland petition was endorsed by the Portland Gazette, the Boston Gazette, and by a convention of Maine merchants and agriculturists in Portland.

Merchants of Salem, Massachusetts, in a petition written by the famous Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, turned the tables on the protectionists by accusing them of being visionary theorists, heedless of the practical effects tariffs would have in destroying the capital and profits of commerce. Tariffs, they declared, would worsen the depression by increasing unemployment in commerce.⁶⁸ Many critics pointed out that agricultural exports would be damaged because lower imports would supply less dollars abroad with which to buy American products.⁶⁹ A New England writer, “Public Good,” asked his readers to suppose that all imports into the country were prohibited. American mechanics and farmers would then have fewer means with which to purchase domestic manufactures than before. Importers would earn less and exporters’ markets abroad would suffer.⁷⁰

A group of Boston merchants charged that a protective tariff would cause widespread starvation among the mechanics and merchants of the seaports.⁷¹ More specifically, merchants and distillers of Boston objected to a proposed import duty on molasses. They pointed to their investment of $11 million in buildings, protesting that a tariff would lead to the unemployment of thousands of people in the molasses and rum trade.⁷²

A more general argument held that protective tariffs would necessarily cause unprofitable business. An interesting presentation of this view appeared in a memorial by citizens of Charleston, written by the wealthy South Carolina banker and landowner Stephen Elliott.⁷³ Elliott pointed out that a tariff would penalize labor and capital employed in commerce and agriculture, and would divert factors from the latter to manufacturing. But if labor and capital employed in manufacturing produced as much profit as that employed in the other occupations, a tariff would be unnecessary, since labor and capital would then shift to manufacturing without government help. If manufacturing were not as profitable then tariffs would be forcing labor and capital into unprofitable employments.⁷⁴

One of the most sophisticated expositions of the doctrine that increased tariffs would only aggravate the depression was delivered by John Taylor of Caroline. Thus, in his memorial of the farmers and merchants of Fredericksburg, Virginia,⁷⁵ Taylor established this chain of causation: tariffs cause diminished imports, that would in turn bring about restriction of exports, which would cause a fall in the prices of domestic products. The depression had already brought about great price declines, declared Taylor, which were equivalent to an increased value of the money unit. The result was an increase in the real burden of tariff duties. The further price fall following higher tariffs would add still more to the real burden.

Taylor regarded tariffs as a burden because he saw them as taxes on consumption; a tariff was a tax which diminishes consumption, hence diminishes production and prosperity. Taylor wrote:

The tariff . . . is a tax upon the national ability . . . since it was imposed, one half the national ability to pay taxes has been destroyed by the doubled value of money, and a reduction to the same amount in the value of products and property. Therefore the burden of taxation has been doubled by circumstances without the agency of legislation . . . if the whole duty is continued, it will compel the payers to retrench their consumption. . . . The enjoyments of consumption are the food of industry; diminish them, and it flags; leave them free, and it is invigorated.⁷⁶

Taylor also pursued this reasoning to advocate reducing tariffs in order to reduce the real tax burden on consumption—a surprisingly modern position. The House Committee on Agriculture, in its anti-tariff report, echoed this position.⁷⁷ Others also advocated reduction in existing tariff as a method of remedying the depression. For example, the National Intelligencer early in the depression declared that a depression needed a reduction in tariffs instead of an increase, to benefit the harassed merchants.⁷⁸

An interesting counter on the unemployment problem was delivered by one of the most influential of the anti-protectionists, the leading New York merchant and politician, Churchill C. Cambreleng.⁷⁹ The United States, he declared, was underpopulated, so unemployment could not be a permanent problem. Present unemployment was merely temporary, and even natural. “Every nation experiences a want of employment at intervals, amidst the natural fluctuations of industry.”

