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The Moral and Political Economy of Northeastern Abolitionism, 1763–1833

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The Moral and Political Economy of Northeastern Abolitionism, 1763–1833 City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2019 Human Capital: The Moral and Political Economy of Northeastern Abolitionism, 1763–1833 Michael Crowder The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3025 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] HUMAN CAPITAL: THE MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF NORTHEASTERN ABOLITIONISM, 1763-1833 by MICHAEL A. CROWDER A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2019 © 2019 MICHAEL A. CROWDER All Rights Reserved ii Human Capital: The Moral and Political Economy of Northeastern Abolitionism, 1763-1833 by Michael A. Crowder This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in History in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 1/16/2019 Date James Oakes Chair of Examining Committee 1/16/2019 Date Joel Allen Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: David Waldstreicher Richard Newman Jonathan Sassi Andrew Shankman THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract HUMAN CAPITAL: THE MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF NORTHEASTERN ABOLITIONISM, 1763-1833 by Michael A. Crowder Advisor: James Oakes “Human Capital” explores the relationships between the moral imperatives of the antislavery movement in the New England and the mid- Atlantic, and their connections to evolving manufacturing and agricultural political economies premised on free labor regimes. Tracing the sweep of history from the British-American imperial crisis through the American Revolution, and into the Early American Republic, “Human Capital” argues that northeasterners like Rhode Island textile capitalist and abolitionist Moses Brown, radical democrats like Thomas Paine, and political economists like Tench Coxe developed visions of capitalism in which chattel slavery’s gradual abolition in the northeastern states acted as a spur to economic development. These visions, it shows, brought them into direct political and economic conflict with southern planters and a small, but wealthy and powerful number of northeastern merchants at the national level by 1820, precisely as the Missouri Crisis over slavery’s proposed western expansion reached a crescendo. The dissertation concludes by laying the intellectual and political-economic groundwork for antebellum abolitionism by emphasizing the under-appreciated bridge figure of Benjamin Lundy and the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. iv Acknowledgements This dissertation changed considerably from its initial germination as a far-fetched project, through many stages of intellectual flights of fancy until its completion. My career as an historian would not have been possible without the mentorship of James Oakes, and I greatly benefitted in the dissertation stage from the patience and support of David Waldstreicher. I am further grateful to members of my dissertation committee, Richard Newman, Jonathan Sassi, and Andy Shankman. In addition, my sincere thanks to Helena Rosenblatt and Andrew Robertson, the Executive Officers of the History Department during the vast majority of my time as a Ph.D. student. While a Ph.D. student, I stumbled into the tremendous luck of being a part of several, often overlapping, intellectual communities at the Graduate Center. I am proud to be an “Acorn,” and thankful for my introduction to this intellectual lineage courtesy of John Blanton, Joseph Murphy, and Paul Polgar. I didn’t know it at the time, but at the beginning of the first-year paper seminar I met the best cohort a Ph.D. student could ever hope for, and we became the “Paradoxalists”: Nora Slonimsky, Micki Kaufman, Glen Olson, Joel Feingold, Chris Morrell, and myself. Wherever we may be, we’ll be arguing over beers in spirit. Finally, I’ve been fortunate to be a member of the EARS. Past and present members who shared the peaks and valleys of the life of an Early Americanist with me at EARS include Scott Ackerman, Sean Griffin, Dave Houpt, Miriam Liebman, Roy Rogers, Alisa Wade, Andrew Lang, Alexander Gambaccini, and Evan Turiano, as well as many others to whom I owe gratitude. Finally, this project and my career would not have been remotely possible without the support of my wife, Sara, and my parents Butch and Debbie—without y’all, I am nothing. v Table of Contents Introduction: The Problems of Slavery, Abolitionism, and Capitalism in Early America 1-16 Chapter 1: Free Household Farms, Manufactures, and Merchants That Traded Slaves: Northeastern Economies and Capitalism in the Colonial