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An American Political Economy: Industry, Trade, and Finance in the Antebellum Mind Christopher W Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 10-20-2010 An American Political Economy: Industry, Trade, and Finance in the Antebellum Mind Christopher W. Calvo Florida International University, [email protected] DOI: 10.25148/etd.FI12041904 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Calvo, Christopher W., "An American Political Economy: Industry, Trade, and Finance in the Antebellum Mind" (2010). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 568. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/568 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida AN AMERICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY: INDUSTRY, TRADE, AND FINANCE IN THE ANTEBELLUM MIND A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY by Christopher William Calvo 2012 To: Dean Kenneth G. Furton College of Arts and Sciences This dissertation, written by Christopher William Calvo, and entitled An American Political Economy: Industry, Trade, and Finance in the Antebellum Mind, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment. We have read this dissertation and recommend that it be approved. _______________________________________ Darden Pyron _______________________________________ Nicol Rae _______________________________________ Howard Rock _______________________________________ Peter Onuf _______________________________________ Kenneth Lipartito, Major Professor Date of Defense: October 20, 2010 The dissertation of Christopher William Calvo is approved. _______________________________________ Dean Kenneth G. Furton College of Arts and Sciences _______________________________________ Dean Lakshmi N. Reddi University Graduate School Florida International University, 2012 ii © Copyright 2012 by Christopher William Calvo All rights reserved. iii DEDICATION Pastora Lozano Calvo iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Several colleagues and family members have contributed to the completion of this dissertation. This project began years ago as an essay submitted in Dr. Pyron’s American Civil War graduate seminar. His enthusiasm for the project provided me with the assurance to take this topic on. I consider Dr. Pyron a mentor and a close friend whose influence on my progress as a historian is treasured. Dr. Pyron taught me that writing history is more a discipline than an art. During the early stages of the research, Dr. Rock impressed upon me the value of extensive research and I appreciate greatly his services on the committee. I am also grateful to Dr. Rae for the afternoons spent discussing the literature on Jacksonian politics. Those moments shaped my understanding of the period more than he realizes. And it is with great honor that Dr. Onuf has taken the time to serve on the committee. I recognize him as a leader in the field and I feel privileged to have accessed his expertise. The staff in the History Department at Florida International University should be recognized for their constant professionalism, their generosity, and their kindness. Hayat Kassab-Gresham, Emily Carreras, Maria Ferrer Young, and Diana Cox (retired) deserve special commendations for the assistance they give students. I also wish to express gratitude for the Interlibrary Loan Staff at Florida International University. I am especially indebted to Dr. Lipartito. As director of the committee he afforded constant encouragement, guided me throughout the course of this project, and offered invaluable personal and professional counsel. Dr. Lipartito has been the single most important factor in my professional development. He has kindly sacrificed his time and energy to ensure the completion of this dissertation and his confidence in my work has left me forever obliged. This expression of thanks is standard, but my appreciation is not. I wish to thank my parents, Enrique and Suzzan Calvo, whose support has provided me the liberty to pursue advanced studies. Never did they question the schedule of my graduate career, nor the outcome. My greatest debt is to my wife. She has stood by me throughout this v extended and grueling enterprise. Late nights, weekends, a silent house, inaudible mumblings, and the insufferable discussions on antebellum political economy she has endured with patient grace. This dissertation is yours as much as it is mine. Darcy, I cherish you dearly. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION AN AMERICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY: INDUSTRY, TRADE, AND FINANCE IN THE ANTEBELLUM MIND by Christopher William Calvo Florida International University, 2012 Miami, Florida Professor Kenneth Lipartito, Major Professor The purpose of this study is to assess American economic thought during the antebellum period. Antebellum political economy has been largely neglected by historians. They have ignored both the valuable contributions made by America’s first political economists to domestic intellectual culture, as well as the importance of American economic thought in the transatlantic discourse. A dynamic, sophisticated, and complex political economy marks the antebellum era, and when studied in its proper context provides insight into how Americans understood the transformative economic changes they experienced. This dissertation draws on an extensive body of primary and secondary literature. Special consideration is given to the more learned articulations of economic thought. However, recognizing the immature state of the science during the period under investigation works of various levels of theoretical erudition are referenced. In their attempts to fashion a distinctly American political economy domestic thinkers entertained a wide range of economic principles. Contrary to conventional wisdom the Americans were not absolutist in their dedication to British orthodoxy. Antebellum political economy manipulated British authorities to suit the immediate concerns of contemporaries, thus spoiling the essence of classical doctrine. This dissertation makes clear that few Americans accepted classical orthodoxy without important qualifications. vii Classical theory was confronted with its most systematic challenge by protectionists. Despite protectionism having shaped the course of American economic development, its theoretical underpinnings have been summarily discounted by historians and economists. Protectionists, however, afforded the quintessential expression of American antebellum political economy. This dissertation intends to rescue the protectionists from historical abandon and reclaim the position of relevance they enjoyed during their own time. The antebellum period also hosted a fiery set of intellectuals determined to upset the emerging free-market order, exhibiting a particular disdain for institutions of finance and the industrial ethos. Conservatives from the North and South aimed to slow America’s march into the modern economy. These elements did not operate on the fringes of intellectual society, rather they represent something central to the American discourse and are illustrative of the difficulty attendant to classifying antebellum thinkers according to traditional notions of economic ideology. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Introduction: History and Antebellum Economic Thought.................................................1 II. Laissez-faire and Moral Philosophy in the Northeast........................................................12 III. Free Trade in the Slave South............................................................................................24 IV. Progress and Poverty: Malthus and Ricardo in America...................................................40 V. The Crisis of Free Society: The Southern and Northern Reactionaries.............................63 VI. Protectionism: An American Political Economy...............................................................91 VII. Henry Carey, Nature, and the Destiny of Man................................................................123 VIII. Liberalism, Republicanism, and Finance.........................................................................136 IX. Conclusion: The Old and the New in American Economics...........................................167 BIBLIOGRAPHY.........................................................................................................................174 VITA.............................................................................................................................................197 ix Chapter I Introduction: History and Antebellum Economic Thought American economic thought before the Civil War has attracted very little scholarly attention. Charles Dunbar set the trend in a widely read 1876 essay by arguing that antebellum American political economists had contributed “nothing towards developing the theory of political economy.” Economic discourse in America, he wrote, suffered from a "general sterility."1 Eighty years later Joseph Schumpeter reiterated Dunbar's blanket dismissal in his History of Economic Analysis. Dunbar's appraisal, Schumpeter wrote, had "not been invalidated by the information made available by more recent research." The Austrian-import found in the pool of American economists
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