No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
From Empire to Law: Customs Collection in the American Founding
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 December 2018
Abstract
This essay investigates the eighteenth-century origins of the federal administrative state through the prism of customs collection. Until recently, historians and legal scholars have not closely studied collection operations in the early federal custom houses. Gautham Rao's National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the American State (2016) offers the most important and thoroughly documented historical analysis to date. Joining a growing historical literature that explains the early development of the US federal political system with reference to imperial models and precedents, Rao shows that the seductive power of commerce over the state within eighteenth-century imperial praxis required the early federal customs officials to “negotiate” their authority with the mercantile community. A paradigm of accommodation dominated American customs collection well into the nineteenth century until Jacksonian centralizers finally began to dismantle it in the 1830s. The book brings welcome light to a long-neglected topic in American history. It offers a nuanced, historiographically attentive interpretation that rests on a broad archival source base. It should command the sustained attention of legal, social, economic, and constitutional historians for it holds the potential to change the way historians think about early federal administration. This essay investigates one of the central questions raised in National Duties: How were the early American custom houses able to successfully administer a comprehensive program of customs duties when their imperial predecessors had proved unable to collect even narrowly tailored ones? Focusing on the Federalist period (1789–1800), I develop an answer that complements Rao's, highlighting administrative change over continuity and finding special significance in the establishment of the first federal judicial system.
- Type
- Review Essay
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2018
References
References
Barrow, Thomas C.
Trade and Empire; the British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660–1775. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Bilder, Mary Sarah.
The Transatlantic Constitution Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Breen, T. H.
The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Brewer, John.
The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783. 1st American ed. New York: Knopf, 1989.Google Scholar
Brown, Roger H.
Redeeming the Republic: Federalists, Taxation, and the Origins of the Constitution. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Butler, Benjamin F. “Indulgences on Custom‐House Bonds,” in Official Opinions of the Attorneys General of the United States, Advising the President and Heads of Departments in Relation to Their Official Duties, edited by Hall, Benjamin F., Vol. 3. Washington, DC: Robert Farnum, 1837.Google Scholar
Canney, Donald L.
U.S. Coast Guard and Revenue Cutters, 1790–1935. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Dalzell, Frederick. “Prudence and the Golden Egg: Establishing the Federal Government in Providence, Rhode Island.” New England Quarterly
65, no. 3 (1992): 355–88.Google Scholar
Dalzell, Frederick. “Taxation with Representation: Federal Revenue in the Early Republic.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1993.Google Scholar
De Pauw, Linda Grant, Bickford, Charlene Bangs, and Veit, Helen E., eds. Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United States of America, March 4, 1789–March 3, 1791. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Dickerson, Oliver M.
The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951.Google Scholar
Edling, Max M.
A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Edling, Max M., and Kaplanoff, Mark D. “Alexander Hamilton's Fiscal Reform: Transforming the Structure of Taxation in the Early Republic.” William and Mary Quarterly
61, no. 4 (2004): 713–44.Google Scholar
Elliot, Jonathan.
The Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, as Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia, in 1787. 2nd ed.
5 Vols. Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1891.Google Scholar
Gales, Joseph.
Annals of the Congress of the United States, 1789–1824. Vol. 1. Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1834.Google Scholar
Goss, John D.
The History of Tariff Administration in the United States: From Colonial Times to the McKinley Administrative Bill. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University, 1897.Google Scholar
Greene, Jack P.
Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607–1788. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Alexander.
The Works of Alexander Hamilton. Edited by Lodge. Federal, Henry C. ed. 12 Vols. New York/London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1904.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Alexander.
The Papers of Alexander Hamilton. 27 Vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Harper, Lawrence A.
The English Navigation Laws: A Seventeenth‐Century Experiment in Social Engineering. New York: Octagon Books. Reprint, 1973.Google Scholar
Harrington, Matthew P. “The Legacy of the Colonial Vice‐Admiralty Courts (Part I).” Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce
26 (1995): 581–606.Google Scholar
Henderson, Dwight F.
Courts for a New Nation. Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Henretta, James A. “Salutary Neglect”; Colonial Administration Under the Duke of Newcastle. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Hobson, Charles F. “The Negative on State Laws: James Madison, the Constitution, and the Crisis of Republican Government.” William and Mary Quarterly
36, no. 2 (1979): 215–35.Google Scholar
Hoon, Elizabeth E. 1968. The Organization of the English Customs Service, 1696–1786. Reprint. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Hulsebosch, Daniel Joseph.
Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664–1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Kern, Florence.
Hopley Yeaton's U.S. Revenue Cutter Scammel, 1791–1798: “The Most Effectual Check to the Mischiefs.”
Washington, DC: Alised Enterprises, 1975.Google Scholar
Kern, Florence.
