Maybe the civil war did largely result from agricultural America's unwillingness to completely embrace Hume and Adam Smith, ie mercantilism. The same could be said for persecuting Native Americans. Today, should Americans profusely embrace Hume and Smith with no growth checks? And/or to maintain a more simplistic growth by being quasi-imperialists (land seizers)? Or look to find a middle ground between rapid growth and spartan simplicity? Discuss or don't.
exerpts from "The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America" by Drew R. McCoy pg75; pg83
University of North Carolina Press. A critique of the book is found at http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/mccoy.html
"most of the Revolutionaries, even with their doubts and misgivings about themselves, seemed to hope that the spirit of classical republicanism could be accommodated both to more modern republican principles and to a more complex social and economic environment...
The intellectual dilemma such a challenge posed for American republicans was inescapable. The problem of finding a way to permit liberty, commerce, and prosperity and, at the same time, to deny their potentially corrupting effects was neither new in American history nor unusual in the context of the eighteenth century's poignant endeavor to bridge the growing gap between antiquity and modernity. Most Americans had no choice but to adopt the deceptively simple and perhaps chimerical proposal that John Brown had offered in his widely read tract from the 1750s--'that commerce and wealth not be discouraged in their Growth, but checked and contouled in their Effects'--for very few of them, including Benjamin Franklin, ever seriously anticipated a republican America without commerce and the wealth and refinement it would inevitably bring. Franklin's vision of an expanding agricultural republic was not a call for Americans to retreat to a social simplicity that was primitive or barbarous--indeed, no one appreciated more than he the advantages of Hume's version of civilised cultural progress. And above all, Franklin's republican vision was hardly that of a Spartan, self-contained society of hermit yeomen, for it was closely tied to a much broader international commercial vision...
For many reasons tied to their fear and distrust of an advanced division of labor in densely populated commercial societies, the Revolutionaries hesistated to embrace Hume's solution of fostering advanced manufactures at home. Adopting this familiar Eurpoean remedy implied that America would be pushed ahead into a new, more complex, and politically dangerous stage of social development. For most Americans, a much better expedient was the opening of abundant foreign markets for the burgeoning surpluses that the farmers were peculiarly equipped to produce. In this way, it was hoped the, the United States might secure the basis for a properly industrious and moral people but still remain the predominantly agricultural society that best supported republicanism. The Scottish writer Sir James Steuart had expressed a standard axiom of eighteenth century political economy by noting that 'when foreign demands begins to fail, so as to not be recalled, either industry must decline, or domestic luxury must begin.' Americans hoped to avoid this situation altogether, because both results of a failure of foreign demand mentioned by Steuart were dangerous to a republican people, who could afford neither a decline in industry nor a more advanced economy tied to the production of luxury manufactures. Only a vigorous foreign commerce with plentiful markets and a highly developed international divsion of labor that would permit the United States to continue its specialization in agriculture could provide the necessary basis for a healthy society of active, enterprising, hence virtuous, republican farmers.
To this extent, however, an expanding American republic required more than merely a reservoir of virgin land in order to remain industrious and predominantly agricultural. It also demanded an open and unrestricted foreign commerce that offered rapidly expanding export markets. And given this formula, the fate of republicanism in America was tied in great measure to the vicissitudes of international trade."
exerpts from "The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America" by Drew R. McCoy pg75; pg83
University of North Carolina Press. A critique of the book is found at http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/mccoy.html
"most of the Revolutionaries, even with their doubts and misgivings about themselves, seemed to hope that the spirit of classical republicanism could be accommodated both to more modern republican principles and to a more complex social and economic environment...
The intellectual dilemma such a challenge posed for American republicans was inescapable. The problem of finding a way to permit liberty, commerce, and prosperity and, at the same time, to deny their potentially corrupting effects was neither new in American history nor unusual in the context of the eighteenth century's poignant endeavor to bridge the growing gap between antiquity and modernity. Most Americans had no choice but to adopt the deceptively simple and perhaps chimerical proposal that John Brown had offered in his widely read tract from the 1750s--'that commerce and wealth not be discouraged in their Growth, but checked and contouled in their Effects'--for very few of them, including Benjamin Franklin, ever seriously anticipated a republican America without commerce and the wealth and refinement it would inevitably bring. Franklin's vision of an expanding agricultural republic was not a call for Americans to retreat to a social simplicity that was primitive or barbarous--indeed, no one appreciated more than he the advantages of Hume's version of civilised cultural progress. And above all, Franklin's republican vision was hardly that of a Spartan, self-contained society of hermit yeomen, for it was closely tied to a much broader international commercial vision...
For many reasons tied to their fear and distrust of an advanced division of labor in densely populated commercial societies, the Revolutionaries hesistated to embrace Hume's solution of fostering advanced manufactures at home. Adopting this familiar Eurpoean remedy implied that America would be pushed ahead into a new, more complex, and politically dangerous stage of social development. For most Americans, a much better expedient was the opening of abundant foreign markets for the burgeoning surpluses that the farmers were peculiarly equipped to produce. In this way, it was hoped the, the United States might secure the basis for a properly industrious and moral people but still remain the predominantly agricultural society that best supported republicanism. The Scottish writer Sir James Steuart had expressed a standard axiom of eighteenth century political economy by noting that 'when foreign demands begins to fail, so as to not be recalled, either industry must decline, or domestic luxury must begin.' Americans hoped to avoid this situation altogether, because both results of a failure of foreign demand mentioned by Steuart were dangerous to a republican people, who could afford neither a decline in industry nor a more advanced economy tied to the production of luxury manufactures. Only a vigorous foreign commerce with plentiful markets and a highly developed international divsion of labor that would permit the United States to continue its specialization in agriculture could provide the necessary basis for a healthy society of active, enterprising, hence virtuous, republican farmers.
To this extent, however, an expanding American republic required more than merely a reservoir of virgin land in order to remain industrious and predominantly agricultural. It also demanded an open and unrestricted foreign commerce that offered rapidly expanding export markets. And given this formula, the fate of republicanism in America was tied in great measure to the vicissitudes of international trade."
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