1.9b Virginia: Virginia’s Revolutionary War Economic Development 

 

 

 

In our last chapter on Virginia it is, of course, fitting that we conclude our comments with Virginia’s policy system as it entered the Federal Union. Virginia, not by itself by any means, had taken arguably “the lead” to form a true national government–and as we have demonstrated George Washington, his Patowmack Canal project, his allies, and those sympathetic to the needs for change were the trigger that started the Constitution-writing. Unable to secure the acceptance of the Articles to his inter-state canal and navigation of the Potomac-Ohio river complex, Washington and Madison had secured legislative endorsement of a conference with Maryland to work out an extended MOU which declared the Potomac as a river bordered by two states (which legally did not exist), and mechanisms and right for public and private navigation and commerce on that river. This was supposed to be the Alexandria Convention described in an earlier module. As mentioned at the time, Virginia did not notify its delegates until the day before, and the conference nearly fell apart–except that Washington under his own direction moved the Maryland delegation to Mount Vernon and then held the conference at Mount Vernon. What I left out in the earlier module, it is very likely the Governor, Patrick Henry, was consciously tried to sabotage the conference, and frustrate the project. Virginia’s weak governor had no veto, and “losing” the approved legislation was its functional equivalent. So he “lost” the memo and the legislation.

Virginia’s Revolutionary War Era policy system, or at least elements of it, apparently was not about to genuflect to George Washington’s visionary economic development paradigm.

Thus it seems appropriate we conclude the chapter on Virginia by describing how it treated Washington’s grand project, and how it tempered its embrace of his Dream with the realities of its decentralized policy process. As it turned out Washington always had troubles with his legislatures, both state and federal. they weren’t by far all of his making. As we proceed through the module, it will hopefully become evident to the reader that Virginia’s state-level policy system had its limitations and biases. State-level policy, enlisting Virginia as the lead state in the opening up of the trans-Appalachian west, was not in the main rejected, but it was redefined in terms more acceptable to the locally-biased General Assembly delegates–and that wreaked havoc with the paradigm’s overall design. Let’s tell the tale of Washington’s great paradigm as he developed and implemented it between 1784 and 1788.

Washington Returns to Virginia: Tale of a Gentleman Farmer

Washington’s 1783 Christmas eve return to Mount Vernon added one more agenda issue to Virginia policy system agenda. Even in “retirement” Washington was a formidable political force and despite myths to the contrary, within months he developed a robust political agenda which he wasted little time in bringing to Richmond (and Annapolis Maryland). Wrapped around his transformational economic development canal/Potomac navigation he proposed to open up the trans-Appalachian west on behalf of the Articles national defense, and for the practical benefit of the state of Virginia. By early November, 1784 he was in Richmond with his allies, including Lafayette and Madison, to press for Virginia legislation to kick the project off.

With his extensive land, military and political Rolodex of friends and fellow Masons, he literally could contact the elites of every state and major commercial enterprise in the nation. Through his efforts he was able to secure similar legislation in Maryland over Christmas in 1784.  His extraordinary vision, believing that settlement of trans-Appalachian west was essential to American security and national defense–as well as economic growth and prosperity–and therefore he linked land development with what we shall call “developmental transportation infrastructure” (DTIS) strategy, i.e. roads, canals, and technologies necessary to render them effective.

His pre-Revolutionary war venture into canal-building is remarkable; this is about the earliest that anybody acted along those lines. As a member of the Northern Neck nexus, and his family and friends linkage with the Ohio Land Company, and his incredible number of personal expeditions into the wilderness, marked his as an insider in the Virginia oligopoly, but an outsider sensitive to the larger perspective of America as a nation in a competitive global economy. Washington’s agenda, and his leadership of Virginia post-1784 economic development was the subject of our two opening modules which provide a entry point so we can interweave and discuss the weighty five issues/dynamics that underscore Virginia’s post-Revolutionary War economic base. Accordingly after surrender of his commission to Congress in 1783, Washington went back to Mount Vernon and in very short order picked up his pre-Revolutionary War Patowmack Canal project and bring it back on line.  He activated his former allies, Jefferson and notably Madison who was then a key member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. Under Washington’s guidance and urging, Madison as Chair of the Burgesses’ Commerce Committee developed, submitted and obtained approval of a series of specific Patowmack and canal acts, and in 1784 a Virginia Port Bill which carried the canal project to another level entirely.

