The Emergence of Capitalism in Early America

Abstract

The title of this book promises too much, as it is a discussion of five different small groups of political economists writing in the United States between 1820 and 1860. Christopher W. Calvo argues that antebellum Americans did not unquestioningly embrace Adam Smith and subsequent classical economists. A wide spectrum of economic thought existed during the antebellum period. Even those who celebrated free trade did so in regionally informed American ways. Calvo discusses northern liberal free traders, southern free traders, southern conservative anticapitalists, northern laborite anticapitalists, and protectionists—the heroes of his story—whom he calls hybrid capitalists. The chapter on northern free traders is the strongest. Calvo shows that thinkers such as Francis Wayland and Henry Vethake brought a distinctly American emphasis to laissez-faire. Unlike the classical economists, they continued to emphasize the seamless compatibility of free trade and Christianity. They also insisted that exceptional American conditions of widely available productive property produced a harmony between capital and labor, allowing for individual liberty, prosperity, and morality, desirable outcomes that only artificial political intervention in the market could upset. Northern liberal free traders rejected Thomas Malthus's gloomy population predictions and the dismal science quality of Ricardian classical political economy.