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The Spanish American Aspect of Henry Clay’s American System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Randolph B. Campbell
Randolph B. Campbell*
Affiliation:
North Texas State University, Denton, Texas
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Extract

Henry Clay of Kentucky first offered his American System as a plan to guide the growth of the United States during the period of awakening nationalism that followed the Peace of Ghent in 1815. When asked just before his death in 1852 to make up a list of his most important public services for use by some friends who were having a medal struck to commemorate his career, Clay prepared a list of fourteen items which included the American System with the date, 1824. Thus, at the end of his long career, the Kentuckian identified this phrase with his most famous speech in support of the protective tariff. It may then seem surprising that his first recorded use of the term came on May 10, 1820, in a speech supporting recognition of the emerging nations of Spanish America. Clay’s use of “American System” in these two apparently different areas of discussion has led to two separate connotations for the phrase. The two meanings call for careful discrimination. Equally important, however, is the significant connection between them in the thought of Henry Clay.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , July 1967 , pp. 3 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1967

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References

1 Clay, Henry, The Works of Henry Clay; Comprising his Life, Correspondence, and Speeches, ed., Colton, Calvin (New York, 1904), V, 620–622.Google Scholar

2 Some authors do not include the Second Bank of the United States as a part of the American System. Among these are Colton, Calvin, The Life and Times of Henry Clay (New York, 1846), I, 428 Google Scholar, and Deusen, Glyndon G. Van, The Life of Henry Clay (Boston, 1937), 164–165, 215Google Scholar. A good example of the more widely accepted definition is found in a recent study in The New American Nation Series— Dangerfield, George, The Awakening of American Nationalism, 1815–1828 (New York, 1965), 207–208 Google Scholar. Among a number of well-known American History textbooks, only Morison, Samuel E. and Commager, Henry S., The Growth of the American Republic (New York, 1950), I, 438–439 Google Scholar, limited the system to the tariff and internal improvements. Malone, Dumas and Rauch, Basil, Empire for Liberty (New York, 1960), I, 406 Google Scholar; Blum, John M. and others, The National Experience (New York, 1963), 186 Google Scholar; and Harry Williams, T., Current, Richard, & Freidel, Frank, A History of the United States (New York, 1964), I, 369 Google Scholar, all include the national bank as an integral part of the system. This seems to be the more valid view since Clay did not feel the need to emphasize the bank which had recently (1816) been established for. a twenty-year period.

3 Alexander Hamilton used “American System ” in Number Eleven of the Federalist Papers to refer to the thirteen former colonies of Britain, but this seems to have been an isolated appearance of the term prior to the beginning of the revolutions in Spanish America. Sperber, Hans & Trittschur, Travis, American Political Terms (Detroit, 1962), 14 Google Scholar; Luxon, Norval N., Niles’ Weekly Register, News Magazine of the Nineteenth Century (Baton Rouge, La., 1947), 113.Google Scholar

4 Jefferson, Thomas, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed., Lipscomb, Andrew A. (Washington, 1903-1904), XIV, 22 Google Scholar. For other examples of the expression of this idea see Bornholdt, Laura, “The Abbé de Pradt and the Monroe Doctrine,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 24 (May, 1944), 219–220 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cresson, William P., The Holy Alliance: The European Background of the Monroe Doctrine (New York, 1922), 84.Google Scholar

5 Pratt, Julius W., A History of United States Foreign Policy (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1955), 181 Google Scholar. See also Whitaker, Arthur P., The Western Hemisphere Idea: Its Rise and Decline (Ithaca, N. Y., 1954), Chapter 2Google Scholar.

6 Johnson, Gerald, America’s Silver Age. The Statecraft of Clay-Webster-Calhoun (New York, 1939), 15, 167–170.Google Scholar

7 Dangerfield, Awakening of American Nationalism, 166.

8 Blum and others, National Experience, 192.

9 Bornholdt, Laura, Baltimore and Early Pan Americanism, A Study of the Background of the Monroe Doctrine (Northampton, Mass., 1949), 29–30 Google Scholar; Stone, Richard G., Hezekiah Niles as an Economist (Baltimore, 1933), 7–8, 40–41, 56.Google Scholar

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11 Ibid., II, 522–523.