If there is a “perfect storm”, logically there can be “perfect good weather”. The latter occurred in 1784. Washington’s full economic development vigor and leadership–replete with his national celebrity status and considerable wealth, he commanded respect and deference–and gratitude–was in 1784 fully engaged. His vision of internal settlement and land development developed previous to the War, was now fleshed out with his newly acquired national perspective which alerted him to the reality Virginia had a very limited time to take advantage of western expansion, that other states had equal, probably better (New York) opportunities, time was “of the essence”. Virginia if it acted now might acquire “First Advantage”. So off to Richmond he went to pick up his canal projects and present to the Legislature new ventures and initiatives. There, the time was also ripe. James Madison was chair of the Legislature’s Commerce Committee, and Patrick Henry, a canal advocate and leader of populist wing of the Virginia Legislature was back in with his fourth term as governor. In the following year, he was reelected to his fifth term. Virginia was as fiscally broke as always, but favorably inclined to follow the path suggested by Washington–for Virginia to seize the ring and be the first to reap the rewards of western settlement and drive to the Mississippi River.

But the matter that captures my interest in this history of American economic development begins in 1784, with the submission of a bill to establish five ports in Virginia. Advanced and developed by James Madison, and George Washington, the bill permits us to return to the great project that opened our history.

 

So, in 1784 Washington submitted his canal bills, which were described in the opening module. His earlier promotion of the James River, as the best route for Virginia to develop the western hinterland, now gave way to his Potomac, Patowmack canal. This was a pivot from his 1770’s canal vision. Back in the 1750’s and 1760’s, Pennsylvania who dominated the Potomac’s headwaters was in full competition with Virginia, with land development companies the principal battleground. Now twenty years later, Washington hoped the Articles of Confederation could be the vehicle to broker a more reasoned Pennsylvania approach–partnership in the development of the Potomac which Washington now regarded as the superior route, connecting to the Ohio River and from there to the Mississippi. While the James River which  ran entirely through Virginia (West Virginia), offering more secure site control, it’s link to the Mississippi was more convoluted–and likely much more expensive. If Virginia was to seize First Advantage, speed–and cost–had to take preference.

The Legislature, in 1784-85, gave him both funds, partnership and authority to do both–providing, incredibly in light of Virginia’s post-1785 record, state funds and investment, as well as partnership in the state chartered corporations tasked with the job of canal construction and financing–and the operation of the completed venture. Public policy scholars observe that a policy entrepreneur, taking advantage of a “open policy window” can seize an advantage and break from the established and previously dominant pattern. This is precisely what occurred in 1784-85. Its effects were not long-lasting, however, and the window was closed by the early 1790’s.

Washington as we have learned, and will learn again as we discuss his city-building of Washington D.C. in a future chapter, always knew his economic vision required a major port city–not a mere pile of piers and warehouses, but a population and commercial complex of note and substance. His eye was on Philadelphia, dominated by one of his closest friends, and like him among the richest in America: Robert Morris. Pennsylvania had a more difficult, lengthy and complex route to the west, and Washington wanted Morris to invest in and establish a major presence in his port of Alexandria. But he also needed Virginia to embrace his port development strategy as fully as his canal building. So in 1784, he and Madison submitted the first major Port Bill since Virginia attempted port development during the 1655-62, 1685-1705 periods.

the Port Bills of 1784 thru 1788

The Bill attacked two “levels” of Virginia’s trade and commerce issues. First, Virginia, starting more than a half-century earlier, had fallen “victim” to British–actually Scottish–merchant houses who took advantage of the decentralized Virginia pattern of tobacco–through individual plantations on its numerous coastal lowlands and river outlets. Sending what was perceived as a horde of Scottish “factors”, logistics agents into direct bookings with individual plantation owners, bookings which provided considerable financing, so critical not only to the tobacco trade, but to the maintenance of the plantation owner lifestyle. As we \have commented, the volatility of tobacco pricing, and the micro economics of tobacco and slavery soon led to a debt cycle among Virginia plantation owners, particularly in the Piedmont which was more tobacco dependent than the “played out” coastal lowlands.

