By the early fall of 1798, Stoddert dispatched his small fleet to the West Indies to engage the French privateers who had been terrorizing American shipping. Although the young navy faced the daunting logistical challenge of waging America’s first naval war at a vast distance from home ports, its vessels performed so well that they more than paid for themselves through insurance savings and increases in trade within eight months. By 1800, American ships had defeated two powerful French frigates, seized at least eighty-six French privateers, and liberated more than seventy captured American merchant ships. One of the most dramatic and celebrated moments in this conflict occurred when the USS Constellation, one of the super frigates, resoundingly defeated and captured l’Insurgente, reportedly the fastest ship in France’s navy. The price of shipping insurance plummeted during this period and hostilities came to a halt after the Convention of 1800 peacefully suspended all political ties between America and France in order to allow America to remain neutral and thereby continue trading with France during its ongoing war with Great Britain.15
An ardent and utilitarian Federalist, Stoddert frequently had long-term national goals in mind when he took short-term actions. While managing the conduct of the Quasi-War he also implemented many procedures to make the navy more efficient, modern, and self-sufficient. He embodied the “loose construction” philosophy of constitutional authority by repeatedly and creatively reinterpreting his mandates to justify the expansion of governmental power. For example, when Congress authorized only the pursuit of “armed” ships on the high seas, Stoddert informed his captains that any ship could be considered armed if any of its crewmen carried a musket or pistol. And even though Congress voted against the acquisition of public naval sites in 1794, 1797, 1798, and 1799, Stoddert used $135,000 of a $700,000 shipbuilding appropriation to purchase 6 navy yards. He also interpreted a $200,000 timber appropriation as permission to purchase 2 wooded islands for $22,000. Later congressional investigations condemned both of these purchases, but the government nevertheless chose to retain all of this property, which proved valuable to the nineteenth-century American navy. Stoddert realized that it is often easier to ask forgiveness than permission and he knew how to minimize the fallout from his repeated stretching of his instructions. Because his actions clearly resulted from the spirited desire to augment America’s naval power, and not from personal ambition, he retained a high standing in the opinion of fellow cabinet members and President Adams.16
The Tentative Growth of American Manufacturing
On December 29, 1798, Stoddert wrote a letter to House Committee of Naval Affairs chairman Josiah Parker, illustrating the full scope of his farsighted Federalist industrial policy. He began by observing that ships should be built locally instead of purchased internationally, because constructing them in America allowed government expenditures to enrich local industries and create essential infrastructure. For similar reasons he believed that ship construction should rely upon domestic raw materials and manufacturing establishments. America’s long shipbuilding tradition facilitated this plan, and all commodities required for ship outfitting could already be manufactured in the United States with the exception of hemp, canvas, and copper. Americans could privately grow hemp and manufacture canvas if a steady demand could be assured via large government contracts, and thanks to Stoddert’s encouragement the hemp and canvas industries soon flourished. But copper remained a trickier challenge until Revere entered the picture.17
Stoddert took a similar approach to the development of American foundries. In 1798 America faced a shortage of quality cannon of all sizes. Even though the War Department had contracted with government foundries and private founders such as Revere as early as 1794, the total output of American shops remained small. Few American foundries possessed sufficient technical skill to produce large guns and only half the finished cannon passed the difficult proving tests without bursting. Facing a dearth of weapons for the navy’s steadily growing fleet, individual captains often frantically competed with each other to procure their own armaments. While Stoddert imported cannon to meet short-term needs, he also promoted a policy of strong support for American founders, even though many of their products did not meet quality standards. He realized that government support could expedite the learning process, and the development of a domestic industry would ensure America’s ability to defend itself against blockades or foreign navies. By 1800, he could report to Congress that “The manufacture of cannon, and indeed of all kinds of arms, and military stores, is now so well established in the United States, that no want of them can be experienced in future, nor does it appear essential that large supplies of them should be laid up in store for the navy service.”18 Revere benefited from this armament process, as he sold twenty-eight cannon to state and federal governments in 1798, more than triple his sales for 1797 or 1796, as shown in the previous chapter.
Stoddert’s belief that self-sufficient domestic industries lay in the nation’s best interests placed him in the middle of a nationwide discussion over the benefits and dangers of manufacturing. America’s continued rapid population growth increased the pace of the market economy’s expansion, which fed the demand for manufactured goods. Britain developed new techniques for increasing its industrial output at this time, including mechanized textile production and new power-generating equipment such as steam engines.19 Revere responded to this trend in his postwar activities, for example, by fabricating larger numbers of cheaper silver goods and building a furnace that could produce utilitarian iron objects. The vast majority of America’s growing population lived on small farms in rural settings and procured nonagricultural necessities from imports or small owner-operated craft shops. The growth in the size and number of manufacturing establishments at the end of the eighteenth century jeopardized this centuries-old system and led to a lengthy political debate on the future of the nation.
