Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- MAP 1 The American Eastern Seaboard, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea
- MAP 2 Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River
- Abbreviations
- Note on US Dollar/Pound Sterling Conversion Rates
- Foreword
- Preface
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 CONVOYS AND BLOCKADES: The Evolution of Maritime Economic Warfare
- 2 WAR AT A DISTANCE: Constraints and Solutions
- 3 FROM BUSINESS PARTNERS TO ENEMIES: Britain and the United States before 1812
- 4 THE UNITED STATES BLOCKADED: Admiral Warren's ‘United Command’, August 1812–April 1814
- 5 BLOCKADES AND BLUNDERS: Vice-Admiral Cochrane's Command, April 1814–February 1815
- 6 TRADE AND WAR: The Effects of Warren's Blockades, August 1812–April 1814
- 7 CAPITAL AND CREDIT: The Impact of the Final Phase
- 8 RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
- EPILOGUE
- Appendix A: Maritime Tables
- Appendix B: Economic History Tables
- Notes to the Chapters
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - CAPITAL AND CREDIT: The Impact of the Final Phase
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- MAP 1 The American Eastern Seaboard, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea
- MAP 2 Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River
- Abbreviations
- Note on US Dollar/Pound Sterling Conversion Rates
- Foreword
- Preface
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 CONVOYS AND BLOCKADES: The Evolution of Maritime Economic Warfare
- 2 WAR AT A DISTANCE: Constraints and Solutions
- 3 FROM BUSINESS PARTNERS TO ENEMIES: Britain and the United States before 1812
- 4 THE UNITED STATES BLOCKADED: Admiral Warren's ‘United Command’, August 1812–April 1814
- 5 BLOCKADES AND BLUNDERS: Vice-Admiral Cochrane's Command, April 1814–February 1815
- 6 TRADE AND WAR: The Effects of Warren's Blockades, August 1812–April 1814
- 7 CAPITAL AND CREDIT: The Impact of the Final Phase
- 8 RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
- EPILOGUE
- Appendix A: Maritime Tables
- Appendix B: Economic History Tables
- Notes to the Chapters
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I will yet hope we may have no more war. If we do, alas … we are not making ready as we ought to do. Congress trifle away the most precious of their days.
(Mrs Madison to Mrs Gallatin, 7 January 1814)ON 1 JANUARY 1814 THE NEW TAXES authorised by Congress the previous August came into effect. These internal excise duties, on the distillation and sale of spirits, sugar refining, auctions, carriages, bank notes and ‘negotiable paper’, were accompanied by ‘direct’ taxes on land, property and slaves. Customs duties alone were failing to meet wartime expenditure and, with public borrowing becoming increasingly difficult, taxation of a wider range of spending had become unavoidable. But these distasteful revivals of earlier Federalist taxes would, as before, have to be paid by the affluent, be predictably unpopular and, if possible, be evaded. Worse, they were together estimated to yield no more net revenue than $5.6m, not enough when set against the government's increasingly urgent need. Funds for the first three months of 1814 had been sought as an additional loan of $7.5m, agreed in Congress the previous summer: a fiscal and financial consequence of the United States declining overseas trade.
By February 1814 Federalist Joseph Pearson of North Carolina told the House that ‘the expenditures of the Government, from January 1812, to January 1815, will have exceeded ninety millions of dollars, exclusive of many millions of outstanding claims’. They had, in fact, exceeded $96.5m by December 1814.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- How Britain Won the War of 1812The Royal Navy's Blockades of the United States, 1812-1815, pp. 161 - 203Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011