By the time of the Revolution, many plantation owners had diversified crop production and embraced developed other income streams such as land development, lending, and even some venture capital for necessary production and infrastructure. Nevertheless the local Scottish factors, much resented, left in droves during the course of the Revolution–several wearing a new uniform of tar and feathers. In 1784, with war ended, Britain did little to facilitate the Virginia plantation owner reentry into conventional commercial trade. A new horde of Scottish and British factors descended on Virginia plantation owners, prodding its plantation owner governor, Benjamin Harrison (yes, he was grandfather and great-grandfather to two American presidents) who bristled that the newly arrived merchants were “locusts that are crowding here as so many emissaries sent  to sound our inclinations and to poison the minds of our people, and if possible bring them back to their old and destructive paths” [1].

In short, rather than repeating old mistakes, the Port Act restricted export and import trade to five specified ports (of which Alexandria and Norfolk were the two biggies), thereby encouraging competition from startup Virginia (of at least American) factors and merchant companies. The second level of purpose was the more simple and obvious: that Madison intended to “city-build” a commercial port of sufficient scale to counter both Philadelphia, and a rising Baltimore and Charleston. The development of a port city of size and scale at the Alexandria terminus of the Patowmack Canal was Washington’s 1784 hot button–at this time he was personally recruiting the king of Philadelphia merchant houses, Robert Morris, his close personal friend. Jefferson, I might add, had his own third level; he supported the Port Bill because he believed it would concentrate in one or two spot key tax-paying companies. It is also of note that Madison originally specified only Norfolk and Alexandria, and the parochial tendencies of the Burgesses decision-making processes caused its “spreading” to three other local centers.

Also in Madison’s eye, the additional hope was that to “scale up” Virginia’s chief port, other American firms, and shippers would relocate to Virginia. The Virginia Legislature, however, was of two minds in this last purpose and added an exemption from duty penalties for Virginia firms. Madison, BTW, also placed limitations on the use of slaves for loading and off-loading of ships (and seamen)–no more than one-third of the labor required. The bill was approved by a relatively close vote (64 to 58), it was deferred to 1786, and repeal efforts were quickly filed; in fact Arthur Lee, brother of Richard Henry Lee and George Mason were leaders against the Port Bill. Opposition was diffuse and it attracted the support of any county with a river-access to the Chesapeake to assert its own claim. In 1785, the measure for repeal narrowly lost, and debate was intense with a number of Virginia merchants advocating its repeal–fearing larger competition if non-Virginia merchant firms relocated. By 1786, repeal of the Port Bill seemed inevitable to Madison. By that time, “Madison retained only a fatherly interest in the Port Bill for by May 1786 he saw the problem of Virginia’s commercial plight to be so great for palliatives on the state level where the situation was too chaotic and unstable to allow any comprehensive constructive program.. The Legislature elections in October confirmed its fate—George Mason who ran his campaign in opposition to it was elected:

Mason’s memorial consisted of a battery of rhetorical questions, each designed to highlight the impracticality, unjustifiably and general foolishness of an act to restrict foreign trade to certain ports. It reflected an intense agrarian-mindedness, and in anti-laissez-fair, anti-urban rhetoric repeatedly warned against the deleterious effects of unnecessary and unjustified interference by government in the natural operation of Virginia’s economy. … Large populous cities in Virginia would be a liability not a boon … Mason climaxed his anti-urban appeal by reminding the General Assembly that the morality and manners of great commercial cities were inimical to republican virtue [2] 