Manufacturers in early America had to overcome a bias in favor of the agricultural pursuits that most citizens of this agrarian republic viewed as inherently virtuous. The debate about the impact of manufacturing on America’s future began in earnest after the Revolution and continued well into the 1800s. This controversy originated in classical republican notions of the nature of society. This social theory posited an ongoing struggle between “power” and “liberty.” Power enabled governments to decisively promote national interests, but power’s aggressive tendencies threatened to limit or eliminate the vital liberty possessed by all free people. Constitutions, representative government, and other frameworks existed to limit power, but this limitation also depended upon the virtue of the people. Agriculture initially served as the ideal model for society because a geographically distributed nation of property-owning farmers would theoretically remain virtuous, thanks to their hard labor, egalitarian customs, and independent self-sufficiency. In the often-quoted words of Cicero, “Of all the occupations by which gain is secured, none is better than agriculture, none more profitable, none more delightful, none more becoming a freeman.” In contrast, most observers equated manufacturing complexes with urban overcrowding and poverty, the oppression of the propertyless poor by factory owners and urban politicians, and excessive production of luxury goods that made the people self-indulgent and vile. The debate over America’s future, pitting agriculture against commerce and manufacturing, had obvious ramifications for the artisan community. The decision to allow and enable unrestricted commercial and industrial development jeopardized the small-producer tradition, and favored mercantile interests hoping to maximize overall economic expansion, efficiency, and output.20
In addition to the need to address financial and logistical hurdles, early manufacturers often had to justify their work in an ideological sense. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposed the establishment of large-scale industry in America due to concerns over the corrupting influence of luxury goods, shifting of population from farms to cities, and creation of a large class of poor laborers who would be oppressed by a capit
alist aristocracy. The debate over America’s best path to prosperity intensified in the 1780s during the period of economic distress, leading Jefferson to famously comment in his 1785 book Notes on Virginia, “let our work-shops remain in Europe.” Anti-industrialists did not oppose the increased use of machinery—Jefferson in particular loved the scientific aspects of mechanization—and often supported widespread manufacturing in households or smaller distributed shops because these actions did not inherently threaten their republican vision like large manufactories did.21
Other writers, growing more numerous as the economy matured, expressed the need for a balance between agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing in order to maintain independence, observing how manufacturing augmented the work of agriculture by enabling the more efficient use of natural resources. The promise of prosperity made possible by manufacturing and other factors allowed many Americans to overcome their earlier Puritan-inspired fear of luxury goods, often described as a corrupting influence. In the words of Benjamin Franklin: “Is not the Hope of one day being able to purchase and enjoy Luxuries a great Spur to Labor and Industry? May not Luxury, therefore, produce more than it consumes, if without such a Spur People would be, as they are naturally enough inclined to be, lazy and indolent?”22 This shift in attitudes presaged the coming of industrial capitalism, a time when people did not perceive material benefits as good or evil as long as their recipients properly earned them. Similarly, Americans no longer exclusively identified manufactures with luxury goods after defense armaments and productivity-increasing tools grew in volume and importance.23
Late eighteenth-century discussions mark the beginning of industrialization discourse in America, decades before the real shape of industry began to be understood or experienced. Physician and statesman Benjamin Rush started the ball rolling in a 1775 speech urging Americans to promote manufactures in order to reduce imports, produce changes that could aid agriculture, employ the poor, encourage immigration, and lessen dependence upon England.24 In later years these comments became distilled into two primary pro-manufacturing talking points: manufacturing made America economically stronger and more independent; and manufacturing employed the idle and thereby increased efficiency while reducing sloth. Tench Coxe took over where Rush left off. In addition to holding appointed offices as assistant secretary of the treasury, commissioner of the revenue, purveyor of the United States, and other positions between 1790 and 1810, Coxe became America’s greatest spokesperson for technology: “These wonderful machines, working as if they were animated beings, endowed with all the talents of their inventors, laboring with organs that never tire, and subject to no expense of food, or bed, or raiment, or dwelling, may be justly considered as equivalent to an immense body of manufacturing recruits, suddenly enlisted in the service of the country.”25 Coxe eloquently reiterated older arguments about manufacturing as a source of independent self-sufficiency, adding that new machines and power sources allowed even greater productivity with less labor, further underscoring the connection between technology and republican virtue.26
Many leading Federalists did not follow Coxe’s lead, at least, not wholeheartedly. Part of the controversy surrounding manufactures resulted from the shifting and divided loyalties of merchants. Some merchants invested in industrial establishments (particularly during embargos when they could not invest as much in commerce) while others opposed all forms of domestic production that competed with their import trades. As late as 1810, Coxe specifically extolled the great mutual advantages received by merchant-manufacturer alliances in Britain and questioned the absence of similar alliances in America.27 Due to a fear of damaging America’s commercial prowess, Alexander Hamilton’s 1791 Report on Manufactures refrained from proposing government sponsorship of manufacturing establishments. Like most Federalists, Hamilton primarily attempted to support commercial and financial institutions and saw manufacturing more as a means to this end rather than an end in itself. His report avoided any pro-manufacturing proposals that might frighten merchants and as a result he failed to address the proto-industrial segment’s most pressing concerns, such as savage competition from cheap British imports, high labor costs, and lack of capital. Tench Coxe, who happened to be Hamilton’s assistant at the time, tried to promote his pro-manufacturing viewpoint in his draft version of Hamilton’s Report, which proposed protective tariffs, government loans and land grants to manufacturers, improved transportation infrastructure, and prohibitions on the import of certain foreign items. Hamilton rejected most of these proposals, undoubtedly avoiding a confrontation with strict constructionists, agricultural interests, and anti-manufacturing merchants. The Report emphasized the need to promote division of labor and manufacture armaments for national defense, and urged both a protective tariff and bounties to reward manufacturers, while reiterating Rush’s points about employing the idle and reducing foreign dependence.28 The federal government failed to take a prominent pro-manufacturing position at this early date, but the banner of future industry would soon be advanced via subtler methods.
