Copyright by Marc-William Palen 2011 The Dissertation Committee for Marc-William Palen Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Conspiracy of Free Trade: Anglo-American Relations and the Ideological Origins of American Globalization, 1846-1896 Committee: H. W. Brands, Supervisor Francis Gavin A. G. Hopkins Mark Lawrence Mark Metzler James Vaughn The Conspiracy of Free Trade: Anglo-American Relations and the Ideological Origins of American Globalization, 1846-1896 by Marc-William Palen, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2011 The Conspiracy of Free Trade: Anglo-American Relations and the Ideological Origins of American Globalization, 1846-1896 Marc-William Palen, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2011 Supervisor: H. W. Brands This work focuses on three issues in particular: how Victorian free trade cosmopolitanism reached and influenced American domestic and foreign policies; how American economic nationalism adversely affected Cobdenism in the United States and the British World; and how both these conflicting ideologies shaped Anglo-American relations, the international free trade movement, and modern globalization. In doing so, I argue that America’s Cobdenites fought fiercely for freer trade, anti-imperialism, the gold standard, and closer ties with the British Empire in an era dominated by protectionism, “new” imperialism, silver agitation, and Anglophobia. America’s economic nationalists in turn considered these Cobdenite efforts as part of a vast, British-inspired, free trade conspiracy. This period’s leading protectionist intellectuals alternatively held an Anglophobic belief in infant industrial protectionism and government-subsidized internal improvements. American implementation of what I call Listian nationalist policies in turn iv greatly affected the British Empire by strengthening internal calls to end British free trade practices and to bring closer the geographically disparate colonies through the creation of a Greater Britain, an idea made all the more viable owing to the development of more efficient tools of globalization such as the transoceanic telegraph, railroads, canals, and steamship lines. I thus incorporate a fresh ideological and global approach to late nineteenth-century foreign relations by explicitly intertwining U.S. policies with those of the British Empire and the history of modern globalization. v Table of Contents List of Figures ..........................................................................................................x Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 The Ideological Origins of American Globalization ......................................4 A Matter of Definitions ...................................................................................7 A Matter of Historiography ..........................................................................19 Chapter Outline .............................................................................................27 Chapter 1 Globalizing Ideologies: The Rise of America's Cobdenite Cosmopolitan and Listian Nationalist, 1846-1860 ...............................................................32 Globalizing Ideologies ..................................................................................37 Cobdenism, the Corn Laws, and Westward Expansion ................................65 The Republican Party: A Fair-Weather Friendship ......................................80 Conclusion ....................................................................................................86 Chapter 2 The Civil War's Forgotten Transatlantic Tariff Debate: Great Britain, the Morrill Tariff, and the Confederacy's Free Trade Diplomacy ......................89 Conclusion ..................................................................................................137 Chapter 3 The Gilded Age Free Trade Movement and Cobdenite Foreign Policy, 1866-1871 ...................................................................................................143 The Cobden Club, the Conversion of David Ames Wells, and the Rise of the American Free Trade League......................................................................147 "Messages of Peace and Goodwill": Cobdenites and the 1871 Treaty of Washington .................................................................................................175 Conclusion ..................................................................................................183 Chapter 4 American Cobdenism, Party Realignment, and the Imperialism of Economic Nationalism, 1872-1884 ............................................................185 The Disastrous 1872 Elections....................................................................187 Peelite Politics and the 1876 Elections .......................................................196 The Imperialism of Economic Nationalism ................................................210 vi Cobdenism West and South ........................................................................216 The 1884 Presidential Elections and the End of Republican Cobdenism ...225 Conclusion ..................................................................................................230 Chapter 5 Grover Cleveland's Cobdenites: The Anti-Imperialism of Free Trade, 1884-89 .......................................................................................................232 The American Legacies of Antislavery and the Anti-Corn-Law League ...236 Cleveland's Cobdenite Cabinet ...................................................................250 The Cleveland "Conspiracy" .......................................................................255 Goldbugs and Greenbacks: Morality and Conspiracy ................................260 The "Great Debate" of 1888 .......................................................................264 Conclusion ..................................................................................................273 Chapter 6 100 Years before NAFTA: Canadian-American Conflict and the Cobdenite Demand for North American Commercial Union, 1885-89 ......276 The Canadian Fisheries Dispute and the Demand for Commercial Union .277 The Rise of Canada's Listian Nationalists ..................................................281 "Canada for Canadians": The Debate over North American Unity ............292 Conclusion ..................................................................................................302 Chapter 7 "A Sea of Fire": The Listian Harrison Administration, the McKinley Tariff, and the Imperialism of Economic Nationalism, 1889-93 ................306 The Resurgence of the Listian Nationalists ................................................312 Listian Politics and the Passage of the 1890 McKinley Tariff ...................320 Harrison's Imperialism of Economic Nationalism ......................................330 Free Trade Strikes Back ..............................................................................339 Conclusion ..................................................................................................349 Chapter 8 Cobdenism in Retreat: The Global Impact of the McKinley Tariff upon the British Empire, 1890-94..............................................................................350 The McKinley Tariff and the Demand for Imperial Unity .........................354 vii The McKinley Tariff and the British World ...............................................364 The Listian-Cobdenite Conflict in Australian Microcosm .........................369 The McKinley Tariff and Canada's Conspiracy of Annexation .................375 The Chimera of Imperial Federation...........................................................383 Conclusion ..................................................................................................393 Chapter 9 Republican Rapprochement: Cleveland's Cobdenites, Anglo-American Relations, and the 1896 Presidential Elections ...........................................395 The Panic of 1893 and Modern Globalization's Discontents ......................401 Cobdenism's Peelite Legacy: the Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894 ..............407 The Cosmopolitanism of Anglo-Saxonism .................................................414 The Anti-Imperialism of Free Trade? Hawaii, Venezuela, and Cleveland's Cobdenites...................................................................................................417 The 1896 Elections: A Temporary Republican Rapprochement ................429 Conclusion ..................................................................................................434 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................437 Appendix List of U.S. Cobden Club Members and Election Year .....................444 Bibliography ........................................................................................................447 viii List of Figures Figure 1: Peel and Polk.....................................................................................75 Figure 2: Before and After the Morrill Tariff .................................................111 Figure 3: Cobdenite Insignias .........................................................................194