Jefferson, Thomas (Administration)

WHEN THOMAS Jefferson became the third president of the United States in 1801, the nation could not have looked more different than the superpower that it has since become. But Jefferson's administration produced three major accomplishments without which the geographical and economic expansion of the nation would simply not have been possible. Ironically, all three of these accomplishments are now at least indirectly at the center of the debates over the erosion of American prosperity and of the standard of living of the average American.

The Louisiana Purchase not only opened the way for American expansion to the Pacific coast, but it also allowed the United States to absorb the great wave of European immigration that occurred in the second half of the 19th century. Without the availability of homesteads on the central and Great Plains, the near-anarchic expansion of American cities would have become absolutely untenable. The opening of the vast breadbasket also sustained the expansion of the railroads, which then made possible the rapid industrial expansion during the Gilded Age.

Indeed, agricultural produce became America's first great export, and the Jefferson administration secured the rights of American commercial interests throughout the world with two major efforts.

First, it successfully prosecuted a war against the Barbary states of north Africa that essentially sponsored piracy. Second, it responded to continued British and French predations on American shipping by imposing the Embargo Acts of 1807. For several years, all trade between the United States and those contending European powers and their allies was curtailed. Jefferson hoped that the economic effects of such an embargo would force the British and French to recognize American rights as a neutral state to trade freely with both nations. After several years, however, it became clear that the embargo had failed in this goal and that it had, in fact, harmed American shipping interests much more than their European counterparts.

In addition, the embargo's negative effects had rippled through the American economy, creating massive unemployment in ports that depended on shipping and [Page 595]shipbuilding and severely constraining the profits of both farmers and shippers within the interior of the nation itself. On the positive side, however, nascent American industries expanded rapidly to compensate for the prohibited imports of European manufactured goods. The economic potential of these industries became so apparent that the interests of industrialists were subsequently advanced over the interests of shippers through the imposition of stiffer tariffs on foreign goods. This shift in emphasis was also because of the federal gov-ernment's dependence on tariffs for most of its revenue and the need the revenues lost because of the embargo.

From the beginning, the government's budget crisis has thus been intertwined with economic and trade policies. Indeed, the most pressing current issues related to American economic performance have included the demise of family farming, the decreasing importance of manufacturing within the American domestic economy, and the increasing trade imbalance between America and states such as China, India, South Korea, and Mexico for whom global free-trade policies have been a boon. And all of these issues can be traced back through the events set in motion by the accomplishments of the Jefferson administration.

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