A Blog Exploring American History and Politics
Pamphlet by “Cato”: Thoughts on a Question of Importance Proposed to the Public, Whether it is probable that the Immense Extent of Territory acquired by this Nation at the late Peace, will operate towards the Prosperity, or the Ruin of the Island of Great-Britain? London, 1765. Part I here. When a nation has “Elegance and […]
MoreIn Martin Van Buren’s inaugural address, in March of 1837, he boasted of the prosperity and expansion of commerce that had occurred under his predecessor, Andrew Jackson. Just months later, the Panic of 1837 would begin. Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: Transformation of America, 1815-1848, 502.
MorePresident John Quincy Adams, in his First Annual Message to Congress delivered on December 6, 1825, set forth his agenda for developing the American economy. Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: Transformation of America, 1815-1848, 251.
MoreFollowing the end of the War of 1812, the United States underwent a transportation revolution. This transportation revolution came about as a result of Americans moving westward but also as more Americans moved into cities to engage in industrial work. Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: Transformation of America, 1815-1848, 212.
MoreBy 1815, America was already split between those states that were taking steps to eliminate slavery and those states who were fortifying their support of slavery. As the Founding Fathers had predicted, a chasm was beginning to open in the United States.
MoreThe economy of the early United States would be familiar to modern Americans in some respects but also hard to recognize, given the development of the American economy in the past two centuries.
MoreAt the beginning of the 1800s, the American economy was becoming an unconventionally successful economy. Domestic commerce was “incalculably more valuable” than foreign commerce and “the home market for productions of the earth and manufactures is of more importance than all foreign ones.” Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty, 707 quoting Nathan Miller, The Enterprise of a Free People: Aspects […]
MoreIn the early 1800s, America underwent a campaign of infrastructure building. The building of new roads, bridges, and canals were done in a spirit of “national grandeur and individual convenience.” Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty, 730 quoting Charles G. Haines, Considerations on the Great Western Canal (Brooklyn, 1818), 11. In 1806, Samuel Blodgett, an economist and architect, concluded […]
MoreAlbert Gallatin knew as early as 1799 that the United States “had become commercially and socially different from the former mother country” England. Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty, 704. At that time, Gallatin was a Congressman, but he would later serve as Secretary of the Treasury from 1801 to 1814. In realizing that America was different, […]
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