There was, of course, a good deal of deprecating of the manufacturers asking for protection. Cambreleng denounced the protectionists as idlers and malcontents, or as wartime speculators in manufacturing stock who wanted a government subsidy. John Taylor laid the plight of the manufacturers at the door of the banks; these were speculative manufacturers who had invested with “fictitious capital” supplied by the banks, and now were left without funds as a result of credit contraction.⁸⁰

The New Orleans Louisiana Gazette spoke for many anti-tariff readers when it stated: “In these times of extraordinary embarrassment, we ought particularly beware how we prune the wing of honest industry” and concluded, “laissez-nous faire.”⁸¹ An amusing attack on the tariff from the laissez-faire point of view, by “The Friends of Natural Rights,” attacked “Professor Matthew Carey” and “Professor Hezekiah Niles” for implicitly advocating government ownership and management of all property, with the government guaranteeing full employment (no moments of idleness) for all capital and labor.⁸² The writers thus described the “Careyan Scheme of Government”:

The people of the United States being in a very unenlightened condition, very indolent and much disposed to waste their labor and their capital . . . the welfare of the community requires that all goods, wares, merchandise, and estates . . . should be granted to the government in fee simple, forever . . . and should be placed under the management of a Board of Trustees, to be styled the Patrons of Industry. The said Board should thereupon guarante [sic] to the people of the United States that thenceforth neither the capital nor labor of this nation should remain for a moment idle.

Among the maxims that such a Board would try to inculcate in the people:

It is a vulgar notion that the property which a citizen possesses, actually belongs to him: for he is a mere tenant, laborer, or agent of the government, to whom all the property in the nation legitimately belongs. The government may therefore manage this property according to its own fancy, and shift capitalists and laborers from one employment to another.

These writers thus saw in the tariff position a logic implicitly leading to a wholly government-planned economy.

In Congress, the leading speeches opposed to the Baldwin Bill were delivered by future president John Tyler, Representative from Charles City County in eastern Virginia, and by Representative Nathaniel Silsbee, from the great shipping center of Salem, Massachusetts.⁸³ Tyler, like Story, denounced the protectionists as hasty theorists, willing to destroy commerce and agriculture to put their experiment into practice. Tyler also brought up the interesting and important point that, in the long run, even manufacturers would not benefit from the subsidy, since competition would flow into the protected industries until their rates of profit were no higher than in any other industry.⁸⁴ Silsbee also stressed the aggravating effect the tariff would have on the existing depression in the seaports.⁸⁵

The protectionists offered two subsidiary measures as part of their political program. Both were designed to supplement tariffs in restricting imports. One proposed that the government cease granting time to importers for payment of duties. The particular criticism of this system was that the debt induced excessive imports. Some merchants joined the protectionists in this proposal in order to limit the competition of those fellow-importers who had meager capital, and were therefore dependent on credit.⁸⁶ The Convention of Friends of National Industry began the drive to abolish credits on duties. It pointed out that since the war many foreign merchants had been induced by the credits to import heavily, thereby depressing domestic manufactures and injuring American mercantile stability.⁸⁷

Conversely, other merchants fought back in defense of the credits system. The Chambers of Commerce of Philadelphia and New York City defended the system. They charged that abolition would repress enterprise, credit, and commerce. The New York Daily Advertiser pointed out that abolition would help the large capitalists at the expense of the small, since it was the young and enterprising merchants who would be forced to abandon trade for lack of capital.⁸⁸ John Pintard—leading merchant, founder of the New York Historical Society, and Secretary of the New York City Chamber of Commerce—taking a position similar to John Taylor on the tariff, charged that imposition of a cash duty would increase the tax burden on commerce. He estimated that cash duties would double the real value of taxes on imports.⁸⁹

A group of Baltimore merchants headed by Isaac McKim, adopted this ingenious reasoning: “all duties on imports are taxes on consumption.” An importer had to have time to convey the goods to consumers. In every government grant of credit to the importers, the time period of the credit fell short of the period before which the capital of the merchants could be realized.⁹⁰ The Baltimore merchants struck a similar note as did Cambreleng—cycles of trade were inevitable in business affairs:

Commerce always tends to extremes and excesses of trading occur under all systems and in the finest periods of commercial prosperity. But if importation does sometimes swell until business stagnates, commerce has a power of self-correction and the resource of self-recovery, and reverses soon allay the intemperate ambition of gain.

