South Carolina Quotes

We are so used to hearing the freedom seeking reasons for the American Revolution that we overlook the more selfish and venal motives. This quotation shows that the large merchants of the colonies had banded together in an illegal conspiracy trust and monopoly and managed to keep many British competitive products out of the colonies. The British, for equally venal reasons, began to enforce the laws in favor of free trade. Many large American merchants were getting huge profits (and American consumers paying more) from their protectionist illegal monopoly. A Revolution would de facto assure that monopoly for many years to come, so they became supporters—patriots—of the American Revolution. As the Revolution drew closer, the Americans made efforts to protect the protectionism and monopoly of some of the richest Americans. See {636861}.

There was, well before the American Revolution, a restriction on the importation of British goods into the American colonies. Partially this was to pressure Parliament to stop some of its most repressive lawmaking. But it also supported what had become a very lucrative protectionist monopoly of large American merchants. See {636861}.

2nd Earl of Guilford. This bill cut off all trade with the American Colonies. It was meant as pressure to cease the rebellion. It did not work.

The British had closed Boston Harbor until the English merchants who lost their goods at the Boston Tea Party were paid for their damages. A convention was called to discuss a response to the closing of Boston Harbor and New York City convened a public meeting to come up with instructions for their delegates to the conference. One amazing thing was that they advocated a boycott of English goods. What was amazing was that there was no nation and New York and Massachusetts were separate entities and sectionalism was rife, yet New Yorkers were willing to sacrifice to help Bostonians. The New York sacrifice was all the greater because most of the imports from England landed at New York harbor where there was work created for New Yorkers and business for New York companies. New York stood to lose the most with a boycott. Philadelphia which also advocated a boycott, lost little as they were not a harbor for imports. New Yorkers also provided assistance to their competitors, the Bostonians who were out of work. See {589413}.

British colonial economics imported raw materials to England which then exported them back to the colonies as manufactured goods. Gandhi correctly calculated that by minimizing purchase of English cloth, colonial control of India would not be as profitable. Gandhi not only called for the boycott, but called on Indians to spin their own cloth, set an example be spinning himself, and his Congress party adopted the spinning wheel as its logo and symbol which continues today. Narcotics, was at the time not only legal, but British economic interests controlled much of the world narcotics trade. Gandhi’s call for a boycott of narcotics was as much an economic tactic as it was a health measure.

“Sir Robert” was Prime Minister Robert Peel. See {630737}.

Note that Britain was blockading Boston in the middle of 1775, some time before the outbreak of battles in Concord and Lexington in 1776. What Gates did not tell Lord Dartmouth, and maybe did not know himself, was that the skilled Massachusetts sailors smuggled a great deal through the blockade in small boats at night landing in the many inlets and coves in the Boston area. Also, do not think of Boston in 1775 as today. At that time most people had, in the city, their own farms and gardens and grew much of their own food. The Boston Commons was a common area for grazing sheep. So the British Blockade of Boston was not very effective.

The fear of civil war amongst the colonies if they were free from Britain was substantial.

Surprising to us today is the reality that before this law, it was perfectly legal for American Citizens to sell transport all kinds of goods and materials to enemies of the country—even in the midst of a war. At the beginning of the War of 1812, New England merchants were selling, shipping, and delivering meat and other critical provisions to the English Armies in Canada. There is an unfortunate long history of this. IBM sold punch card equipment and technology to the Nazis through European subsidiaries prior to and during WWII. American oil companies were helping the Arab countries enforce their embargo against is in the 1970s. American firms shipped weapons technology to Iraq when they threatened to create weapons of mass destruction. It has often been difficult to get American companies to pass up profits for patriotic reasons unless there were strong laws and enforcement.

This was one of the first proposals for a type of world government. Ironically, Angell, and English politician, was suggesting that the United States take the lead in his ‘new world order” and be the principle controlling factor. This was before the League of Nations and the United Nations.

