Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn

by Robert Martello

  59. Paul Revere to Joshua Humphreys, January 22, 1801, “Letterbook 1783–1800,” reel 14, vol. 53.1, RFP.

  60. Moreno, “Patriotism and Profit: The Copper Mills at Canton,” p. 104.

  61. Paul Revere to Harrison G. Otis, January 17, 1801, and Paul Revere to Joshua Humphreys, January 22, 1801, in “Letterbook 1783–1800,” reel 14, vol. 53.1, RFP.

  62. U.S. Office of Naval Records and Library, Naval Documents related to the Quasi-war between the United States and France, vol. 7 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1938), p. 128.

  63. White, The Jeffersonians, pp. 75, 265, 267, 142–143; Nettels, Emergence of a National Economy, pp. 318–319.

  64. Paul Revere to Benjamin Stoddert, March 5, 1801, “Letterbook 1801–1806,” reel 14, vol. 53.2, RFP.

  65. March 10, 1801 letter from Benjamin Stoddert, “Loose Manuscripts 1746–1801,” reel 1, RFP.

  66. Paul Revere to William Bartlett, date prior to April 3, 1801, “Letterbook 1801–1806,” reel 14, vol. 53.2, RFP. The date and some of the text of the letter are missing, but it immediately precedes an April 3, 1801 letter.

  67. Paul Revere letter (addressee missing, but other sources indicate that it was Robert Smith), May 11, 1801, “Letterbook 1801–1806,” reel 14, vol. 53.2, RFP.

  68. U.S. Office of Naval Records and Library, Quasi-war between the United States and France, vol. 7, p. 247.

  69. “1801 Furnace,” in “Account Book, Boston 1793–1810,” reel 6, vol. 10, RFP. These records are presumably comprehensive, but as always, this cannot be claimed with certainty, given Revere’s incomplete and often confusing recordkeeping style.

  70. This income figure includes the $10,000 loan, which he received in two installments: $6,000 on October 30, 1801, and $4,000 on February 1, 1802.

  71. Revere to Levi Lincoln, April 21, 1801, “Letterbook 1801–1806,” reel 14, vol. 53.2, RFP. Note that Levi Lincoln was Revere’s good friend and the brother of two of Revere’s sons-in-law, as well as a close personal contact who was well placed in the government. Revere wrote to him occasionally over the next few years whenever a contract encountered difficulty. These matters had absolutely nothing to do with Lincoln’s job responsibilities as attorney general and it is unclear whether he provided Revere with any assistance. We might speculate that, if nothing else, Lincoln might have advocated for Revere behind the scenes, and it seems likely that he offered some service since Revere continued soliciting his aid.

  72. Paul Revere to Robert Smith, October 26, [1801], “Letterbook 1801–1806,” reel 14, vol. 53.2, RFP.

  73. Paul Revere to Robert Smith, October 26, [1801], and Paul Revere to Robert Smith, May 24, 1802, “Letterbook 1801–1806,” reel 14, vol. 53.2, RFP.

  74. Paul Revere to Robert Smith, November 27, 1803, “Letterbook 1801–1806,” reel 14, vol. 53.2, RFP.

  75. Palmer, Stoddert’s War, p. 121.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: The Onset of Industrial Capitalism: Managerial and Labor Adaptations (1802–1811)

  1. Revere to Robert Smith, May 24, 1802, “Letterbook 1801–1806,” Revere Family Papers (hereafter RFP), microfilm edition, 15 reels (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1979), reel 14, vol. 53.2.

  2. Revere to Joshua Humphreys, December 19, 1803, “Letterbook 1801–1806,” reel 14, vol. 53.2, RFP.

  3. Revere to Henry Dearborn, September 13, 1809, “Letterbook 1805–1810,” reel 14, vol. 53.5, RFP.

  4. Jonathan Prude, The Coming of Industrial Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 17.

  5. The number of American post offices increased from 75 in 1790, to 903 in 1800, to 2,300 in 1810. Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 26–31, 51–57.

  6. George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1977), pp. 15–19; David R. Meyer, The Roots of American Industrialization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 28–30; Curtis P. Nettels, The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775–1815 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1962), pp. 251–253; Paul A. Gilje, “The Rise of Capitalism in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 16, no. 2 (Summer 1996): 165.