John Foster Williams' U.S. Revenue Cutter Massachusetts, 1791–1792. Washington, DC: Alised Enterprises, 1976a.Google Scholar
Kern, Florence.
Jonathan Maltbie's U.S. Revenue Cutter Argus, 1791–1804. Washington, DC: Alised Enterprises, 1976b.Google Scholar
Kern, Florence.
Patrick Dennis' U.S. Revenue Cutter Vigilant, 1791–1798. Washington, DC: Alised Enterprises, 1976c.Google Scholar
Kern, Florence.
James Montgomery's U.S. Revenue Cutter General Green, 1791–1797. Washington, DC: Alised Enterprises, 1977a.Google Scholar
Kern, Florence.
Richard Taylor's U.S. Revenue Cutter Virginia, 1791–1797. Washington, DC: Alised Enterprises, 1977b.Google Scholar
Kern, Florence.
Simon Gross's U.S. Revenue Cutter Active, 1791–1798. Washington, DC: Alised Enterprises, 1977c.Google Scholar
Kern, Florence.
John Howell's U.S. Revenue Cutter Eagle, Georgia, 1793–1799. Washington, DC: Alised Enterprises, 1978a.Google Scholar
Kern, Florence.
Robert Cochran's U.S. Revenue Cutter South Carolina, 1793–1798. Washington, DC: Alised Enterprises, 1978b.Google Scholar
Kern, Florence.
William Cooke's U.S. Revenue Cutter Dilegence, 1791–1798. Washington, DC: Alised Enterprises, 1979.Google Scholar
King, Irving H.
George Washington's Coast Guard: Origins of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, 1789–1801. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Knapp, Aaron T. “Law's Revolution: Benjamin Austin and the Spirit of ‘86.” Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities
25 (2013): 271–358.Google Scholar
Leach, Douglas Edward.
Roots of Conflict: British Armed Forces and Colonial Americans, 1677–1763. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Lender, Mark Edward. “This Honorable Court”: The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, 1789–2000. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, David S.
The Glorious Revolution in America. 1st ed. New York,: Harper & Row, 1972.Google Scholar
Lowrie, Walter, and Clair Clarke, Matthew St., eds. American State Papers. Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States. Finance Vol. 2. Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1832.Google Scholar
Maclay, William.
Journal of William Maclay: United States Senator from Pennsylvania, 1789–1791, edited by Maclay, Edgar S.
New York: D. A. Appleton and Co., 1890.Google Scholar
Madison, James, Hamilton, Alexander, Jay, John, and Kramnick, Isaac. The Federalist Papers. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987.Google Scholar
Mann, Bruce H. “The Evolutionary Revolution in American Law: A Comment on J. R. Pole's ‘Reflections.’” William and Mary Quarterly
50, no. 1 (1993): 168–75.Google Scholar
Marcus, Maeva ed. The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789–1800. 8 Vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Mashaw, Jerry L.
Creating the Administrative Constitution: The Lost One Hundred Years of American Administrative Law. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
McConville, Brendan.
The King's Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688–1776. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Morgan, Edmund Sears.
The Stamp Act Crisis; Prologue to Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953.Google Scholar
Parrillo, Nicholas R.
Against the Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government, 1780—1940. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. Essay on the Warehousing System and Government Credits of the United States. Philadelphia, PA: William Brown, 1828.Google Scholar
Rao, Gautham.
National Duties: Customhouses and the Making of the American State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Reid, John Phillip.
In Defiance of the Law: The Standing‐Army Controversy, the Two Constitutions, and the Coming of the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Slaughter, Thomas P. “The Tax Man Cometh: Ideological Opposition to Internal Taxes, 1760–1790.” William and Mary Quarterly
41, no. 4 (1984): 566–91.Google Scholar
Snell, Steven L.
Courts of Admiralty and the Common Law: Origins of the American Experiment in Concurrent Jurisdiction. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Stephens, Frank Fletcher.
The Transitional Period, 1788–1789: In the Government of the United States. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 1909.Google Scholar
Ubbelohde, Carl.
The Vice‐Admiralty Courts and the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960.Google Scholar
Wallis, John Joseph. “Federal Government Revenue by Source, 1789–1939,” in Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present, millennial ed., edited by Carter, Susan B.
Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
White, Leonard Dupee.
The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History. New York: Macmillan Co., 1948
Google Scholar
Collection Act of 1790, 1 Stat. 145.Google Scholar
National Archives, Boston (Waltham, MA).Google Scholar
Treasury Correspondence, RG56, M178, Rolls 11 and 26.Google Scholar
Collection Act of 1790, 1 Stat. 145.Google Scholar
National Archives, Boston (Waltham, MA).Google Scholar
Treasury Correspondence, RG56, M178, Rolls 11 and 26.Google Scholar