Britain, in order to protect the landed gentry and aristocracy who made their money via agriculture, long had the Corn Laws (Corn was the term for wheat.) which was a protectionist system making it virtually to import food grains, rice or potatoes into Britain. However, with the growth of the population and a protected agricultural industry that had no drive to be more productive there was not quite enough food in the kingdom. When there was a potato blight in Ireland, the situation reached critical proportions. Victoria was not generally in favor of protectionism, and given the shortage and high cost of food then, she wanted to allow food imports. Robert Peel presided over a government where the protectionists who represented the large landowners had a very strong block. Pushing for an end to the Corn Laws could have caused the government to collapse. Peel himself did not think the Corn Laws were good policy and created a hardship for most people especially the poor. But he was the leader of his party and the party was split on the Corn Law issue. Victoria, in this private letter, tells him to do what he things is right and not what is politically expedient. Peel tried but at this time could not get a majority to repeal the Corn Laws, and the Irish Potato Famine killed millions. See {630738} . Peel however stuck with the Queen’s and his perception of what was right. The following year he proposed the Importation Act 1846 which repealed the Corn Laws. Many of his own party would not support it, but this time, he went to the two opposition parties and created a slim majority which passed the bill much to the approval of the Queen.

This was one of the first and is considered the best of the Colonial arguments against taxation without representation. The argument here about exports also affected other commodities—see {636866}. Despite this, Dulany is not well known in American history because when the Revolution finally came he was a loyalist.

It was the Dutch that first founded New York and there were many mercantile relationships existing between New Yorkers and Dutch merchants. Initially, the Dutch gunpowder was smuggled into New York because it was less expensive than English gunpowder or gunpowder from Kentucky or other parts of America. (The transportation costs by ship from Holland were much less than the overland cost from Kentucky.) By 1774, there was great friction between American patriots and the British and the smuggling was used to stockpile gunpowder for a possible revolutionary war. See {636944} for insight into the gunpowder shortage.

He wrote this anonymously as calling for a boycott of English manufactured clothing might have gotten him into much difficulty.

In this case the tariffs were imposed not to protect national industries but to simply raise revenue. In the early years of the United States, almost all of the Federal Revenue was raised this way.

At the beginning of the dispute between America and England, the issue was the raising of internal American taxes by Parliament without any American representation in Parliament. The issue escalated and when the British began using force, independence then became the American objective.

if trade between the British and the Sioux were terminated The essential difference between the British and American interests were that the Hudson Bay Company—the English authority in Canada—was generally interested in short term commercial profits from trading including guns and alcohol while the Americans wanted pacification so that the Westward expansion and growth of the country could move forward. To the Americans at the time, it was a forgone conclusion that the few Indians would have to share their land with the more numerous whites. The different between doves and hawks at the time was how. The hawks wanted to simply drive the Indians out. The doves like Meriwether wanted to develop a trading dependency on America for modern goods. Therefore, the problem boiled down to making America the sole supplier of most goods. The strategy did not work as the bloody history of relations with the Sioux will attest.

There was much New England dissatisfaction with the disproportionate power held by the Southern states as a result of counting three-fifths of the slave population for apportioning Congressional seats. In addition they were disproportionately hurt by the War of 1812 and the Embargo on trade with England. Secession was proposed but failed to get a majority. A number of proposed Constitutional amendments were voted upon. The super-majority herein required would have diminished their vulnerability to Southern power.

The French had a much different agenda in the new world than the British who wanted to create residential colonies. The French were more interested in trade—not in establishing permanent colonies. The result was that the French were in many ways better trading partners for the Indians than the English. They came without women, intermarried among the Indians and learned the languages; they did not contest for land, and they paid the Indians more for pelts and furs than the English were willing to. At the same time they exacerbated conflicts with the colonists, and encouraged Indian attacks on settlers as that kept competition out. They were not above giving Indians alcohol and encouraging them to rob the furs and/or kill their English competitors. So on two levels, they had to be removed. See the military view of Robert Rogers: {614122}.

See {614042} for a traders view.