  7. The shape of America’s growing market economy was not a foregone conclusion: different interests advocated for a neo-mercantilist market featuring strong government control of economic expansion, for unrestricted markets governed by the laws of supply and demand, or for a more traditional “yeoman” producer-republic. The unregulated market won out in the short term and helped promote industrialization, which fostered additional market growth in turn. Therefore, industrialization served as both a product and an instigator of economic changes. Walter Licht, Industrializing America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp. xvi–xvii.

  8. Meyer, Roots of American Industrialization, pp. 7, 25; Licht, Industrializing America, pp. 4, xvii; Winifred Rothenberg, From Market-Places to a Market Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 143–144, 242–244; Winifred Barr Rothenberg, “The Invention of American Capitalism: The Economy of New England in the Federal Period,” in Engines of Enterprise: An Economic History of New England, ed. Peter Temin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 75; Nettels, Emergence of a National Economy, p. 289; Michel Beaud, A History of Capitalism, 1500–1980 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), pp. 72–73.

  9. As mentioned in earlier chapters, capitalism existed to a lesser degree in the colonial period as well, as illustrated by the use of circulating money, European banks, corporations, and profit calculations. Gilje, “Rise of Capitalism in the Early Republic,” pp. 169–173, 178; John Larson, “A Bridge, A Dam, A River: Liberty and Innovation in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 7, no. 4 (Winter 1987): 354; Jan de Vries, “The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 54, no. 2 (June 1994): 258; Rothenberg, “Invention of American Capitalism,” p. 69; Jonathan Prude, “Capitalism, Industrialization, and the Factory in Post-revolutionary America,” Journal of the Early Republic 16, no. 2 (Summer 1996): 242.

  10. England reeled from a widespread anti-machine movement in 1811 and 1812, when manufacturing laborers gathered in the name of Nad Ludd and destroyed countless looms, spinning jennies, and other machines in more than a thousand textile mills. These “Luddite” laborers did not hate all machines, but merely protested specific implementations of labor-saving equipment that exacerbated the unemployment and poverty common at the time. In America no similar movement arose because this category of machinery filled a void. Meyer, Roots of American Industrialization, pp. 11, 37; Robert Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), pp. 85–87; Licht, Industrializing America, pp. 42, 46–47; Thomas Cochran and William Miller, The Age of Enterprise: A Social History of Industrial America (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), p. 5; Prude, “Capitalism, Industrialization, and the Factory,” p. 245; Rothenberg, “Invention of American Capitalism,” pp. 70, 93.

  11. Gilje, “Rise of Capitalism in the Early Republic,” p. 169; Licht, Industrializing America, pp. 13–14; John F. Kasson, Civilizing the Machine (New York: Hill and Wang, 1979), pp. 10, 19, 30, 41.

  12. Prude, “Capitalism, Industrialization, and the Factory,” pp. 247, 251; Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 222–224.

  13. Lindy Biggs, The Rational Factory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 19–21; Thomas C. Cochran, Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialism in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 58–60, 65–69; Kasson, Civilizing the Machine, p. 28; Otto Mayr and Robert C. Post, eds., Yankee Enterprise: The Rise of the American System of Manufactures (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), p. vii.

  14. Nathan Rosenberg, “Yankee Enterprise: The Rise of the American System of Manufactures, ed. Otto Mayr and Robert C. Post (Washington
: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), p. 57; Nathan Rosenberg, “Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry,” Journal of Economic History 22 (1963): 423–443; Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977).

  15. Cochran, Frontiers of Change, p. 10.

  16. See Merritt Roe Smith’s Becoming Engineers in Early Industrial America, STS Working Paper no. 13 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1990), esp. pp. 22–24, and Cochran, Frontiers of Change, p. 58.

  17. From 1774 to 1815 equipment occupied only 4 to 5 percent of capital stock while land and buildings rose from 17 to 27 percent. Meyer, Roots of American Industrialization, pp. 59–61.

  18. Bank quotation taken from Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 29. Three separate attempts to create a New York bank to loan money to needy artisans failed, either because the bank wavered in its desire to make these loans or because the bank collapsed. In the ensuing years the number of banks steadily increased, numbering in the thousands by the 1830s. By that point the larger number of banks did increase the quantity of circulating currency as well as available capital, greatly expanding the economy. Also see Gilje, “Rise of Capitalism in the Early Republic,” pp. 162–165; Stuart Bruchey, The Roots of American Economic Growth, 1607–1861 (New York: Harper, 1965), p. 213; Howard B. Rock, Artisans of the New Republic (New York: New York University Press, 1984), pp. 165, 168–169; Matthew Roth, Platt Brothers and Company: Small Business in American Manufacturing (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1994), p. 2; Cochran, Frontiers of Change, pp. 68–69; Laura Rigal, The American Manufactory: Art, Labor, and the World of Things in the Early Republic (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 55–88.

