Abstract
Reinventing Protectionism: Regional Identity and International Trade in Early American Tariff Politics
Seemingly interminable conflicts over trade legislation dominated American politics in the first half of the nineteenth-century. The earliest advocates of protection promoted high tariffs as a tool to limit the role of international trade in the American economy and promote domestic industrial development. Protectionists thus envisioned a world in which tariff barriers insulated American producers from competition with foreign markets and the disruptions of foreign war. The image of an insulated United States became increasingly untenable as Americans enmeshed themselves in distant markets through innovations in finance, transportation, and communication. Amid a transatlantic debate over trade policy in the 1840s, protectionists reinvented their arguments for high tariffs as essential for making American producers more competitive in international trade, rather than free from its invasive influence. This argument appealed especially to farmers, merchants, and manufacturers in the antebellum West, who expressed contingent and fluctuating support for both free trade and protectionism. While existing literature has focused primarily on the international relevance of wheat production in the Ohio Valley, this paper focuses on a broader commitment to economic diversification and manufacturing—expressed most clearly in the investment in silk production—that bolstered a regional identity in which westerners and other American producers saw themselves as inextricably tied to international trade. An analysis of business interests and discussions of trade that unfolded in newspapers, periodicals, and the private correspondence of residents of the western states illuminates often overlooked evolutions in protectionist political economy and highlights the dynamic interplay between regional identity and international economic conditions.