Other groups attempted to fill the void left by federal inaction. State legislatures jumped into this effort by offering monopolistic patents and other forms of support to prominent manufacturers. For example, Massachusetts passed a protective tariff in 1785, lent 200 pounds to Robert and Alexander Burr to help them finish textile-related research in 1776, and gave lands to the Beverly Cotton Factory incorporators in 1779. Unfortunately, these modest efforts did not produce significant returns. Beginning in 1785, manufacturing societies crept up in different cities in an attempt to share knowledge and coordinate lobbying efforts for protective tariffs. Some organizations took an information-based approach, such as Benjamin Franklin’s American Philosophical Society, which encouraged science and technology by corresponding with British experts such as the Royal Society and promulgating knowledge of inventions. Many pro-manufacturing groups followed conventional class assumptions and aimed their appeals to merchants who might invest in manufacturing firms, instead of artisans or other individuals familiar with the practical business of manufacturing. Other groups did include practicing artisans who banded together to address common issues faced by members of different trades. Manufacturing societies coincided with and in some cases gave rise to large-scale manufacturing experiments such as the Boston Sail Cloth Manufactory, Boston Glass House, Hartford Woolen Factory, New York Manufacturing Society, Beverly Cotton Manufactory, and the high-profile Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures. Other than Samuel Slater’s groundbreaking Rhode Island spinning mill, which succeeded due to Slater’s combination of technical and managerial experience, all other large-scale manufacturing experiments failed by the early 1790s. America’s lack of competitiveness resulted from chronic shortages of skilled labor, capital, and entrepreneurial experience, which could have helped these firms navigate the turbulent political and economic climate.29
Benjamin Stoddert’s successes in stimulating hemp, canvas, and armament manufacturing become all the more impressive in light of America’s prevailing economic and ideological environment. Stoddert shared the views of Tench Coxe and other Federalists hoping to strengthen America’s manufacturing infrastructure, but unlike Coxe, he had the freedom and authority to act on his views as long as he could justify their connection to America’s naval program. In some cases he could do this easily, as when he promoted domestic hemp and canvas production by guaranteeing a market for these products. By the close of the century, Stoddert found himself one step away from realizing his dream of a powerful navy built entirely in America, by Americans, from American materials. He merely needed to solve the problem of rolling copper.
The Search for Sheathing
In his search for copper sheathing, Stoddert took on a technological challenge that had vexed naval experts for more than one thousand years. It had been known since Roman times that all oceangoing wooden ships, especially ones cruising in tropical or Mediterranean waters, faced hull problems as their service l
ife grew long. Most wooden hulls acquired a “sea mat” of unwanted marine life within six to eight months, starting with clusters of barnacles but soon including vast masses of seaweed or other debris. This “mat” could be four inches thick and weigh more than one hundred tons, running the risk of rotting the hull, sinking the boat, decreasing its speed, or ruining its maneuverability. A second and far more serious threat resulted from the onslaught of shipworms such as the Teredo navalis. These creatures weakened hulls by boring into planks, turning ship bottoms into “leaky sieves.” Ship hulls usually became dangerously weakened in one or two years and the expensive refitting process required months of hard work, during which time the ship occupied precious dry dock space.30 A solution to this problem would not only save money and labor, but would increase the number of operating ships in the fleet at any time by decreasing the need for tedious dry dock repairs. The mid-eighteenth-century British navy tried using combinations of different types of wood, lead sheathing, tar, hair, and paper to prolong hull life, with no success. Copper sheeting finally provided a solution, greatly prolonging a ship’s working life by deterring or killing sea creatures that attempted to adhere to it.
Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn Page 29