  19. Jefferson changed his tune after the embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812, both in his writings and in his actions. He installed numerous machines on his property at Shadwell and Monticello, including a nail manufactory that used three hearths and a cutting machine; a grist mill; and a textile manufactory that included a carding machine, spinning machine, and loom with a flying shuttle. He also advocated for decentralized manufacturing using the most efficient possible machinery; labor of women, children, or men unable to work on farms; and propagation of agricultural interests. Kasson, Civilizing the Machine, pp. 24–25; Cochran and Miller, The Age of Enterprise, p. 11.

  20. Revere to Robert Smith, November 6, 1802, and Revere Letter, recipient unknown (probably Samuel Brown), November 6, 1802, “Letterbook 1801–1806,” reel 14, vol. 53.2, RFP.

  21. Revere to Robert Smith, November 6, 1802, “Letterbook 1801–1806,” reel 14, vol. 53.2, RFP.

  22. Revere to Thomas Ramsden, August 4, 1804, “Loose Manuscripts 1802–1813,” reel 2, RFP.

  23. Leonard D. White, The Jeffersonians, A Study in Administrative History (New York: Macmillan, 1956), pp. 423–425, 472–473; Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1961), pp. 38, 46, 55.

  24. Revere to Joseph Carson, March 6, 1809, “Letterbook 1805–1810,” reel 14, vol. 53.3, RFP.

  25. Cochran, Frontiers of Change, p. 36.

  26. Merritt Roe Smith, “Eli Whitney and the American System of Manufacturing,” in Technology in America, ed. Carroll W. Pursell Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989), p. 51.

  27. Revere to Hathaway and Davis, March 1, 1805, “Letterbook 1801–1806,” reel 14, vol. 53.2, RFP.

  28. Thomas Hazard to Revere, June 9, 1808, “Loose Manuscripts 1802–1813,” reel 2, RFP; February 26, 1806 entries in Revere’s “Boston Wastebook 1804–1811,” reel 5, vol. 5, RFP.

  29. Joseph Carson to Revere, June 6, 1809, “Loose Manuscripts 1802–1813,” reel 2, RFP.

  30. Quotes taken from January 1806 and September 12, 1803 letters from Harmon Hendricks to Paul Revere, cited in Mark Bortman, “Paul Revere and Son and their Jewish Correspondents,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 43 (1953–1954): 199–229. The Soho copper plant technically became a competitor to Revere, although the small size of both manufactories kept them from harming each other. Hendricks did testify against Revere’s tariff petition, as described later in this chapter, but the cordial and mutually beneficial nature of their continuing correspondence makes it hard to imagine this as a malicious act.

  31. Edgard Moreno, “Patriotism and Profit: The Copper Mills at Canton,” in Paul Revere—Artisan, Businessman, and Patriot (Boston: Paul Revere Memorial Association, 1988), p. 112.

  32. Revere to Josiah Snelling, October 26, 1810, “Letterbook 1809–1810,” reel 14, vol. 53.4, RFP.

  33. Folsom and Lubar, The Philosophy of Manufactures, pp. xxiii, xxvi.

  34. These rates were doubled for the extent of the war, and then readjusted to 20 percent in 1816 and to 25 percent in 1818. Charles K. Hyde, Copper for America (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998), p. 12; John R. Nelson, Liberty and Property (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 153; Howard B. Rock, The New York City Artisan, 1789–1825 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 143–147; Rock, Artisans of the New Republic, pp. 171–172.

