The integrated developmental program articulated by Henry Clay after the War of 1812 and implemented most fully by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Three pillars: protective tariffs, a national bank, and federally funded internal improvements.
The system’s intellectual root is Alexander Hamilton’s Report on the Subject of Manufactures (1791). Its theoretical elaboration came from Henry Carey. Its most complete implementation ran from the Morrill Tariff (1861) through the National Banking Acts (1863 and 1864), the Homestead Act (1862), the Pacific Railway Acts (1862 and 1864), the Morrill Land-Grant College Act (1862), and the greenback issuance under the Legal Tender Acts.
The American System is a growth-phase framework, nationalist and industrial in its assumptions. Its structural principle, value measured by what stays inside the national economy, is the precursor logic that Regenerative Economics inherits and extends. Contrast with British-style free trade, which after Peel’s 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws became the doctrine Britain exported once it had achieved industrial dominance.
Related terms
Sources
- Hamilton, A. (1791). Report on the Subject of Manufactures
- Carey, H. C. (1851). The Harmony of Interests
Provenance
Extracted from Section 2, Cluster B of the Research Brief: The S-Curve Thesis.