Chapter 32: How Americans Hurt Themselves. Although the Thirteen Colonies gained their independence, it came at an immense cost. One historian has estimated that about 25,000 Americans died during the Revolution from battle, disease, and as prisoners of war. If the same percent of our population died today, that would amount to about 2 million deaths. And yet the only disputed tax at the start of the Revolution was a three-penny tax on each pound of tea. Economic Devastation.
One of the things our American history textbooks hide from us is the drastic economic devastation that independence and the Revolution brought. In the 1730s, John Wesley spent time in the colonies as a missionary and evangelist. During his time here, he witnessed the prosperity of the American colonies. He later remarked, "The immense trade of America, greater in proportion than even that of the mother country, brought in an immense flow of wealth, which was also continually increasing.
Hence, both merchants and tradesmen of various kinds accumulated money without end, and rose from indigence to opulent fortunes quicker than any could do in Europe. Riches poured in upon them as a flood, and treasures were heaped up as the sand of the sea. And hence, naturally, arose unbounded plenty of all the necessaries, conveniences, yes, and luxuries of life. A natural consequence of wealth was luxury, particularly in food.
We are apt to imagine nothing can exceed the luxurious living which now prevails in Great Britain and Ireland. But alas, what is this to that which lately prevailed in Philadelphia and other parts of North America? A merchant or middling tradesman there kept a table equal to that of a nobleman in England, entertaining his guests with ten, twelve, yes, sometimes twenty dishes of meat at a meal.
And this was so far from being criticized by anyone that it was applauded as generosity and hospitality." The Revolutionary War wiped out nearly all of that. Based on the correspondence he received from the Methodists in America, Wesley described the condition there toward the end of the war, "At least nine parts in ten of their immense trade to Europe, Asia, Africa, and other parts of America were cut off at one stroke. What was the necessary consequence of this?
Why, that as the fountain of their wealth was dammed up, the streams of it had to run lower and lower till they were wholly exhausted, so that at present these provinces are no richer than the poorest parts either of Scotland or Ireland. Abundance declined in the same proportion as wealth, till universal scarcity took place. In a short time there was everywhere felt a deep want, not only of the luxuries, not only of the common conveniences, but even of the necessities of life.
Wholesome food was not to be procured, but at a very advanced price. Decent apparel was not to be had, not even in the large towns." In The Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt described the plight of Americans living in the South at the close of the Revolutionary War, "Even the close of active hostilities, when the British were driven from the Southern states, brought at first but a slight betterment of condition to the struggling people.
There was no cash in the land, the paper currency was nearly worthless, everyone was heavily in debt, and no one was able to collect what was owing to him. There was much mob violence and a general relaxation of the bonds of law and order. Even nature turned hostile. A terrible drought shrunk up all the streams until they could not turn the gristmills, while from the same cause the crops failed almost completely.
A hard winter followed, and many cattle and hogs died, so that the well-to-do were brought to the verge of bankruptcy, and the poor suffered extreme privations, being forced to go fifty or sixty miles to purchase small quantities of meal and grain at exorbitant prices." Although the colonists had complained that British mercantile policies had been hurting them economically, independence hurt them far worse. That's because they lost the captive market for their goods in Great Britain.
To illustrate, right before the war, the Thirteen Colonies were exporting around 100 million British pounds' worth of commodities and products annually. But exports came crashing to a standstill when war broke out. Even after the war ended, exports rose only to a small fraction of what they had been before. By 1814, total exports had risen only to 51 million British pounds, barely half of what they had been 35 years previously.
Even by the early 1820s, exports had climbed only to just 79 million British pounds, still less than what they had been before the Revolution. Certain commodities were hurt worse than others. The indigo trade was particularly hard hit. Indigo was used to make a blue-violet dye. In 1773, the colonies were exporting 1.4 million pounds of indigo, almost all of it to Britain. With the Revolution, this industry totally collapsed.
The devastation was so severe that as late as 1822, the American indigo industry had recovered only enough to export a mere 3,000 pounds of indigo, less than 1% of what it was exporting in 1773. The United States eventually did prosper as a result of its bounteous natural resources and the abundance of inexpensive land the settlers took from the Indians. But it wasn't freedom from England's trade policies that brought prosperity. They got what they wanted, but it didn't work.
Although it came at a staggering cost in terms of government, the colonies got what they wanted as a result of the Revolution: 13 free and independent states. But what they wanted lasted only about five years after the war was over. That's because the Americans discovered that 13 independent countries didn't work very well.
They needed a larger, central government with taxing power and the authority to regulate interstate and international commerce, some of the very things they had fought against in their quest for political freedom. No sooner did the new constitution go into effect than Congress basically duplicated all the British policies the colonists had complained about 20 years previously. One of the first actions of the new Congress was to impose tariffs ranging from 5 to 15 percent on most imports.
The tariffs served two purposes. First, they gave the federal government its main source of revenue. Ironically, the new federal government imposed tariffs on rum and molasses that were higher than what the British had imposed. In fact, at the time of the Boston Tea Vandalism, the tariff on rum and molasses had been totally withdrawn. Again, the only tariff the colonists had to pay on the eve of the Revolution was a three-penny duty on tea.
But now, after independence, the American people would have to pay tariffs on practically all imports. The second purpose of these new tariffs was to protect American manufacturers by making various foreign-manufactured goods prohibitively expensive in the United States. As I've said, American manufacturing was centered in the northern states, so Congress forced the less populous southern states to buy expensive northern-manufactured goods.
In 1791, Congress enacted an excise tax on whiskey and other distilled spirits made in the United States. The tax impacted the settlers on the western frontiers more than it did their fellow citizens in the east. The tax was heavier on small distilleries, giving the large distilleries a competitive advantage over the smaller ones. The frontier settlers complained that their interests weren't being adequately represented in Congress because the east was more populous than the west.
Remembering what the colonists had done 30 years earlier, the western settlers protested in various ways: refusing to pay the tax, threatening and assaulting tax officers, and rioting. This had worked in the 1760s; why not now? they reasoned. The difference this time was that the central government wasn't 3,000 miles away. It was a few hundred miles away. The federal government wasted no time in dispatching nearly 13,000 armed troops to quell the whiskey rebellion.
It's ironic, isn't it, that the new federal government enacted many of the same policies the colonists had called tyranny just a few decades earlier? The only difference was that this time the taxes were much higher, and the response to violence was swift and overpowering. Yes, the framers of the new U.S. Constitution turned their backs on many of the ideals the original revolutionists had fought for. But they did more than that; they also turned their backs on God.