Demanding a Market at Home: Stability, Independence, and Protection in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1792–1816

Abstract

Demanding a Market at Home:Stability, Independence, and Protection in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1792–1816 Keith Harris (bio) Responding to the news in 1793 of the capture of a "vessel built on the Ohio" and "owned by the citizens of the United States," one Kentuckian pleaded that Congress recognize the "necessity of a treaty with Spain, respecting the navigation of the Mississippi." Such blatant predation on their commerce periodically disrupted the confidence of early settlers in the trans-Appalachian West in the future prospects of their "western country." Alongside access to the port at New Orleans and the free navigation of the Mississippi River, this correspondent identified a reliance on the foreign market for surplus produce as a primary obstacle toward western prosperity. This dependence resulted from a lack of large urban areas and the dominance of agriculture, both of which exposed westerners to the "arbitrary proceedings of Spain." Consequently, the "courageous and enterprising people" of the western country labored under the oppression of foreign powers, remaining "attached to the federal government," but in desperate need of its protection. Lacking a market both at home and abroad, this correspondent warned that the failure of the federal government to secure free navigation of the Mississippi River would compel westerners to exercise "their favorite axiom in politics," a [End Page 219] lesson supposedly learned from the American Revolution: "that allegiance and protection are reciprocal."1 Between the 1790s and the end of the War of 1812 concerns about foreign trade and economic prosperity united the merchants, farmers, and manufacturers who settled west of the Appalachian Mountains. Both above the Ohio River, in the area organized under the Northwest Territory, and southward along the Mississippi River, in Kentucky and Tennessee, shared challenges with trade and economic development joined settlers within a coherent "western interest."2 Securing free navigation of the Mississippi, alongside violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples, constituted an important aspect of state building for the early federal government in making the claims to the trans-Appalachian West, both the land and its peoples, a reality.3 This was a contingent process in which westerners' commitment to national unity correlated directly with the success of the federal government in securing western commercial and territorial interests.4 Historians have tended to portray settlers in the trans-Appalachian West on a relentless pursuit of free trade in the first two [End Page 220] decades of independence, motivated by ideological concerns and a commitment to commercial capitalism.5 However, the interests of economic actors in the trans-Appalachian West were not static. Throughout these years of transition from territorial status to statehood, a vocal contingent of western political elites, merchants, farmers, and manufacturers increasingly coupled their demands for secure access to foreign markets with support for government promotion of economic diversification in both agriculture and manufacturing.6 Commercial agriculture appeared as essential for stability and independence when steady demand for agricultural exports provided westerners with cash they used to attain landed independence and "competency."7 Western confidence in this [End Page 221] system waned in response to the failure of state legislative efforts at development, structural issues with labor and transportation, and restrictions on commerce from both foreign rivals and the federal government. In a period when Congress employed tariffs primarily for revenue, early demands for state and federal promotion of diverse agricultural and industrial ventures ensured support for later protective legislation from advocates of the western interest, which necessitates a closer reexamination of a period omitted by recent monographs on tariff politics in the United States.8 More broadly, tracking how certain westerners shifted from pursuing free trade and open markets to demanding protective legislation offers an opportunity to illuminate evolutions in ideas about markets, prosperity, and the authority of the federal government itself.9 [End Page 222] Click for larger view View full resolution An early map of the United States showing a young Kentucky, roads, and rivers in 1796. Image courtesy of Aaron Arrowsmith, cartographer, A Map of the United States of North America, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. The 1780s were the most intense period of western dissatisfaction over commerce. Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, responded to the Spanish...