War
is the most potent engine of economic competition. Constantinople and
Antwerp survived and flourished on the same identical conditions long
before the day of London. She must keep her avenues of communication with
all the world open, and guard them against possible attack. So long as
America competed actively with England on the sea, even for her own trade,
her relations with Great Britain were troubled. The irritation of the
colonies with the restrictions which England put upon their commerce
materially contributed to foment the revolution, as abundantly appears in
the famous case of John Hancock's sloop Liberty, which was seized for
smuggling. So in the War of 1812, England could not endure the United
States as a competitor in her contest with France. She must be an ally,
or, in other words, she must function as a component part of the British
economic system, or she must be crushed. The crisis came with the attack
of the Leopard on the Chesapeake in 1807, after which the possibility of
maintaining peace, under such a pressure, appeared, in its true light, as
a phantasm. After the war, with more or less constant friction, the same
conditions continued until the outbreak of the Rebellion, and then Great
Britain manifested her true animus as a competitor. She waged an
unacknowledged campaign against the commerce of the United States,
building, equipping, arming, manning, and succoring a navy for the South,
which operated none the less effectively because its action was officially
repudiated.
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