One proponent of credit on duties went to the extent of proposing a lengthening of the credit period as a remedy for the depression.⁹¹ He reasoned as follows: A particular depressant in the commercial situation was the large amount of custom house bonds owed by merchants for payment of import duties. They could not sell the goods they imported because of the “scarcity of money and the stagnation of business.” Therefore, to acquire the money to pay the bonds, the merchants had to discount their bills at the banks. After the merchants paid the bank notes into the Treasury in payment of their debts, the Treasury deposited the notes in the Bank of the United States, thereby adding to the pressure on state banks to redeem their notes in specie. This exerted deflationist pressure, obliging banks to curtail greatly their loans and discounts. Thus, the author demonstrated how taxes exerted a deflationary effect on the money supply and economy.

Senator William A. Trimble (Ohio), an ardent protectionist, introduced a bill to suspend credits on duties, but the bill failed to come to a vote in Congress, as the failure of other protectionist measures doomed this one as well.

The other subsidiary measure was a prohibitory tax on sales at auction. Protectionists charged that auction sales, which had become a prominent form of wholesale import sales after the war, spurred cheap foreign competition with American products.⁹² Thus, a group of Merchants and Citizens of Philadelphia, in a memorial to Congress, pointed to the pernicious effects of auction sales during the previous few years.⁹³ Auction sales provided a means for agents of foreign exporters to dispose of their goods easily. These channels had been deluged with every sort of imported goods, fostered by the “extreme elevation of the market at the close of the war, owing to the few foreign productions in the country at the time.” Auction sales of imported goods had wrecked domestic manufactures, by underselling the established merchants. Here again the leading role in attacking auctions was taken by merchant competitors of the auction system.⁹⁴ Critics also charged that auction prices fluctuated more rapidly than regular prices, since they were not regulated by cost. A prohibitory tax had first been proposed by a group of New York City merchants and traders as early as 1817.⁹⁵ Merchants were, however, by no means unanimous in advocating a prohibitory tax on auction sales. Baltimore merchants split on the issue, and the Chamber of Commerce of New York City opposed a tax on auctions.⁹⁶ The drive for a 10 percent tax on auction sales was launched in earnest by the protectionist Convention of Friends of National Industry.⁹⁷ It pointed out that large quantities of imported clothes were sold at auction. Even domestic goods sold at auction were frowned on, because auctions generally promoted goods of “inferior quality.” The proposed 10 percent tax was to apply to both foreign and domestic goods at auction.

Congress, however, rejected a bill, submitted by Representative Baldwin at the same time as his tariff proposal, to levy a 10 percent tax on auction sales.⁹⁸ Baldwin charged that the auction system was ruining the fair traders by “inundating the country with worthless goods at reduced prices, benefiting foreigners and bankrupting American merchants.” On the other hand, Representative Albert H. Tracy of Buffalo defended traders who sold at lower prices and advocated consumer freedom to buy from whatever source they desired. Representative Johnson of Virginia asserted that the measure would ruin one part of the country for the benefit of another, and that free choice was still the best system of trade. Middle-of-the-roaders, such as the influential Representative Samuel Smith of Baltimore, advocated a very small duty of 1 to 2 percent. The auction bill was closely fought. It was first rejected in the House by a vote of 77 to 72, and then was modified to a 5 percent tax on dry goods and 1 percent on minor items, and passed by an 89-to-61 vote. After the defeat of the Baldwin Tariff Bill, however, the bill never came to a vote in the Senate.