At first glance Mason’s anti-port perspective fits into the stereotypical-conventional Tidewater plantation elite “ideology”. But McCoy returns to the Port Bill in his most impactful work, “the Elusive Republic”. There McCoy argues that Mason had little doubt that at some point urbanization, industrialization and large commercial cities were “the future”, and that in time they were inevitable. His argument on the Port Bill was the process, the path to the future was unsettling and rife with discontent and disruption–what we today would call “social change”. His concern with the Port Bill was not specifically where it led to, but that Virginia was too early on the development path for it to accelerate economic disruption which would necessarily cause social change and political disruption prematurely, before Virginia was ready and able to deal with it.  He concludes that Mason believed “Virginia should not accelerate the process. There was no sense in incurring the many disadvantages of a more complex society before it was necessary” [3].

In this subtle shading of the consequences and implication of a state-led economic development initiative, Mason, I think, exposes that Virginia’s more conservative Founding Fathers did not oppose necessarily that brave new world the more aggressive Founding Fathers espoused. They knew it was coming and could not ignore that–but it need not be brought on by an aggressive state (or federal government); change should follow its own timetable, evolution over time lessened the disruption and its effects that such change induced. As politically correct as this line of thought might be, Mason’s insight might also apply to Virginia’s conservative (what will be the core of anti-Federalist and Jeffersonian Democrat-Republicans) notions on slavery and the plantation economy.

Whatever merit this last thought might have, it sidesteps the implications, however, of not maintaining what today we call “competitiveness”. Virginia, in effect, was deciding not to compete with those that did take active steps to induce economic development and change. That this risked Virginia’s decline, that it also risked condemning it to economic inequality relative to other states and geographies, goes unsaid. And therein lies the rub of what seems to have been an instinctive consensus within much of Virginia’s Founding Father Tidewater elite that doomed the Virginia economic base and policy system to slow loss of competitiveness, that yielded the early advantage to its neighbors, an advantage that converted into a hardened economic and then political hegemony that it would literally take centuries for Virginia to break and to catch up.

Whatever, incredibly, Mason got the surprise of his lifetime, however. The legislature, after listening to his memorial, overwhelmingly voted in December 1786 to retain the Port Bill. In the midst of a revenue/fiscal crisis, custom duties were regarded as an excellent way to balance Virginia’s budget; using duties as the revenue source saved the legislators from having to impose a direct tax on tax payers—the worst possible sin in Tidewater Virginia. But the price to Madison’s original bill was to expand the number of ports to seventeen from five. Still the amended bill removed restrictions of Virginia employment and opened it up to companies and sailors from other states eliminating barriers to Virginia’s importing innovation and a skilled workforce. The amended bill in short still was a step forward toward Madison’s vision. But victory was to be short-lived.

In 1787, George Mason was back and the 1787 bill was repealed and a new one, passed in January 1788, heavily influenced by Mason, opened the number of ports to forty-one. Most textbooks and comments on the Virginia’s 1784 Port Bill simply do not follow its subsequent history. It was amended beyond repair—the original purposes largely, if not totally abandoned. Equally important the subsequent history reveal the forces and dynamics, particular to the Virginia Legislature and its oligopolistic decentralized parochial foundations that would continue to frustrate state-level economic development for the next sixty years. While it is not at all apparent with the case study, the lesson that was learned was the economic development in Virginia was a local government/community affair and prerogative. It would be to the cities, such as they were in Virginia, that we will have to look for economic development strategies and initiative.

Afterthought, maybe we have an inkling why Washington and lifelong Mason’s friendship deteriorated?

the Cultural Impact on Policy-Making–In any event, the 1784-8 Port Bill saga raises a number of issues, including the well-worn and acknowledged lack of southern urbanization, Virginia’s lack of a port, and the impact of slavery on both. Knowing as we do key internal dynamics of its policy system, including its extreme malapportionment and the dominance of Tidewater/Piedmont plantation elites, the specifics of the debate suggest we might be able to discern the impact of the Tidewater elite culture on the substance of the Port Bill debate. Mason’s memorial to the Legislature, while in the short-term unsuccessful, suggests to me two cultural implications: the manifest dislike of urbanization or large cities as dens of evil and threats to virtue, and the almost instinctive unwillingness of Virginia plantation elites to wade too heavily into the mechanics of capitalist finance.

