Jeffersonians in Power by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036040 History / United States / 19th Century
Publisher: University of Virginia Press

American Dynamo: An Empire of Consumption

As far as the Madison administration was concerned, peace came to North America in the nick of time. Word of the Treaty of Ghent, concluded on December 24, 1814, reached North America in mid-February 1815. Peace was embraced by President Madison, Congress, and the population at large. But perhaps no American was happier with the onset of peace than the man charged with guiding the Gallatinian ship-of-state into port, the new treasury secretary, Alexander Dallas, appointed in the wake of George W. Campbell’s resignation in September 1814. Dallas’s immediate assessment on coming into office was that the finances of the United States remained in dire straits. The loan of 1814 sufficed as a stopgap, but continuing the war into 1815 would have required a new infusion of funds. Dallas requested an additional $40 million for the coming year, to be paid for with new borrowing and a new issue of treasury notes. He also asked for, and received, new taxes—a direct tax, a tax on whiskey, and taxes on manufactured goods were all approved. And that was not all. Dallas asked Congress in October 1814 to charter a new national bank. For Alexander Dallas, there were seemingly no Republican sacred cows that could not be sacrificed for the war effort. The proposed bank was debated heavily in Congress but actually passed the Senate and was under consideration in the House when news of the treaty arrived in Washington. Beyond these financial measures, Congress had approved legislation that would strengthen federal powers in other ways, particularly around the military establishment (for example, state troops could be incorporated into the federal service) and customs enforcement (a new enemy trade act would give customs officers increased powers to interdict smugglers in borderland and frontier regions). While the return of peace rendered many of these measures moot, the Republican majority had shown a willingness to expand the ambit of centralized federal power when faced with the ongoing emergency of the war. It was a habit that the Jeffersonians could never entirely kick.36

As 1815 drew to a close, President James Madison sent his annual message to Congress. Even though the United States had been at peace for almost a year, the effects of three years of warfare loomed large. Both in describing the state of the union, and assessing and planning its prospects for the future, Madison seemed to accept the realities that the United States had to embrace the fiscal-military state, and that its economy was rooted in a balance of production and consumption. Indeed, commerce was foregrounded in the message. Madison announced that peace had been made with Algiers and that the Mediterranean would once again be open to American ships without harassment. The peace treaty with Britain had already led to the conclusion of a new commercial accord, so British markets would now be open to American producers and consumers. The northern borderlands were peaceful, although there seemed to be growing unease with the Indian nations in the Southeast.

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