  35. Revere to Albert Gallatin and Revere to Josiah Quincy, April 3, 1806, “Loose Manuscripts 1802–1813,” reel 2, RFP.

  36. Revere to Josiah Quincy, February 12, 1807, “Letterbook 1805–1810,” reel 14, vol. 53.5, RFP.

  37. Report of the Committee of Commerce and Manufactures, January 21, 1808.

  38. Revere to Josiah Quincy, December 12, 1808, “Letterbook 1805–1810,” reel 14, vol. 53.5, RFP.

  39. Revere to James Prince, December 10, 1810, “Letterbook 1805–1810,” reel 14, vol. 53.3, RFP.

  40. Revere to Henry Dearborn, September 13, 1809, “Letterbook 1805–1810,” reel 14, vol. 53.3, RFP.

  41. Gabriel Duvall to Revere, September 4, 1810, “Loose Manuscripts 1802–1813,” reel 2, RFP. Also see Otis E. Young Jr., “Origins of the American Copper Industry,” Journal of the Early Republic 3 (Summer 1983): 127; Revere to James Prince, December 10, 1810, “Letterbook 1805–1810,” reel 14, vol. 53.3, RFP; Nettels, Emergence of a National Economy, p. 274.

  42. Revere to Thomas Ramdsen, August 4, 1804, “Loose Manuscripts 1802–1813,” reel 2, RFP.

  43. Partnership agreement between Paul and Joseph Warren Revere, June 7, 1804, “Loose Manuscripts 1802–1813,” reel 2, RFP.

  44. Partnership renewal between Paul and Joseph Warren Revere, June 7, 1807, “Loose Manuscripts 1802–1813,” reel 2, RFP.

  45. Naomi Lamoreaux, “The Partnership Form of Organization: Its Popularity in Early-Nineteenth Century Boston,” in Entrepreneurs: The Boston Business Community, 1700–1850, ed. Conrad E. Wright and Katheryn P. Viens (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1997), pp. 270–271, 275, 293–295; Roth, Platt Brothers and Company, pp. 12–14.

  46. In 1801 only eight manufacturing corporations had received charters in all of America. Michael B. Folsom and Steven D. Lubar, The Philosophy of Manufactures (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), p. xxvii; Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 308; Oscar Handlin and Mary Handlin, Commonwealth (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1969), p. 162; Pauline Maier, “The Revolutionary Origins of the American Corporation,” William and Mary Quarterly 50, no. 1 (January 1993): 51, 53, 82.

  47. Nettels, Emergence of a National Economy, p. 289; Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), pp. 44–45; Lamoreaux, “The Partnership Form of Organization,” pp. 273–275.

  48. Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life (New York: HarperPerennial, 1989), p. 59; Bruce Laurie, “‘Spavined Ministers, Lying Toothpullers, and Buggering Priests’: Third-Partyism and the Search for Security in the Antebellum North,” in American Artisans: Crafting Social Identity, ed. Howard B. Rock, Paul A. Gilje, and Robert Asher (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp. 99, 105–106; Robert B. Gordon and Patrick M. Malone, The Texture of Indu
stry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 347–348; Prude, “Capitalism, Industrialization, and the Factory,” p. 251.

  49. H. J. Habakkuk, American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 4–43; Licht, Industrializing America, p. 43; Paul A. David, Technical Choice Innovation and Economic Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 21–33.

  50. Caleb Gibbs to Revere, July 15, 1803, “Loose Manuscripts 1802–1813,” reel 2, RFP. Also see Rock, Artisans of the New Republic, p. 242.

  51. Laurie, Artisans into Workers, pp. 38–41, 45; Licht, Industrializing America, p. 49; Biggs, The Rational Factory, p. 3; Gordon and Malone, Texture of Industry, pp. 385–386; Wilenz, Chants Democratic, pp. 30–32, 53–54; Ronald Schultz, The Republic of Labor: Philadelphia Artisans and the Politics of Class, 1720–1830 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 171; Nettels, Emergence of a National Economy, pp. 235–236; Beaud, A History of Capitalism, pp. 66–67; Merritt Roe Smith, “Industry, Technology, and the ‘Labor Question’ in 19th Century America: Seeking Synthesis,” presidential address for the Society for the October 19, 1990 History of Technology Meeting, reprinted in Technology and Culture 32, no. 3 (July 1991): 558–559; de Vries, “The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution,” p. 258.

  52. Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory, pp. 62–67; Nettels, Emergence of a National Economy, p. 265.

  53. Laurie, Artisans into Workers, p. 36; Licht, Industrializing America, pp. 49–51, 69; Wilenz, Chants Democratic, pp. 49–50, 56–58.

  54. These figures are taken from Moreno, “Patriotism and Profit,” p. 106. A comparison with Appendix 8 reveals small discrepancies in the number of employees each year. In some cases Revere’s records are ambiguous and subject to interpretation, and in other cases Moreno and I disagree, for example, as to whether twelve months of service beginning in December should count as one year of employment or two.