Political Independence:
- April 1775 - August 1782 Revolutionary War
- July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence
- 1777 Articles of Confederation
- 1787 Constitutional Convention
- 1788 Constitution Ratified
- 1789 Washington Inaugurated
- 1791 Bill of Rights passed
Indian Removal:
Andrew Jackson's speech to the Cherokee tribe, March 7, 1835:
You are now placed in the midst of a white population. Your peculiar customs... have been abrogated by the great political community among which you live; and you are now subject to the same laws which govern the other citizens of Georgia and Alabama.... Most of your people are uneducated, and are liable to be brought into collision at all times with their white neighbors. Your young men are acquiring habits of intoxication. With strong passions, and without those habits of restraint which our laws inculcate and render necessary, they are frequently driven to excesses which must eventually terminate in their ruin. The game has disappeared among you, and you must depend upon agriculture and the mechanic arts for support. And, yet, a large portion of your people have acquired little or no property in the soil itself, or in any article of personal property which can be useful to them. How, under these circumstances, can you live in the country you now occupy? Your condition must become worse and worse, and you will ultimately disappear, as so many tribes have done before you. . . .
I have no motive, my friends, to deceive you. I am sincerely desirous to promote your welfare. Listen to me, then, while I tell you that you cannot remain where you are now. Circumstances that cannot be controlled, and which are beyond the reach of human laws, render it impossible that you can flourish in the midst of a civilized community. You have but one remedy within your reach; and that is, to remove to the West and join your countrymen, who are already established there...
Canals and Rivers:
Railroads:
Factories:
National Population:
1790: 3.9M people, $1100 1840 17.1M people, $1800 1860 31.4M people, $2000
City sizes: 1790: NY 33, PH 29, BO 18; 1840: NY 313, Balt 102, NO 102, PH 93; 1860 NY+Brooklyn 1081, PH 565, Balt 212.
Why this pattern? Transport: Erie Canal, C&O Canal, Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio river system. The coming of the railroad to keep NO from surpassing NY... New York Central RR, Pennsylvania RR...
SF in 1860: 15th among American cities with 57K people...
Conquest: Northwest territories, inland southeast and War of 1812, Louisiana Purchase, Florida, Texas, Mexican Cession, Oregon Territory, Alaska "Seward's Folly", Hawaii. Conquest keeps land abundant, hence keeps wages high.
Relatively fast increase in output per capita in the U.S. before 1860. A puzzle that growth was so fast. The puzzle set out for your inspection... Implication: an enormous increase in effective land and natural resources per worker from 1790 to 1860. Population grows. Accessible natural resources grow significantly faster...
Handout on growth accounting, resources, and the pre-Civil War U.S.:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/5447130/null
Alexander Hamilton: Debt, Banks, and Manufactures.
U.S. Revolutionary War hyperinflation: $241 million continental dollars worth $1 million gold dollars by the end of the war.
Value of Revolutionary War debt tripled as debt assumption was discussed and debated.
Alexander Hamilton believed that an America which owed lots of rich merchants lots of money--an America that "assumed" the debts the states had run up during the Revolutionary War and were not likely to pay--would be a stronger and better America. Why did he believe this? Megasthenes: the coming of cotton to the Mediterranean...
David Ricardo: Why didn't the U.S. become one big unindustralized Canada?
Answer: the tariff
Could the tariff have been good for the country?
Answer--yes, if the infant industry argument holds.
What is the infant industry argument? There has to be some benefit--external to the firm and to the worker--from production. Future productivity has to be positively influenced by past production in order to make it beneficial in the long run to upset the Ricardian pattern of comparative advantage.
The infant industry argument is plausible, but not certain, for the case of U.S. textile manufacture.
Even so, it's not good for the cotton-exporting tariff-paying south.
The history of the cotton textile business: Samuel Slater, Francis Cabot Lowell, Lowell Massachusetts, et cetera...
Peter Temin's article: the American system
The Crystal Palace exhibition What is special about American industry Eli Whitney Interchangeable parts The "American System" Resource-using technological style.
Consequences for post-Civil War industrialization...
Northern Industry/Slavery Lecture Notes: Econ 113: American Economic History: Fall 2007
Industry
Alexander Hamilton: Debt, Banks, and Manufactures.
U.S. Revolutionary War hyperinflation: $241 million continental dollars worth $1 million gold dollars by the end of the war.
Value of Revolutionary War debt tripled as debt assumption was discussed and debated.
Alexander Hamilton believed that an America which owed lots of rich merchants lots of money--an America that "assumed" the debts the states had run up during the Revolutionary War and were not likely to pay--would be a stronger and better America. Why did he believe this? Megasthenes: the coming of cotton to the Mediterranean...
David Ricardo: Why didn't the U.S. become one big unindustralized Canada?
Answer: the tariff Could the tariff have been good for the country?
Answer--yes, if the infant industry argument holds. What is the infant industry argument?
There has to be some benefit--external to the firm and to the worker--from production. Future productivity has to be positively influenced by past production in order to make it beneficial in the long run to upset the Ricardian pattern of comparative advantage. The infant industry argument is plausible, but not certain, for the case of U.S. textile manufacture. Even so, it's not good for the cotton-exporting tariff-paying south. The history of the cotton textile business: Samuel Slater, Francis Cabot Lowell, Lowell Massachusetts, et cetera...
Peter Temin's article: the American system:
The Crystal Palace exhibition What is special about American industry Eli Whitney Interchangeable parts The "American System" Resource-using technological style. Consequences for post-Civil War industrialization...
Northern Agriculture Lecture: Econ 113: American Economic History: Fall 2007
Notes: Northern Agriculture Lecture: Econ 113: American Economic History: Fall 2007
Trying to do something different: a very quick rush through pre-Civil War U.S. economic history to create space in the syllabus to cover post-WWII history.
This week and next week spent trying to do four things:
Northern agrarian westward expansion Early industrialization as a result of the tariff Why did slavery--which people like Adam Smith thought was bad even for the slaveholder and was on the way out--grow and strengthen in pre-Civil War America The Civil War--600K dead, 600K maimed; could there have been a better way?
Accumulation
Alice Hanson Jones... data from estates...
Top 20% of households have about 60% of wealth...
Median Wealth Estimates as of 1774:
Region Land Slaves Other New England $2800 -- $1200 Middle States $4800 -- $3200 South $4000 $1600 $2400 Note that slaves were fully a third of southern wealth, according to AHJ... Big skew in slave ownership...
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