At the end of the war, there were serious opportunities for southern plantation elites to participate, invest, and take hold of their export-related sectors. Their product, tobacco, was addicting and by no means had the market withered. Despite an obvious vacuum in trade finance and logistics created by the war, plantation elites had not formed their own merchant houses as they had with land development companies. There were openings in both shipping, shipbuilding, and trade to the West Indies, but few resident Virginians ventured into foreign trade and the related sectors. Smuggling, which was a way of life in New England, was looked upon mostly by plantation elites as tax/duty evasion–and that threatened imposition on taxes on them. Taxes were their third rail (along with slavery, of course). Duties were paid by “outsiders”.

Ironically, Governor Harrison did–and he did not fare well– and he was very much the exception. Part of the reason for his failure was the unwillingness of his plantation compatriots to support his initiatives. In frustration Washington confirmed the reluctance of the Virginia elite to engage in commerce, commenting in a Philadelphia speech  that “Virginians were a People, not so much engaged in Trade as the Pennsylvanians” [4]. In his study of 100 1787 Virginia’s wealthiest planters, Jackson Turner Main found that “many decades of land engrossment and intermarriage had molded the Virginia gentry into an exclusive tightly knit elite”. Observing that only ten were “self-made), as opposed to inherited, they were disproportionately located in western lands and retained their dependence on land. He compared Virginia’s 10% entrepreneurial rate with Philadelphia’s 3%, and Boston’s over 50% [5].

Underlying both is in my mind a moral and economic commitment to agriculture and “to the manor born” (manor lifestyle), and personalistic finance, i.e. one on one dealings with familiar institutions and traditional terms and conditions. Despite their obvious dissatisfaction with Scottish factors, it appears much of the rank-in-file of the Tidewater plantation elite were more than willing to restore that system rather than deal with foreign (which included other states) commercial merchant firms in a strange in urban center rather than on the plantation. Southern plantation elites who opposed the Port Bill were (1) revolutionary war founding fathers–not British loyalists–, had serious involvement with land development companies and western settlement–not simply lazy affluent landowners, and were willing to use manufacturing where it could be applied to agriculture or was essential to daily life. Indeed, by the eve of the Civil War, Richmond was considered as the Lowell of the South”, with a solid manufacturing sector.

Virginia’s plantation elite were not across-the-board anti-capitalists; they exhibited at least moderate entrepreneurial tendencies. But, I suggest they were so strongly rooted in agriculture and their rural way of life–including their oligopolistic political and economic hegemonies–that they resisted outside capitalist finance sincerely viewing it as corruption and excessively greedy, but also impersonal and threatening their autonomy, if not hegemonies. The object was to pass this own to one’s progeny so too continue a way of life–horribly, this commitment to a way of life required slavery (in their mind), and that may go far in explaining the unwillingness of Virginia’s plantation elites to free their slaves, even on death, despite a life-long abhorrence of slavery itself (George Mason is an example, as is Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, among just a few).

The social solidarity of a closed elite that exercised hegemonic, autonomous influences over politics, society the economy, and their local community presented what appears to have been an insurmountable barrier to deviate from or threaten a highly-valued way of life. In this self-identification to a agricultural plantation life is, to me, therefore a defining (but not exclusive) characteristic of the post-Revolutionary War (Early Republic) Virginia Tidewater political culture. It may well also partially explain their fixation on low-tax, limited government, and most interestingly their commitment to states’ rights, and within the state to preference for local government leadership. While obviously composed of several elements, certainly slavery and tobacco economics, this way-of-life nexus was considerably more than the sum of its parts–and as we shall see surprisingly shared by groupings, classes, and even other political cultures resident in their communities. That is a topic we shall pick up in future chapters.

