Tench Coxe And The Early Republic

Tench Coxe participated in or commented on most of the major events in American history from the Revolution to the 1820s. His long career of public involvement embodies many of the significant historical themes of the time: he was a Philadelphia aristocrat, a loyalist out of opportunism, a merchant during the period of economic adjustment in the 1780s, a grandiose land speculator, a Federalist with Alexander Hamilton and later a Republican with Thomas Jefferson, a nationalist theorist, a major prophet of industrial growth, and a prolific journalist. As this biography conclusively demonstrates, Coxe's role was considerably more consequential in the early history of the nation than has hitherto been supposed. Coxe's career is more interesting because it is paradoxical. Although he persistently aspired to fame as a public official, the posthumous recognition he has received is the result of his extensive writings on economic and mercantile policy. This volume expecially emphasizes Coxe's farsighted views and achievements as a political economist: his support of protective tarrifts, his advocacy of laborsaving machinery, and his prescient belief that cotton growing was the key to American economic independence and industrialization. Based on more than a decade's work in the voluminous collection of Coxe Papers, to which Jacob Cooke was given exclusive access, this biography provides much information on the operations of the Treasury Department under Alexander Hamilton, whom Coxe served as assistant secretary, and on the development of political parties. A Federalist apostate, Coxe was representative of a small but historically significant wing of his party that enthusiastically endorsed the fiscal policies of Hamilton while championing the commercial policies of Jefferson. Coxe openly became one of the Virginian's most active supporters, as a state party leader, national campaign coordinator, and partisan polemicist. Originally published in 1978. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value. Yet in the course of his career Coxe managed to alienate Jefferson and most of his other powerful associates, including Hamilton and John Adams. These men and others have left damaging portraits of Coxe. Professor Cooke examines the paradox presented by such uncomplimentary assessments of a man of uncommon ability and conspicuous accomplishments and at the same time opens for readers many new views of the stage upon which Tench Coxe played out his frustrated ambitions -- the whole political and economic life of the early Republic.

Gibbons v. Ogden, Law, and Society in the Early Republic examines a landmark decision in American jurisprudence, the first Supreme Court case to deal with the thorny legal issue of interstate commerce. Decided in 1824, Gibbons v. Ogden arose out of litigation between owners of rival steamboat lines over passenger and freight routes between the neighboring states of New York and New Jersey. But what began as a local dispute over the right to ferry the paying public from the New Jersey shore to New York City soon found its way into John Marshall’s court and constitutional history. The case is consistently ranked as one of the twenty most significant Supreme Court decisions and is still taught in constitutional law courses, cited in state and federal cases, and quoted in articles on constitutional, business, and technological history. Gibbons v. Ogden initially attracted enormous public attention because it involved the development of a new and sensational form of technology. To early Americans, steamboats were floating symbols of progress—cheaper and quicker transportation that could bring goods to market and refinement to the backcountry. A product of the rough-and-tumble world of nascent capitalism and legal innovation, the case became a landmark decision that established the supremacy of federal regulation of interstate trade, curtailed states’ rights, and promoted a national market economy. The case has been invoked by prohibitionists, New Dealers, civil rights activists, and social conservatives alike in debates over federal regulation of issues ranging from labor standards to gun control. This lively study fills in the social and political context in which the case was decided—the colorful and fascinating personalities, the entrepreneurial spirit of the early republic, and the technological breakthroughs that brought modernity to the masses.

Penned by leading historians, the specially-commissioned essays of Whither the Early Republic represent the most stimulating and innovative work being done on imperialism, environmental history, slavery, economic history, politics, and culture in the early Republic. The past fifteen years have seen a dramatic expansion in the scope of scholarship on the history of the early American republic. Whither the Early Republic consists of innovative essays on all aspects of the culture and society of this period, including Indians and empire, the economy and the environment, slavery and culture, and gender and urban life. Penned by leading historians, the essays are arranged thematically to reflect areas of change and growth in the field. Throughout the book, preeminent scholars act as guides for students to their areas of expertise. Contributors include Pulitzer Prize-winner Alan Taylor, Bancroft Prize-winner James Brooks, Christopher Clark, Ted Steinberg, Walter Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, David Waldstreicher, and more. These essays, all originally commissioned to appear in a special issue of the Journal of the Early Republic, explore a diverse array of subjects: the struggles for control of North America; the economic culture of the early Republic; the interactions of humans with plants, climate, animals, and germs; the commodification of people; and the complex intersections of politics and culture. Whither the Early Republic offers a wealth of tools for introducing a new generation of historians to the nature of the field and also to the wide array of possibilities that lie in the future for scholars of this fascinating period.

