Union and Democracy

by Allen Johnson

The wars in Europe had created an unprecedented and ever-increasing demand for American agricultural products. The price of foodstuffs like flour and meal reached a point which made possible enormous profits. Shipping became, therefore, the indispensable handmaid of agriculture, as Jefferson observed. The volume of trade expanded at an astonishing rate. The total value of exports mounted from $20,000,000 in 1790 to $94,000,000 in the year of Jefferson's inauguration. One half of this amount, however, represented the value of commodities like sugar, coffee, and cocoa, which had been brought into the country for exportation. The easy and almost certain profits of this trade attracted capital which might otherwise have gone into manufacturing.

Shipping was stimulated also by the Navigation Act of 1789, which imposed lower tonnage duties in American ports on vessels built or owned by American citizens, and by the Tariff Act of the same year, which allowed a ten per cent deduction from the customs duties levied on goods imported in American vessels. These discriminating duties, together with the law of 1792, which excluded foreign-built ships from American registry, would have aided materially in the building of an American marine, even in less prosperous times. The registered tonnage engaged in foreign trade increased from 346,254 in 1790 to 718,549 in 1801; and in coast trade, from 103,775 to 246,255. Yet there was an artificial quality in this prosperity. "Temporary benefits were mistaken for permanent advantages," writes a contemporary; "so certain were the profits on the foreign voyages, that commerce was only pursued as an art; ... the philosophy of commerce, if I am allowed the expression, was totally neglected ... they [merchants] did not contemplate a period of general peace, when each nation will carry its own productions, when discriminations will be made in favour of domestic tonnage, when foreign commerce will be limited to enumerated articles, and when much circumspection will be necessary in all our commercial transactions."

It cannot be said, either, that the American farmer studied the philosophy of agriculture. He owed his crops less to intelligent cultivation of the soil than to provident Nature in a new and untilled country. Both his methods and his implements were bad, and resulted in that land spoliation which has been the bane of American industry. "Agriculture in the South," said John Taylor, of Caroline, "does not consist so much in cultivating land as in killing it"; and the statement was scarcely less true when applied to the Northern farmer. The soil was rapidly exhausted by planting the same crop year after year, for it was easier to take up fresh land than to restore productivity to the old. Indeed, the comments of foreign travelers at the close of the century suggest doubts as to whether the American farmer understood the importance of rotating his crops and of fertilizing his fields. The farming implements in use showed little of that mechanical ingenuity which is now characteristic of the American people. The plough was still a clumsy affair with heavy beam and handles, and wooden mould-board. The scythe, the sickle, and the flail were the same as their forbears had used for centuries.

The demand of Europe for the food products of the Northern and Middle States obscured for a time the importance of cotton as an article of export. In 1790, South Carolina and Georgia, then the only cotton-growing States, produced less than two million pounds of inferior quality, none of which was exported. A decade later thirty-five million pounds were raised, one half of which was exported; and Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee had begun the cultivation. This sudden development was due to the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, in 1793. This machine facilitated the separation of the seed from the fiber of the short-staple variety of cotton, which alone could be profitably cultivated in the uplands, and thus made possible a vast extension of the area of cotton culture.

The cotton gin came at an opportune moment for the Southern planters, since rice and indigo were declining in importance as exports, and their gangs of African slaves were likely to become a burden. They could now cultivate cotton under an extensive system of agriculture with large immediate profits. Experience proved, however, that the system was extraordinarily wasteful, leading to a rapid exhaustion of the soil. This ever-recurring exhaustion of the soil and demand for new land was a potent cause of the incessant pressure of population into the virgin lands of the Southwest, in succeeding decades.

The new President was the embodiment of the national life. Although he was tall of stature, he was not outwardly an impressive figure. His red, freckled face wore a frank, good-natured expression, but he lacked dignity and poise. "His whole figure has a loose, shackling air," wrote a contemporary. "A laxity of manner seemed shed about him ... even his discourse partook of his personal demeanor. It was loose and rambling." With his blue coat and red waistcoat, his green velveteen breeches, yarn stockings, and slippers down at the heels, he seemed to an English visitor, who saw him in 1804, "very much like a tall, large-boned farmer." Jefferson would have been the last to resent this epithet. No man had a more profound respect for tillers of the soil. Years before he had written: "Generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its husbandmen is the proportion of its sound to its healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption." He rejoiced in the agricultural possibilities of America. Could he have had his way, he would have made the republic, in the apt phrase of Mr. Henry Adams, "an enlarged Virginia—a society to be kept pure and free by the absence of complicated interests, by the encouragement of agriculture and of commerce as its handmaid." He abhorred cities and factories, and dreaded the growth of a manufacturing and capitalist class.

An agricultural society bent upon justice, Jefferson believed, could always protect itself against the aggressions of foreign nations. "Our commerce," he wrote soon after his inauguration, "is so valuable to them, that they will be glad to purchase it, when the only price we ask is to do us justice. I believe we have in our own hands the means of peaceable coercion." In this wise the United States would set an example to the world of a society democratically organized and capable of unlimited moral and physical progress.

As the head of a party which had effected a revolution in government, Jefferson's first care was to reconcile his opponents to Republican rule. The inaugural address emphasized the principles upon which all republican governments must be based. It is often said that these principles might have been uttered by Washington with equal propriety—as good Federalist doctrine. This is to mistake the significance of the revolution which had occurred. A party had triumphed which Federalists firmly believed inimical to all government. The announcement that the fundamental principles to which all Americans were attached would guide the new Administration had a meaning which it would not have had if uttered by a Federalist President. So far did Jefferson lean in holding out the olive branch that he ran the risk of minimizing the revolution of 1800. To say that "every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists," was to contradict his often expressed conviction that his party had saved the country from monarchy.