12 Annals of Congress, 15th Congress, 1st Session, 1515, 1622.

13 Clay, Papers, II, 856–857.

14 Ibid., II, 857–858. This was Clay’s first recorded use of the exact phrase. When Van Deusen quoted this passage in his Life of Henry Clay, 129, he capitalized both “American ” and “System,” but the original report in Annals of Congress does not capitalize “system.” See below, note 33.

15 Ibid., II, 867–870, Clay to Charles Wilkins et al., June 3, 1820.

16 Annals, 17th Congress, 1st Session, I, 1383–1387.

17 Buren, Martin Van, Autobiography, ed., Fitzpatrick, John C., American Historical Association, Annual Report (1918), 307.Google Scholar

18 Clay, Papers, III, 597.

19 Williams, William A., “The Age of Mercantilism: An Interpretation of the American Political Economy, 1763–1828,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, XV (October, 1958), 436 Google Scholar. Henry Clay certainly had this idea. See note 32 below.

20 Adams, John Quincy, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams Comprising Portions of his Diary from 1195–1848, ed., Adams, Charles Francis (Philadelphia, 1874-1877), V, 176 Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., VI, 224.

22 Setser, Vernon G., The Commercial Reciprocity Policy of the United States, 1774–1829 (Philadelphia, 1937), 184, 251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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24 Adams, Memoirs, VI, 531.

25 American State Papers, V, 834–835.

26 Ibid.; International American Conference, Proceedings, IV, “The Congress of 1826 at Panama, and Subsequent Movements toward a Conference of American Nations,” (Washington, 1910), 114–118.Google Scholar

27 Van Buren, Autobiography, 199.

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29 Ibid., 19th Congress, 1st Session, II, Part 2, 2078–2079, 2087.

30 Quoted in Luxon, Niles’ Weekly Register, 113.

31 Clay, Papers, II, 546.

32 Adams, Memoirs, V, 113–116.

33 For examples of Bolívar’s point of view see Bolívar, Simón, Selected Writings of Bolivar, compiled by Lecuna, Vicente, edited by Bierck, Harold A. Jr. (New York, 1951), II, 489, Bolivar to Francisco de Paula Santander, April 7, 1825Google Scholar; II, 543, Bolivar to Santander, October 21, 1825.

34 Ibid., Ill, 690–691.

35 Ibid., III, 701. In reporting this speech, the phrase “American System ” was printed entirely in upper case letters. In 1820, “American ” was capitalized, but “system” was not. This may be taken as a sign of the increasing renown of Clay’s program.

36 Ibid., Ill, 704–705.

37 Clay even went so far in 1828 as to write to Bolivar on the matter of reports concerning the latter’s “ambitious designs” in Colombia. Clay, Works, I, 266-267.

38 Rippy, J. Fred, The Rivalry of the United States and Great Britain over Latin America, 1808–1830 (Baltimore, 1929), 303–306.Google Scholar

39 Adams, Memoirs, V, 324.

40 Moore, John Bassett, “Henry Clay and Pan-Americanism,” Columbia University Quarterly, XVII (Sept., 1915), 358 Google Scholar; Curtis Wilgus, A., “James G. Blaine and the Pan American Movement,” Hispanic American Historical Review, V (November, 1922), 667 Google Scholar; Pratt, History of U.S. Foreign Policy, 345.

41 Barnard, Eunice Fuller, “To Henry Clay comes Paradoxical Fame,” New York Times Magazine, April 10, 1927 Google Scholar; Robledo, Alfonso, “Elogio a Henry Clay,” Hispanic American Historical Review, VI (November, 1926), 199–204.Google Scholar

42 “Latin America’s Homage to Henry Clay on the Occasion of the One-Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of his Birth: April 12, 1777-April 12, 1927,” Pan American Union Bulletin, LXI (June, 1927), 539–546 Google Scholar.

43 Clay’s well-known speech, “In Defense of the American System,” delivered to the Senate in February, 1832, concentrated almost entirely on defending the protective tariff.