Failing to obtain legislative action, merchants of New York and other cities decided to combat the competition of auction sales of imported goods by banding together to refuse to buy goods at auction. Thus, the United Dry Goods Association of New York, representing nearly all the wholesale and retail dry goods merchants of the city, met on May 21, 1821 and resolved not to purchase any dry goods at auction, in order to combat the “price fixing” of the “auction monopoly.”⁹⁹ Protectionists had high hopes for this measure, and Niles hailed the action as a check on the British menace to American employment and injury to the merchant and retailer.¹⁰⁰ Shortly thereafter, similar boycott action was taken by organizations of Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore merchants, in the dry goods and hardware fields.¹⁰¹ The New York Association took the lead in appointing a Vigilance Committee to keep watch over the membership in carrying out the pledge. Not only did they agree not to buy at auction but they also agreed not to sell any goods at auction, except at sheriffs’ sales for bankruptcy. All these boycott efforts soon came to naught, and the report of the Vigilance Committee in September of that year provides insight into the reasons for its complete failure and into the difficulties faced by any such “cartel” arrangement.¹⁰² First, there was a lack of “complete uniformity of views upon the subject.” A few merchants, mainly small dealers, were opposed to the suppression of auction sales. Second, several large merchants, though opposed to auctions on principle, indulged in their self-interested advantage and continued to purchase—more cheaply—at auction. Third, New York, the auction center of the country, was filled with merchants from other cities who did not participate in the agreement and continued to buy at auction. And fourth, even the most “patriotic” (i.e., anti-auction) merchants were chafing at the restriction because, unfortunately, American importers did not import a sufficient variety of goods as demanded by consumers. Therefore, many merchants were “in a measure compelled” to buy at auction “for the sake of an assortment of goods” provided by auctions from foreign exporting houses. The Association, followed by the merchants of other cities, had to repeal its boycott. The repeal in New York carried by only two votes, 64 to 62.

In addition to the failure to obtain federal legislation, a proposal to tax auctions in Maryland was rejected by only two votes, after a struggle in the Maryland House.¹⁰³

Thus, the depression rejuvenated a protectionist movement that had arisen after the war and become dominant. The postwar movement resulting in the Tariff of 1816, however, had been a general patriotic expression connected with the war and its aftermath, and meant to provide temporary relief to the industry spawned by war. Adherents comprised most Americans, including such later vigorous free traders as Thomas Jefferson and John Calhoun. With the passing of the war, the tariff issue had more or less disappeared. The character of the new depression-born movement would become more familiar to later generations. The movement was led by the new manufacturers, most of whom had begun during the war of 1812 when foreign trade was virtually suspended. Cotton textiles led the clamor for greater protection from imports, followed closely by woolen, iron, glass, and paper manufacturers. The battle over an increased tariff, which reached its peak in 1820 over the Baldwin Bill, was far more of a sectional controversy than the monetary issues. Protectionist sentiment flourished in the states where the manufactures were located—especially in the Middle Atlantic states, and adjacent states such as Ohio. The South, on the other hand, dependent on the export of its staples, almost solidly opposed the higher tariff, while the West and commercial New England split on the issue.

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¹U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 455 (December 13, 1815): 32; no. 458 (December 22, 1815): 52; no. 460 (January 5, 1816): 56; no. 533 (April 7, 1818): 265; no. 476 (March 6, 1816): 103; no. 501 (February 4, 1817): 168. Also see Niles’ Weekly Register 10 (March 23, 1816): 49; 10 (April 13, 1816): 99; 11 (November 9, 1816): 424; 11 (May 10, 1817): 166–67.

²Most of them cited a statement advocating deliberate dumping made by the influential Lord Brougham before a Parliamentary Committee. Niles’ Weekly Register 11 (December 28, 1816): 284.

³The minimum duty of 25 cents per square yard was equivalent to an over 6 cents per yard rise in price. Clark, History of Manufactures, vol. 2, p. 275.

⁴Bishop, History, pp. 230ff. Also see Niles’ Weekly Register 12 (March 29, 1817): 75; New York Evening Post, June 14, 1817.

⁵The report of the Corresponding Committee to the American Society for Encouragement of Manufactures, in the New York Evening Post, February 28, 1819.

⁶In the summer of 1821, the citizens of ardently protectionist Wilmington, Delaware, presented Carey with a plaque commemorating his services to the cause. Niles’ Weekly Register 20 (July 28, 1821): 345.

⁷For examples, see Carey, Essays, pp. 141, 198ff., 230, 318ff., 416. Also see Washington (D.C.) National Intelligencer, May 26, 1819.

⁸Of the 36 delegates, there were 12 from New York, 7 from Pennsylvania, 5 from New Jersey, and 5 from Connecticut. For the personnel of the threeday convention, see Niles’ Weekly Register 17 (December 11, 1819): 229.