The first volume of an ambitious new economic history of American higher education. Exchange of Ideas launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. In this volume, Adam R. Nelson focuses on the early republic, explaining how knowledge itself became a commodity, as useful ideas became salable goods and American colleges were drawn into transatlantic commercial relations. American scholars might once have imagined that higher education could sit beyond the sphere of market activity—that intellectual exchange could transcend vulgar consumerism—but already by the end of the eighteenth century, they saw how ideas could be factored into the nation’s balance of trade. Moreover, they concluded that it was the function of colleges to oversee the complex process whereby knowledge could be priced and purchased. The history of capitalism and the history of higher education, Nelson reveals, are intimately intertwined—which raises a host of important and strikingly urgent questions. How do we understand knowledge and education as commercial goods? Who should pay for them? And, fundamentally, what is the optimal system of higher education in a capitalist democracy?

The Trials of Allegiance examines the law of treason during the American Revolution: a convulsive, violent civil war in which nearly everyone could be considered a traitor, either to Great Britain or to America. Drawing from extensive archival research in Pennsylvania, one of the main centers of the revolution, Carlton Larson provides the most comprehensive analysis yet of the treason prosecutions brought by Americans against British adherents: through committees of safety, military tribunals, and ordinary criminal trials. Although popular rhetoric against traitors was pervasive in Pennsylvania, jurors consistently viewed treason defendants not as incorrigibly evil, but as fellow Americans who had made a political mistake. This book explains the repeated and violently controversial pattern of acquittals. Juries were carefully selected in ways that benefited the defendants, and jurors refused to accept the death penalty as an appropriate punishment for treason. The American Revolution, unlike many others, would not be enforced with the gallows. More broadly, Larson explores how the Revolution's treason trials shaped American national identity and perceptions of national allegiance. He concludes with the adoption of the Treason Clause of the United States Constitution, which was immediately put to use in the early 1790s in response to the Whiskey Rebellion and Fries's Rebellion. In taking a fresh look at these formative events, The Trials of Allegiance reframes how we think about treason in American history, up to and including the present.

Serving as a vehicle for change and offering an outlet for the anxieties of a changing socity, Watts writes, the War of 1812 ultimately intensified and sanctioned the imperatives of a developing world-view

Winner, 2010 Bennett H. Wall Award, Southern Historical Association In this fresh study Brian Schoen views the Deep South and its cotton industry from a global perspective, revisiting old assumptions and providing new insights into the region, the political history of the United States, and the causes of the Civil War. Schoen takes a unique and broad approach. Rather than seeing the Deep South and its planters as isolated from larger intellectual, economic, and political developments, he places the region firmly within them. In doing so, he demonstrates that the region’s prominence within the modern world—and not its opposition to it—indelibly shaped Southern history. The place of “King Cotton” in the sectional thinking and budding nationalism of the Lower South seems obvious enough, but Schoen reexamines the ever-shifting landscape of international trade from the 1780s through the eve of the Civil War. He argues that the Southern cotton trade was essential to the European economy, seemingly worth any price for Europeans to protect and maintain, and something to defend aggressively in the halls of Congress. This powerful association gave the Deep South the confidence to ultimately secede from the Union. By integrating the history of the region with global events, Schoen reveals how white farmers, planters, and merchants created a “Cotton South,” preserved its profitability for many years, and ensured its dominance in the international raw cotton markets. The story he tells reveals the opportunities and costs of cotton production for the Lower South and the United States.

The American Revolution describes and explains the crucial events in the history of the United States between 1763 and 1815, when settlers in North America rebelled against British authority, won their independence in a long and bloddy stuggle and created an enduring republic. Placing the political revolution at the core of the story, this book considers: * the deterioration of the relationship between Britain and the American colonists * the Wars of Independence * the creation of the republican government and the ratification of the United States Constitution * the trials and tribulations of the first years of the new republic. The American Revolution also examines those who paradoxically were excluded from the political life of the new republic and the American claim to uphold the principle that all men are created equal. In particular this book describes the experiences of women who were often denied the rights of citizens, Native Americans and African Americans. The American Revolution is an important book for all students of the American past.