Throughout his life, Henry Clay strove to strengthen the USA and turn Americans into united people with coinciding feelings and interests. He believed that the implementation of the “American system” (the development of economic relations between the states and the expansion of transport communications) would help strengthen the union. As a seasoned politician, Clay was aware of public opinion’s power to guide and solve the greatest problems of the civilized world (Baxter, 2015). Clay tried to form in the public consciousness of Americans a special image of America, a strong and prosperous state. Speaking about the main rival of the United States, England, he argued that this country is waging a real war against American commerce, full of envy and fears of competition. Appealing to the Americans’ pride, he called on them to become staunch defenders of the noble nation since this is required by the country’s international prestige and its reputation in the civilized world.
Clay paid great attention to communication issues within the country and with representatives of other states. The politician believed that there is an obvious truth: England’s former colonies are independent and free in politics but remained slaves in commerce. He declared the principle of freedom of trade, which was then considered the pinnacle of economic thought, to be the main British financial domination instrument. In England, according to Clay, free trade was possible only because its industry could not be afraid of foreign competition. Applying this principle to a young developing country meant condemning it to constant dependence, degradation, and poverty. Thus, he consistently defended the idea of industrial protectionism.
Clay saw the country’s future in the preferential development of national industrial production and ensuring the stable sale of its goods in the domestic market. In particular, mechanization was one way to achieve this success, as it would make it possible to produce more goods at a lower cost. The protection of industrialists’ interests by the state, as the politician has repeatedly stated, consisted in the adoption by the legislators of high customs duties on foreign manufactured goods and in the reduction of raw materials exports (Kochin & Taylor, 2020). Clay believed that Americans should develop different industries in the only way known from the experience of many countries: by protecting the industry from foreign competition.
An important component of Clay’s program was a centralized banking system. In the activities of the state bank, he saw a reliable way to build financial stability. In addition, the “American system” included so-called internal improvements, which boiled down mainly to the construction of communication lines at the expense of the federal budget (Baxter, 2015). The development of transport infrastructure was supposed to contribute to the formation of a single internal economic space. Clay argued that the creation of transport arteries is a national matter, and it is beyond individual states’ power. Only the federal government is in a position to provide the necessary funds for this.
In Clay’s “American system,” the weakest and most vulnerable point was its orientation towards the interests of mainly large and medium-sized entrepreneurs, industrialists, financiers, and merchants. At the same time, the interests of agrarians who were interested in the unhindered export of their products to foreign markets and in cheap imports of foreign industrial goods, moreover of higher quality than domestic ones, were infringed upon. The obvious disadvantage of Clay’s program was a certain regionalism. It met the needs of the rapidly developing Northeast and Northwest, to the detriment of the South and Southwest.
References
Baxter, M.G. (2015). Henry Clay and the American System. The University Press of Kentucky.
Kochin, M. S., & Taylor, M. (2020). An independent empire: Diplomacy & war in the making of the United States. University of Michigan Press.