Consequences of Virginia’s Failure to Build a Large Competitive Port City–First, let’s start with the not-so-obvious: Virginia in 1784 did have a port city of consequence, Norfolk. It also enjoyed a rising star, Alexandria to which Washington and his Patowmack buddies were committed to develop into a commercial center capable of exporting goods from and to its western trans-Appalachian interior, and sufficiently “scaled” to withstand competition from Baltimore, Charleston and even Philadelphia. Of course, as the fate of the Port Bill alludes, there was no lack of other river and Chesapeake Bay communities that also aspired to some level of a port function. What is not necessarily known to the reader is that Washington D.C., the Federal City (capitol) was (After the demise of the Port Bill to be Plan B) intended to function as Virginia’s port city. Washington & friends had already acquired substantial property there, and he successfully maneuvered to include Alexandria in the original boundaries of the Federal District. Alexandria did not become an autonomous incorporated city until the Civil War. This will be discussed in a future chapter. Accordingly, despite the sad fate of the 1784 Port Bill, the matter of a Virginia port city still had some life left in it–thanks to our First Economic Developer.

The 1775-6 Revolutionary War descended upon Norfolk directly. In fact, it was ground zero in the civil war between the Royalist governor Dunsmore and the insurgent forces of the Virginia Patriot Conventions. The city was without doubt a Loyalist stronghold, and last major point of resistance in the quest for Patriot sovereignty over Virginia. Dunsmore, with a British fleet lay off its shores, and Royal Marines and Loyalist volunteers staffed his expeditionary army. Infused with escaped slaves, offered their freedom for service to the British crown, and Loyalist refugees from across Virginia (and North Carolina), Norfolk was the make-it or break it last ditch stand of Virginia colonial governance. Suffice it to say, the Patriots won in the end–after more than six months of attacks, siege, battles and forays. Much of Norfolk itself was burned in the process, the British fleet shelled Norfolk when it fell, and when final victory had by the Patriots, they burned and sacked the rest. It is claimed 800 buildings were destroyed, about two-thirds of the city leveled.

Loyalists left with the British fleet–as did many slaves–and the city was a shell of its former self. Of and on the British raided Virginia, and after late 1780 the British began their “southern campaign” and using Yorktown and Norfolk as their staging and supply area, they invaded the entire South with Lord Cornwallis’s army. To be fair, this was one reason Virginian elites did not develop an entrepreneurial bent during the Revolutionary War; they had little infrastructure available for export. To add insult to injury, a great waterfront fire in 1804 destroyed much of what had been rebuilt by that point [6].

Baltimore, however, was free to grow and prosper during this period–and its increase in population reflected that. Using Baltimore City’s population base of less than 7,000 in 1775, it had grown to 1,350 by 1790. Subsequent annexations and mergers of its adjoining neighbors, and further growth meant Baltimore in 1800 had grown to 26,500–and by 1810 to 46,555. At that point Norfolk was at its peak, with 9,200. 1820, however, tells the tale: in that year Baltimore grew to 62,700+, and Norfolk declined to less than 8500. The War of 1812 devastated Norfolk’s West Indies trade, and a rising New York port competition finished the job. Baltimore, in the meanwhile, had reached accommodation with its Loyalist commercial elites, and was capturing more than its fair share of declining immigration from Europe. By that time, a rising urban elite in Baltimore, exercised its power and created an autonomous policy system capable of defending itself from the Maryland plantation oligopoly.

Let’s put this is a larger context before we return to 1780’s Virginia revolutionary war policy system’s economic development–

In the opening module, picked up in this module, w know that George Washington, ours (and Virginia’s) First Economic Developer had devised a Virginia-centric economic development strategy that was meant through the Patowmack Canal to access and extend Virginia’s economic influence into its trans-Appalachian interior. To be successful that required Virginia develop a major port city, with infrastructure both physical and commercial/export finance cluster. Upon his return to Mount Vernon in 1784, he mobilized his allies, restarted the canal state-chartered corporation and began serious construction on the canal, discovered by happen-stance a technology (the steamboat and its combustion engine) that could navigate the Fall Line rapids and permeate the deep interior, and had introduced/secured approval through his close political and investor association (Madison) of the 1784 Port Bill designed to focus Virginia’s attention on the creation of two sizable ports for export.