⁹For the petition, see U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 560 (December 20, 1819): 440. Also see the very similar petition of the American Society of New York City for the Encouragement of Domestic Manufactures, ibid., 561 (December 27, 1819): 443; and, their later petition, ibid., 593 (April 24, 1820): 532. Leaders were William Few, Peter Schenck, and John E. Hyde. Few, a leading lawyer and banker, had had in former days a distinguished career in Georgia. Few had been United States Senator from Georgia, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and Federal Judge. Also see Petition of a Convention of Friends of National Industry in New Jersey (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton Co., 1820). The American Society of New York, in particular, stressed recovery from the depression as the reason for advocating protection.

¹⁰Most of Carey’s numerous writings in this period are collected in his Essays. See particularly his widely distributed “Addresses of the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of National Industry,” in ibid., pp. 18ff., 36–38. Also see Philadelphia Union, September 17, 1819.

¹¹Carey, Essays, pp. 67, 362ff. Also see New York Patron of Industry, July 9, 1820.

¹²Carey, Essays, pp. 13ff. An almost identical argument was offered by Niles. Niles’ Weekly Register 17 (October 23, 1819): 117. Niles also printed Carey’s Philadelphia as well as other material, and arguments of his own. Ibid., 16 (April 17 and August 28, 1819). For Niles as a protectionist leader see Norval N. Luxon, Niles’ Weekly Register (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1947), p. 110.

¹³For Jackson’s writings, see Carey, Essays, pp. 175–87.

¹⁴See the petition for protection of cottons and woolens by Peter S. Du Ponceau and other citizens of Pennsylvania, in U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 569 (January 17, 1820): 454ff. Also the petition of the Society of Paper Makers of Pennsylvania and Delaware, ibid., 3, no. 571 (January 18, 1820).

¹⁵Carey, Essays, pp. 36–38.

¹⁶Ibid., pp. 68ff. Also see Edith Abbott, Women in Industry (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1915), pp. 51ff.

¹⁷New York Patron of Industry, July 1, 1820.

¹⁸“Plain Truth,” in Pittsburgh Gazette, reprinted in New York Patron of Industry, August 10, 1820.

¹⁹Lyman Beecher, The Means of National Prosperity (New York: J. Sayre Co., 1820). Thanksgiving Sermon, December 2, 1819.

²⁰“A Manufacturer,” in Philadelphia Union, May 29, 1819. Also see “A Friend of His Country,” in Washington (D.C.) National Intelligencer, January 21, 1819, and report of the Joint Committee on Domestic Manufacture of the Ohio Legislature, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1819–20 (January 24): 252–53.

²¹Frank W. Stonecipher, “Pittsburgh and the Nineteenth Century Tariffs,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 31 (September–December, 1948): 87ff. Also see Russell J. Ferguson, Early Western Pennsylvania Politics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1938), pp. 236–44.

²²M. Flavia Taylor, “The Political and Civic Career of Henry Baldwin, 1799–1830,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 24 (March 1941): 37–50. Dorfman, Economic Mind, vol. 1, p. 386.

²³Annals of Congress, 16th Congress, 1st Session (April 21, 1820), p. 1944, speech of Representative Baldwin.

²⁴First President of the Association was prominent glass manufacturer, George Sutton. See William Bining, “The Glass Industry of Western Pennsylvania, 1797–1857,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, 19 (December 1936): 263; George T. Fleming, History of Pittsburgh and Its Environs (New York: American Historical Society, 1922), vol. 2, p. 60; Bishop, History, pp. 250ff.

²⁵Arthur C. Bining, “The Rise of Iron Manufacture in Western Pennsylvania,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, 16 (November 1933): 242; Eiselen, The Rise, pp. 46ff.

²⁶Kehl, Ill-Feeling, pp. 79, 189.

²⁷Pennsylvania Legislature, Journal of the House, 1819–20 (January 28, 1820): 413; Journal of the Senate, 1819–20 (January 28, 1820): 219–20.

²⁸Duane Report, for Governor Findlay’s support of protection see Pennsylvania Legislature, Journal of the Senate, 1820–21 (December 7, 1820): 30.