Period 17-70 Chapter 2: The British-American Imperial Crisis and Abolitionism in the Northeastern Colonies, 1763-1776 71-120 Chapter 3: Abolition Unleashed: The Revolution and Northeastern State Abolition, 1776-1788 121-174 Chapter 4: The Fruits of Northeastern State Abolition, I: The Politics of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Abolitionist Activity in the Early Republic, 1787-1808 175-227 Chapter 5: The Fruits of Northeastern State Abolition, II: Visions of Northeastern Economic Development in the Early Republic, 1787-1800 228-274 Chapter 6: Slavery, Antislavery, and Capitalism: Production, Politics, and the Fraying Fabric of Union, 1800-1820 275-331 Conclusion: Abolitionism, Antislavery Political Economy, and the Roots of the Civil War 332-346 Bibliography 347-367 vi List of Tables Table I: Bar Iron Imported from Mainland Colonies, 1768-1772 41 Table II: Value of Selected Wood Products Exported by the New England and Middle Colonies by Region, 1768-1772 45 Table III: Average Annual Value of Exports from and Imports to British North America, 1768- 1772 51 Table IV: British North American Shipping Earnings by Region, 1768- 1772 53 Table V: The Slave Trade to North America by Destination and Origin, 1768-1772 67 vii Introduction: The Problems of Slavery, Abolitionism, and Capitalism in Early America In July 1823, Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lundy’s newspaper Genius of Universal Emancipation featured “THE FATHERS OF EMANCIPATION,” an extract of a letter from “an aged member of the Abolition Society, in Pennsylvania.” The man described his experiences fighting the African slave trade to the United States in 1787 and 1788. He witnessed a ship anchor off a secluded island near Port Penn, Delaware, sixty miles southeast of Philadelphia, advertised as “From Guinea, with 1500 Slaves on board.” “This electrified me,” he remembered, “and I kept strict eye and ear, and close mouth to all that passed” until after the master and supercargo had negotiated with customers and went on to enjoy an evening of “feasting and drinking.” He rushed an express letter to Pennsylvania Governor and Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS) president Benjamin Franklin warning him of the ship's presence and purpose, which arrived within thirty hours. But because the ship never entered Pennsylvania's jurisdiction, the PAS could not press charges against the ship's owner, master, supercargo, and crew under Pennsylvania state law. His efforts bore fruit soon after, however, because the “affair roused the public sentiment; it gave energy to the exertions of the Abolition Society to attend the election, to have proper men elected.” After abolitionist “champion” William Lewis secured election to the state assembly from Philadelphia, the aged abolitionist described how Lewis set about creating an antislavery coalition able to pass supplemental legislation to the Keystone State's 1780 slavery abolition law. The assembly committee assigned to report the bill contained a mixture of abolitionists and slaveholders. Lewis even convinced slaveholding colleague General Joseph Meister to support the bill, and it passed. The 1788 act patched loopholes in the 1780 law, including restricting masters’ right to transport slaves and servants out of state, and providing stricter penalties for engaging in the foreign slave trade. It is certainly fair to say that the grizzled abolitionist's rangy narrative from personal experience to the successful passage of antislavery legislation was fuzzy and teleological. On the other hand, by 1823 Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, New England, and the Old Northwest states had abolished slavery, or had recently finished fighting off its legalization, in the case of Illinois. To Lundy, the old Pennsylvania abolitionist's lessons rang true: antislavery politics could work.1 National antislavery politics emerged from economic and social conditions created by the wave of abolitionism which swept across the northeastern states in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, generating significant tension in debates over national political economy.2 Ten years after Lundy printed the Revolutionary Era abolitionist’s remembrance of fighting the slave trade, his Genius of Universal Emancipation spilled over with detailed coverage of the Nullification Crisis, a national political conflict over national tariff policy with inescapable connections to the growing conflict between slavery and freedom in the antebellum United States. The crisis, a product of import tariffs narrowly rammed through Congress at the end of John Quincy Adams’s term as president in 1827, and cynically backed by southern
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