Thomas Jefferson and Commercial Policy, 1783-1793

Bibliographic Data

ID3486820
AuthorsMerrill D Peterson (corresponding author)
Year1965
Volume22
Issue4
Pages584
Publication date1965-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1922911
OpenAlexW2333994644
LanguageEN
Citations received6

O n December i6, I793, just two weeks before he resigned the office of Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson submitted to Congress his Report on the Privileges and Restrictions on the Commerce of the United States in Foreign Countries.1 The Report had a curious history. It was made in compliance with a resolution of the House of Representatives in February 1791. Jefferson worked it up in the ensuing months and planned to present it when Congress convened in the fall; but his colleague in the Treasury Department, Alexander Hamilton, opposed it violently, thinking the threat of commercial warfare on Great Britain, which the Report carried, would wreck the negotiations then in process with the British minister. Jefferson agreed to defer the Report.2 It lapsed into the catalepsy of the British negotiations. A year passed; Jefferson revised the Report and prepared to submit it at the close of the Second Congress in February I793. But the timing troubled him. His recommendations would almost certainly get a better hearing from the Third Congress, more heavily freighted with Republicans, and in the interim the new French minister would have an opportunity to present the attractive commercial propositions he was thought to be bringing from Paris, thus strengthening the Secretary's case for differential treatment of the commerce of Britain and France. The Republican leadership in the House, prodded by Jefferson, decided not to call for the Report.3

Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History

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