Decision in Philadelphia by James Lincoln Collier

Author:James Lincoln Collier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AudioGO
Published: 2012-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Another Trade-off

The bargaining between the North and South, as must now be abundantly clear, was enormously convoluted, with the main deals being continually modified by subbargains, which were in turn further adjusted with yet other bargains. This was certainly the case with yet one more of these horse trades, a bargain in which the South made concessions on certain commercial matters in exchange for further protections for slavery. One of the principal causes of the American Revolution had been the effort by the British to control the trade of the colonies to its own benefit. In general, the British in London did not want the colonies trading independently with foreign nations. They wanted instead to force the trade to pass through England, where it could be taxed, and middleman profits could be extracted. They also required that colonial goods be shipped in British or colonial ships. In exchange, the colonies were given trading advantages with the mother country and each other over foreign competitors.

Parliament began passing the so-called navigation acts as early as 1650, and continued to pass them virtually up to the moment of the Revolution. The acts were not always seen as burdensome by Americans, because they did help to keep down foreign competition, especially in the lucrative West Indies trade. But in the years leading up to the Revolution they were increasingly resented, and were got around whenever possible. Many Americans favored the moves toward independence primarily to escape British regulation of their trade.

The term “navigation acts” thus was a loaded one, and the whole question of how foreign trade was to be regulated proved thorny right from the moment the colonies achieved their freedom. The problem, as was so frequently the case in the union, was that the different states had different commercial interests. Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, and Massachusetts imported great quantities of goods, a substantial proportion of which were passed along to neighboring states, such as New Hampshire, Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware. It was to the advantage of the big importing states to levy for themselves high import taxes, which could be collected from the ultimate consumers in other states.

The major importers were not averse to taxes on exports, either. Export taxes were standard among commercial nations in the eighteenth century and had been for some time. Indeed, it was more usual to tax exports than imports, because export taxes could be passed along to customers in other nations, while import taxes would be borne at home. All the big trading states, of course, exported, but the largest portion of any export taxes would be collected on the products of the southern states, whose economy was built around exporting tobacco, rice, and indigo. Such taxes would raise the prices of their exports and reduce their markets.

The big importing states also had a strong interest in gaining trading privileges from foreign nations. In order to negotiate trade treaties they needed to present a unified front. But under the Articles of Confederation, which left

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