By 1786 under his leadership, Virginia had achieved a head-start over the other colonies (Pennsylvania being the most formidable), and it had done so with a supportive state government which had stepped to the plate with serious financial subsidies to his newly formed state-chartered EDO. At that point, he attempted to nail down Maryland support and participation in the endeavor (after all the other shore of the Potomac, on which the entire project rested, was owned by Maryland. While Maryland proved cooperative, Pennsylvania who controlled the opposite bank of the Potomac’s headwaters in the interior, would not. The Articles of Confederation proved no help–and in frustration Washington and Madison put together the Annapolis Convention–which as we now know morphed into a serious drive to reform the Articles, to make them friendlier to interstate commerce, and that in turn led to the 1787 Constitutional Convention–and the rest, they say, is history.

As all this unfurled, Washington was pulled into politics, constitution-writing–leaving his project behind in the hands of managers. The Port Bill imploded, his venture capital-financed steamboat entered into competition with a Pennsylvania-financed steamboat–and a decade long battle frustrated any real commercialization of that technology. The canal however, continued construction, and by the middle 1790’s had reached the Fall Line–always on the edge of fiscal ruin, it finally had by that time established a niche into Virginia’s interior–but not the trans-Appalachian. Profits rolled in and interest distributions flowed to the investors. The locks at Little Falls were completed in 1795, and five locks at Great Falls were opened  in 1802. The canal had by 1800 become functioning. Washington in the meanwhile went to Plan B for a commercial port: the Federal City, the capital of the United States Washington D.C. With Alexandria within its boundaries, Washington built his city. That story will be told in great detail in future chapters. The city was no gazelle in its financing and construction (for the first five years, the Federal Government wouldn’t provide financial support–Washington had to finance the city using his own contacts and sources. He directly managed the project while holding down his night job–the Presidency. Congress came to the rescue in 1795-7, and the rudiments of a national capital were constructed so by 1800 John and Abigail Adams moved in and Washington D.C. became the nation’s capital.

By then, George Washington, who had returned to Mount Vernon and who had reasserted his influence over the Canal, had died in 1799. In 1800, Washington’s fellow canal investor and dedicated political foe, Thomas Jefferson was elected President. Jefferson, never a fan of large cities, was not committed to making Washington D.C. a major urban center–and D.C. federal investment (and private investment as well) petered out. Washington D.C. did not become the great commercial port Washington hoped for. The Canal meanwhile stagnated, and in 1810 went into bankruptcy–its assets turned over to the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Company which in 1825 was rechartered by President Monroe in one of the last acts of his presidency as a final effort to achieve Washington’s great vision.

By the 1820’s, the last of the Virginia-born Presidents, the Virginia dynasty, James Monroe made one last attempt to relive Washington’s dream–adopted by his successor, J.Q. Adams—Washington’s last economic development hurrah could not gain traction in Virginia politics, and succumbed to the 1825 Erie Canal and the subsequent rise of the City of New York to become one of the globe’s “world cities”. Virginia had lost the race, squandered its initial head start to be a major economic leader of a new nation and source point for expanding into the trans-Appalachian West. It’s day in the sun was over. Andrew Jackson made sure that sun would never shine for a very long time. That my friends, is the larger context.

 

Footnotes

[1] Drew R. McCoy, the Virginia Port Bill of 1784″, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (Vol. 83, No. 3 (July, 1975), p. 289

[2] Drew R. McCoy, the Virginia Port Bill of 1784″, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (Vol. 83, No. 3 (July, 1975), pp 299-300

[3] Drew R. McCoy, the Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (W. W. Norton & Co., 1980), pp. 15-16

[4] Thomas M. Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (University of North Carolina Press, 1986), p. 360

[5] Jackson Turner Main, the Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton, 1965), p. 184

[6] see Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Norfolk: Historic Southern Port (University of North Carolina Press, 1931)