²⁹Philadelphia Union, April 10, 1821.

³⁰Alfred B. Sears, “Thomas Worthington, Pioneer Businessman of the Old Northwest,” Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 58 (January 1949): 76; “Source Illustrations of Ohio’s Relations to National History, 1816–40,” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications 25 (1916): 143.

³¹Ohio General Assembly, Journal of the Senate, 1819–20 (January 25, 1820): 219–29.

³²New York Columbian, November 10, 1819.

³³Boston New England Palladium, January 7, 1820.

³⁴Gronert, “Trade,” pp. 313–23.

³⁵Anderson, “Frontier Economic Problems, II,” p. 199.

³⁶Delaware General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1819 (February 2, 1819): 138.

³⁷Du Pont was a delegate to the protectionist Convention of December 1819. Niles’ Weekly Register 18 (December 11, 1819): 229.

³⁸Delaware General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1820 (January 29, 1820): 109–11.

³⁹Ibid., (February 10, 1820): 191. Governor John Clarke heartily endorsed protection and the subsidy measures. See Clarke’s message, ibid. (January 5, 1820): 8–11. New Hampshire rejected a similar proposal by a three-to-two majority. See New Hampshire General Court, Journal of the House, 1819 (June 28, 1819): 300ff.

⁴⁰Delaware General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1820 (February 4, 1820): 141ff.

⁴¹North Carolina General Assembly, Acts, 1821, p. 3; also see C.S. Sydnor, Development of Southern Nationalism, 1819–48 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1948), p. 118.

⁴²The subject here deals only with arguments over protection that had the depression as their base. Thus, the New York American, a pro-Tammany, neo-Federalist publication, supported protection on the grounds of retaliation against British restrictions. See New York American, September 22, 1819. Also see “Zeno” in Washington (D.C.) National Intelligencer, November 13, 1819.

⁴³“A New York Gentleman to a Friend in Boston,” New York Columbian, August 11, 1819. Also see ibid., June 10 and June 12, 1819.

⁴⁴“H.B.” in ibid., February 19, 1819. For emphasis on the protection for cotton and woolens also see the petition of the citizens of Middletown, Connecticut, U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 568 (January 10, 1820): 45 and the New York Columbian, August 11, 1819.

⁴⁵For an example of the Patron’s use of poetry as a weapon, see New York Patron of Industry, July 22, 1820.

⁴⁶For an example of protectionist opinion upstate, see Albany Argus, September 17, 1819.

⁴⁷Woodward, Tammany Address, p. 18.

⁴⁸The following states—Vermont, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois—were also alleged to be overwhelmingly protectionist, Annals of Congress (May 4, 1820), p. 655.

⁴⁹Pennsylvania Legislature, Journal of the House, 1819–20 (January 28, 1820): 410ff. New York Evening Post, January 30, 1818.

⁵⁰U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 571 (January 18, 1820): 460. Leaders were Mark Willcox, president, and Thomas Gilpin, secretary.

⁵¹Ibid., 3, no. 572 (January 26, 1820): 462ff.

⁵²“An Agriculturist,” in Philadelphia Union, October 19, 1821. Also see speech by Gideon Granger, president of the Ontario, New York Agricultural Society, New York Patron of Industry, December 13, 1820, and ibid., December 23, 1820; “Agricola of Ontario, N.Y.,” in Washington (D.C.) National Intelligencer, January 25, 1820.

⁵³Niles’ Weekly Register 17 (October 23, 1810): 117.

⁵⁴U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 568 (January 10, 1820). Leaders of the petition were Jonathan Lawrence Lewis, chairman, and Arthur W. Magill, secretary.

⁵⁵Annals of Congress, 16th Congress, 1st Session (April 21, 1820), p. 1944.

⁵⁶Ibid. (May 4, 1820), pp. 655ff. Also see Niles’ Weekly Register 18 (May 6, 1820): 169.

⁵⁷Stonecipher, “Pittsburgh.”

⁵⁸The Lexington Kentucky Reporter, in which the suggestion appeared, lamented that such a step would probably be unconstitutional. See Washington (D.C.) National Intelligencer, September 22, 1819.

