It was during this bitter
struggle that John Adams wrote to Jefferson: "I am sometimes Cassandra
enough to dream that another Hamilton, another Burr, may rend this
mighty fabric in twain, or perhaps into a leash, and a few more choice
spirits of the same stamp might produce as many Nations in North America
as there are in Europe."
It is true that we had "sown the wind," but we had not yet "reaped the
whirlwind."
CHAPTER II.
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE.
We have seen that the first Federal Congress met at New York in March,
1789. It organized April 6th. None knew better than its members that
the war of the Americana Revolution chiefly grew out of the efforts of
Great Britain to cripple and destroy our Colonial industries to the
benefit of the British trader, and that the Independence conquered, was
an Industrial as well as Political Independence; and none knew better
than they, that the failure of the subsequent political Confederation of
States was due mainly to its failure to encourage and protect the
budding domestic manufactures of those States. Hence they hastened,
under the leadership of James Madison, to pass "An Act laying a duty on
goods, wares and merchandize imported into the United States," with a
preamble, declaring it to be "necessary" for the "discharge of the debt
of the United States and the encouragement and protection of
manufactures.
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