In 1776, one-third of the seagoing merchant marine of Great Britain had been bought or built to order in America because lumber was cheaper and wages were lower.This lucrative business was killed by a law which denied Englishmen the privilege of purchasing ships built in American yards.So narrow and bitter was this commercial enmity, so ardent this desire to banish the Stars and Stripes from blue water, that Lord Sheffield in 1784advised Parliament that the pirates of Algiers and Tripoli really benefited English commerce by preying on the shipping of weaker nations."It is not probable that the American States will have a very free trade in the Mediterranean, " said he."It will not be to the interest of any of the great maritime Powers to protect them from the Barbary States.If they know their interests, they will not encourage the Americans to be carriers.That the Barbary States are advantageous to maritime Powers is certain."Denied the normal ebb and flow of trade and commerce and with the imports from England far exceeding the value of the merchandise exported thence, the United States, already impoverished, was drained of its money, and a currency of dollars, guineas, joes, and moidores grew scarcer day by day.There was no help in a government which consisted of States united only in name.
Congress comprised a handful of respectable gentlemen who had little power and less responsibility, quarreling among themselves for lack of better employment.Retaliation against England by means of legislation was utterly impossible.Each State looked after its commerce in its own peculiar fashion and the devil might take the hindmost.Their rivalries and jealousies were like those of petty kingdoms.If one State should close her ports is to English ships, the others would welcome them in order to divert the trade, with no feeling of national pride or federal cooperation.
The Articles of Confederation had empowered Congress to make treaties of commerce, but only such as did not restrain the legislative power of any State from laying imposts and regulating exports and imports.If a foreign power imposed heavy duties upon American shipping, it was for the individual States and not for Congress to say whether the vessels of the offending nation should be allowed free entrance to the ports of the United States: It was folly to suppose, ran the common opinion, that if South Carolina should bar her ports to Spain because rice and indigo were excluded from the Spanish colonies, New Hampshire, which furnished masts and lumber for the Spanish Navy, ought to do the same.The idea of turning the whole matter over to Congress was considered preposterous by many intelligent Americans.
In these thirteen States were nearly three and a quarter million people hemmed in a long and narrow strip between the sea and an unexplored wilderness in which the Indians were an ever present peril.The Southern States, including Maryland, prosperous agricultural regions, contained almost one-half the English-speaking population of America.As colonies, they had found the Old World eager for their rice, tobacco, indigo, and tar, and slavery was the means of labor so firmly established that one-fifth of the inhabitants were black.By contrast, the Northern States were still concerned with commerce as the very lifeblood of their existence.New England had not dreamed of the millions of spindles which should hum on the banks of her rivers and lure her young men and women from the farms to the clamorous factory towns.The city of New York had not yet outgrown its traffic in furs and its magnificent commercial destiny was still unrevealed.It was a considerable seaport but not yet a gateway.
>From Sandy Hook, however, to the stormy headlands of Maine, it was a matter of life and death that ships should freely come and go with cargoes to exchange.All other resources were trifling in comparison.
