It seems fitting, in this second half of April to begin this entry as
Longfellow began his poem:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear,
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
On the 18th of April in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
That was the 18th of April and the ride or rides. Then came the 19th of April and the action, the skirmishes at the sacred suburbs of Lexington and Concord, where, to quote from the Concord Hymn:
Here once the embattled farmer stood
And fired the shot hear round the world.
But let's move the story along a bit with these well-known dates:
July 4, 1776 - The
Declaration of Independence. We'll skip over the stirring words of the preamble, just this once, to focus on a single grievance. The new states charged their former king
"with cutting off our trade with all parts of the world."
October 19, 1781 - The surrender of Britain's
General Cornwallis at
Yorktown, effectively ending the conflict. America had won its war for independence. At that point the former 13 colonies were indeed "Free and Independent States."
September 3, 1783 - The
Treaty of Paris formally ending the war between Great Britain and its former colonies in North America is signed. Its effective date is May 12, 1784.
A Commercial Irony. Better, more unfettered trade may have been a goal of the 13 American colonies that sought independence from Great Britain in 1776, but the short-term result was anything but. Great Britain-including the British West Indies-was their most important trading partner. With the advent of the war, U.S. trade with Britain fell off a cliff, and the end of hostilities did little to turn that around. Thus, the ironic challenge of the fledgling United States was to try to find a way back to trading relationships that at least approximated those they had enjoyed before the separation. Pinning their hopes on commercial diplomacy, the Continental Congress sent
John Adams to London and
Thomas Jefferson to Paris, each charged with forging new trade agreements with their host governments.
But there was a problem. They had no leverage. Congress could offer little and threaten less because, under the Articles of Confederation, the regulation of trade was in the hands of the states, not the federal government. All of this is clearly and compellingly laid out at the start of
Douglas Irwin's excellent book,
Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy. And indeed, as Irwin explains, the British were well aware of the cards they were holding. A pamphlet published by
Lord Sheffield in 1783 laid out the situation in frustratingly clear terms. As Irwin summarized it:
Sheffield was right: the United States had a very weak bargaining position, because it already had an open market, and the government had no ability to close it.
And so Adams (and Jefferson) had a thankless if not impossible task. Adams expressed his frustration in a letter from London, a portion of which is today's featured quote. Here is the full passage quoted by Irwin:
From JOHN ADAMS: Patience, under all the unequal burthens they impose upon our commerce, will do us no good; it will contribute in no degree to preserve the peace with this country. On the contrary, nothing but retaliations, reciprocal prohibitions, and imposts, and putting ourselves in a posture of defense will have any effect. ...Confining our exports to our own ships, and laying on heavy duties on all foreign luxuries, and encouraging our own manufacturers, appear to me to be our only resource, although I am very sensible to the many difficulties along the way.