⁵⁹“Plain Truth,” in New York Patron of Industry, August 10, 1820.

⁶⁰Detroit Gazette, April 23, 1819.

⁶¹Eiselen, The Rise, p. 53.

⁶²”A Pennsylvania,” in Philadelphia Union, February 11, 1820.

⁶³Thus, see U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 596 (November 27, 1820): 540, petition of citizens of Petersburg, Virginia, Major Thomas Wallace, chairman, John F. May secretary; ibid., 3, no. 603 (December 18, 1820): 577, petition of United Agricultural Society of Virginia, Richard Field, president, Edward Ruffin, secretary; ibid., 3, no. 604 (December 22, 1820): 578, petition of Roanoke Agricultural Society, Thomas M. Nelson, president, Charles L. Wangfield, secretary; ibid., 3, no. 564 (January 3, 1820): 447, petition of Virginia Agricultural Society of Fredericksburg, Virginia, James M. Garnett, president, William G. Gray, secretary. These men were leading planters of Virginia and the South. Garnett was a friend of Madison, Taylor, and Randolph, and a leader in the anti-tariff struggle. He later became first president of the United States Agricultural Society. Ruffin was a famous agricultural experimenter, later publisher of the Farmers’ Register.

Also see ibid., 3, no. 573 (January 31,1820): 463, petition of Merchants of Salem and towns in vicinity; ibid., 3, no. 594 (April 28, 1820): 533, petition of Chamber of Commerce of Philadelphia; president was Robert Ralston.

⁶⁴Thus, see Report of House Committee on Agriculture, ibid., 3, no. 613 (February 2, 1821): 65ff. Also see memorial of the United Agriculture Societies of Virginia, written by John Taylor, ibid., 3, no. 570 (January 17, 1820): 458ff. Secretary of the societies was Edward Ruffin, and the president was John Pegram. Also see “Public Good,” in Boston New England Palladium, September 28, October 1, 1819.

⁶⁵Dorfman, Economic Mind, vol. 1, p. 306.

⁶⁶Raguet Report, 1820.

⁶⁷From the Portland Gazette, reprinted in the Philadelphia Union (August 6, 1820). Leaders were Arthur McClellan, chairman, and Henry Clarke, secretary. Also see the report of the Convention of Merchants of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in Washington (D.C.) National Intelligencer, October 25, 1820. See “Nob,” a Virginia correspondent, ibid., May 8, 1819.

⁶⁸U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 573 (January 31, 1820): 463. The same position was taken by the Chamber of Commerce of Philadelphia, ibid., 3 no. 594 (April 28, 1820): 533ff., which pointed to the plight of commerce and surplus agriculture until domestic manufactures would be established.

⁶⁹Thus, see “Cato,” in Washington (D.C.) National Intelligencer, April 18, 1820.

⁷⁰“Public Good,” in Boston New England Palladium, September 28, 1819.

⁷¹In Boston Daily Advertiser, reprinted in the New York Evening Post, September 13–14, 1820.

⁷²U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 558 (April 13, 1820): 522. For other attacks on protection as a depressing force in the economy, see Memorial of a Convention of Merchants of Philadelphia by William Bayard, president, ibid., 3, no. 597 (November 27, 1820): 543; and Philadelphia Union, December 5, 1820.

⁷³U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 600 (December 8, 1820): 563. On Elliott, see Dorfman, Economic Mind, vol. 1, pp. 370–71.

⁷⁴See the statement by the influential Representative William Lowndes, a planter from South Carolina, in Niles’ Weekly Register 18 (June 10, 1820): 259, and a brief statement by a committee of citizens of Boston made after an address to them by Representative Daniel Webster, in Washington (D.C.) National Intelligencer, October 14, 1820.

⁷⁵Philadelphia Union, August 29, 1820.

⁷⁶Ibid.

⁷⁷U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 613 (February 2, 1821): 650ff.

⁷⁸Washington (D.C.) National Intelligencer, May 29, 1819.

⁷⁹Cambreleng, An Examination, passim; Dorfman, Economic Mind, vol. 1, pp. 371–72.

