"A New Thing on Earth": Alexander Hamilton, Pro-Manufacturing Republicans, and the Democratization of American Political Economy

Abstract

1819 was difficult year in the United States and few understood that more than the Pennsylvanian Matthew Carey. The political economist had since the 179Os been part of phalanx of Republicans, primarily from the Middle Atlantic States, and particularly Pennsylvania, that called for diversified economy, state support for manufactures, and the development of the internal market. The panic merely confirmed for Carey that the nation needed balanced economy of agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing. Thus in the spring of 1819 Carey did something somewhat surprising. In the third Address sponsored by his Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Domestic Industry, he denounced John Taylor of Caroline and praised Alexander Hamilton.1 To be sure, Taylor by 1819 was no longer an unblemished Republican icon, and the bitter hatred Hamilton provoked during his life had begun to subside. Nevertheless, when criticizing one of Virginia's founding Republican gentlemen, and when praising the archetypal Federalist, Carey unwittingly helped to mislead future scholars.Starting with Henry Adams, many historians have argued that ultimately the Republicans rejected John Taylor's world and embraced that of Alexander Hamilton.2 Naive, Utopian hopes for simple agrarian commercial economy without debt, standing army, navy, or vigorous national state gave way after 1807 to embargo, war, debt, protective tariffs, manufacturing, and the recharter of Hamilton's national bank. Once the Republicans confronted the realities of power, they had to mature to govern-and that maturation required the posthumous vindication of Alexander Hamilton. Thus historians have described these years of Republican Party transformation that began with the failure of the embargo and that culminated in 1816 with the protective tariff and the recharter of the national bank as neo-Federalist or neo-Hamiltonian.3 But they were neither really; rather, they represented profound democratization of American political economy. Careful comparison of Hamilton's policies with new Republican positions shows that pro-manufacturing Republicans supported substantially different policies and sought vastly different outcome than Hamilton and his partisans.In this essay I will show three things. First, that although Hamilton did seek to diversify the internal economy, he did so to empower elites and prevent the chaos of social fluidity, mobility, and democracy that he believed would overwhelm the republic. second, I will argue that those primarily responsible for conceiving the political economy that focused on diversification and internal markets were pro-manufacturing Republicans of the Middle Atlantic States, particularly Pennsylvania. These men first articulated their ideas (in opposition to Hamilton) during the 179Os as they tried to defeat what they feared was rising Federalist oligarchy. They preferred to empower actual producers. They welcomed social mobility and fluidity, and by democratizing American political economy they helped establish social, cultural, economic, and political conditions that made Hamilton's more hierarchical republic impossible to realize. Third, I will suggest that the political economy of these pro-manufacturing Republicans shaped, to remarkable degree, the antebellum North, extending opportunity and social mobility to more people than most societies had ever imagined possible. In building what one Pennsylvania Republican called a new thing on earth, however, pro-manufacturing Republicans such as Carey helped create problems at least as grave as those they sought to resolve. Because of their unbending commitment to the sanctity of the marketplace, it grew increasingly difficult to use public power to care for citizens in need. Further, their egalitarian vision became racialized, stressing allegedly natural distinctions between white men and all other Americans. These Republicans shattered the commitment of eighteenth-century gentlemen such as Alexander Hamilton to hierarchy and deference; by democratizing American political economy, they established both what we praise and what we despise about nineteenth-century America. …