⁸⁰Memorial of United Agricultural Societies of Virginia, U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 580 (January 17, 1820): 457.

⁸¹New Orleans Louisiana Gazette, May 6, 1820; Tregle, “Louisiana and the Tariff.”

⁸²Washington (D.C.) National Intelligencer, August 25, 1821. The “Friends of Natural Rights” also attacked “Professor Daniel Raymond” for presuming to correct Adam Smith, and faring no better than Lord Lauderdale.

⁸³Tyler came from an aristocratic family. Later Governor and U.S. Senator, as well as President, he was a Jacksonian until the removal of deposits and sub-treasury issues arose. Silsbee was a leading Salem merchant and shipowner. Formerly noted as a Jeffersonian, Silsbee was a director of the Boston branch of the Bank of the United States and later U.S. Senator.

⁸⁴Annals of Congress, 16th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 1952ff.

⁸⁵Ibid., pp. 1987ff.

⁸⁶Petition of Merchants and Citizens of Baltimore, U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 565 (January 5, 1820): 448. The Baltimore merchants were led by William Patterson. Also see the petition of the New York City Merchants, in New York Daily Advertiser, December 14, 1819; Convention of Friends of National Industry, Petition; “No Inflation,” New York Commercial Advertiser, December 21, 1819; “C.W.” in New York American, February 9, 1820; New York Evening Post, December 20, 1819.

⁸⁷U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 560, pp. 440ff. Also see petition of William Few’s American Society of New York City for Employment of Domestic Manufactures, ibid., no. 561, p. 443; Bishop, History of Manufactures, pp. 256ff.

⁸⁸New York Daily Advertiser, December 17, 1819, and February 11, 1820; “Galeani,” in New York Evening Post, April 25, 1820; Cambreleng, An Examination, pp. 151–54. (James De P. Ogden) “Publeus,” in New York Commercial Advertiser, December 15, 1819; John Pintard, New York Daily Advertiser, January 6, 1820; “R.L.” in Washington (D.C.) National Intelligencer, December 30, 1819.

⁸⁹U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 567 (January 6, 1820): 451.

⁹⁰Ibid., 3, no. 579 (February 8, 1820): 484ff. Also see Petition of Chamber of Commerce of Philadelphia, Robert Ralston, president, ibid., 3, no. 586 (March 11, 1820): 518.

⁹¹From the Baltimore Telegraph, reprinted in the Richmond Enquirer, January 1, 1819.

⁹²On the rise of the auction system in this period, see Westerfield, “Early History,” pp. 200ff.

⁹³Philadelphia Union, February 8, 1820; “H.B.” in New York Columbian, February 19, 1819.

⁹⁴“A Pennsylvanian,” Philadelphia Union, February 11, 1820; “C.W.” in New York American, February 9, 1820; New York Evening Post, December 20, 1819.

⁹⁵New York Evening Post, January 11, 1817.

⁹⁶Bishop, History, vol. 2, p. 258. U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 3, no. 567 (January 6, 1820): 51. Petition of Chamber of Commerce of New York City, William Bayard, president, John Pintard, secretary.

⁹⁷Ibid., 3, no. 560 (December 20, 1819): 440ff. Also petition of citizens of Middleton, Connecticut, ibid., 3, no. 568 (January 10, 1820): 452. Also see Convention of Friends of National Industry in New Jersey, Petition, passim.

⁹⁸Annals of Congress, 16th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 2174–75. Actually the 10 percent tax was to apply only to important items such as woolens, cottons, etc. Minor items were to pay 1 to 2 percent. See Niles’ Weekly Register 18 (May 5, 1820): 182ff.

⁹⁹New York Patron of Industry, June 6, 1821.

¹⁰⁰Niles’ Weekly Register 20 (July 21, 1821): 322.

¹⁰¹New York Patron of Industry, June 16, 17, 20, 1821.

¹⁰²Niles’ Weekly Register 21 (October 13, 1821): 103. The report was presented on September 24 and signed by Stephen Lockwood, chairman.

¹⁰³Maryland General Assembly, Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives, 1820–21.