Introduction

On October 19, 1829, the second annual fair of the American Institute of the City of New-York came to an end.Footnote ¹ For three days, a reported thirty thousand people had strolled through the stands, observing and examining the “one thousand Specimens of Domestic Manufactures” on display. Curious New Yorkers and out-of-town visitors attending the closing ceremony experienced a carefully orchestrated spectacle. Upon entering the Masonic Hall, they might admire “at the opposite part of the hall, as if raised by magic, a temple twenty-two feet in height.” The arches were supported by four columns, each ostentatiously decorated to symbolize the American Institute’s departments—agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and the arts. Near the center, a bust of Alexander Hamilton presided, surrounded by evergreens and painted glass enclosing twenty-four burning lamps, one for each state in the union. As the band started playing in the gallery, two of the vice presidents, textile and machinery manufacturer Peter S. Schenck and merchant Curtis Bolton, entered and sat down on a sack of wool. The rest of the officers followed, ceremoniously taking their seats around the stage, and after a call to order, the managers of the fair announced the winners of the several premiums and honorary diplomas. General David Lynch then ascended the scene and delivered an address, elaborating on the harmony of interests among the different branches of industry. As he finished, the band struck up “Hail Columbia,” and the popular song, according to one reporter “seemed to add new inspiration, and raise the patriotism of the audience to a higher pitch than ever.” On the way out, visitors were invited to pass through the temple.Footnote ²

The three-day event at the Masonic Hall was an ostentatious celebration of domestic ingenuity and skill in manufacturing and the mechanic arts. Exhibitions of this kind—combining the marketing of merchandize, competition for awards, and popular entertainment—were by no means a novelty by the late 1820s. Detailed accounts of the larger European fairs had for years circulated widely in U.S. newspapers, and New Yorkers were familiar with similar events organized by town councils and agricultural societies around the mid-Atlantic and New England states. Several of the officers of the American Institute had experience—as exhibitors, judges, and managers—from the fairs organized by the New-York Mechanic and Scientific Institution in the early 1820s.Footnote ³ The exhibitions organized by the American Institute, however, differed both in terms of scope and objectives. “Our fairs did not grow out of the sole desire of traffic, as was the case with European fairs,” Superintending Agent Thaddeus B. Wakeman explained in a written address to the members. “Their origin was connected with noble principles.”Footnote ⁴ So what were these noble principles? To address the question, we first need to recognize that Wakeman and his allies primarily conceived of the fair as a political instrument. From its formation in early 1828 to the mid-1840s, when its activities began to change focus, the American Institute remained the principal interest group of “friends of industry” in the United States. Its leadership initiated and hosted the tariff convention of 1831, put out the call for the “National Convention of Business Men” in 1837, launched and coordinated the Home League movement in 1841–1842, and provided a focal point of mobilization throughout these years. Its declared mission was to secure government support for domestic manufacturing. In comparison to earlier as well as contemporary interest groups, its longevity and ability to mobilize members was nothing short of remarkable. Key to the institute’s capacity to engage in politics, this paper argues, was the development of the annual exhibitions.Footnote ⁵

Congressional records, newspapers, and a range of other sources from the early republic and antebellum eras are ripe with references to a vaguely defined manufacturing interest wielding influence over the political process. However, the activities of self-proclaimed friends of industry, and organized business interests more broadly, remain an understudied topic in studies of the pre–Civil War period. Louis Galambos famously dismissed antebellum interest groups as mere “dinner-club associations.” Lacking bureaucratic and financial muscle, he argued, these organizations were typically short-lived and primarily focused on exchanging information regarding technical and other largely nonpolitical matters. Whereas political parties have attracted a great deal of attention among scholars of pre–Civil War United States, other modes of organizing interests and channeling political activism have been largely overlooked. Important exceptions include Lawrence Peskin’s study of rhetoric and ideology, roughly covering the period from the 1760s to the 1810s, and Daniel Peart’s work on Pennsylvania associations in the late 1810s and the tariff debates between 1816 to the Civil War era. Neither, however, engages with the problem of group mobilization—that is, how friends of industry coalesced and acquired the resources necessary to become an effective force in politics.Footnote ⁶

The American Institute has hitherto not been the subject of any extensive research.Footnote ⁷ When it at all appears in the literature, it is typically in studies of class formation as one of the many mechanics’ institutes formed in the antebellum decades. Emphasizing ideals of moral uplift, diligence, self-elevation, and discipline, these institutes took form within a broad reform movement that gained momentum as growing social tensions fractured traditional authority structures.Footnote ⁸ In a period marked by a shift from handicraft to industrial modes of production and rapid market expansion, mechanics’ institutes served as vehicles for rising groups in pursuit of social distinction and cultural authority.Footnote ⁹ The American Institute indeed embraced many of the same objectives, and its officers insisted that the fairs were “doing more to elevate and dignify the mechanic, the artisan and the manufacturer, than all the other means added together.”Footnote ¹⁰ Much less understood, yet equally significant, the American Institute also became the foremost interest group of self-declared friends of industry in the United States. The institute was formed by an elite group of New York City manufacturers and investors, with the declared objective to counter tendencies “in various quarters, to create and perpetuate a spirit unfriendly to the growth and prosperity of our own manufactures.” Unlike many other mechanics’ institutes, membership was never restricted to specific occupations, but rather to men “entertaining the same views in relation to the policy of encouraging and protecting our national industry.”Footnote ¹¹

The institute’s officers embraced a view of economic development according to which the growth of domestic industry would promote technological innovation and exchange in an ever-expanding national marketplace. In the process, rival interests would combine and help bridge regional and emerging class conflict. Recent studies highlight the central role of slavery in industrial growth and market expansion. Growing attention to “the Cotton Kingdom” and its place in transnational financial networks and commodity flows, the interstate slave trade, the adaptation of steamboat transportation and agricultural innovation, and the development of southern credit and land markets has prompted a revision of an older historiography that depicts slavery as an essentially premodern economic regime, increasingly at odds with industrial capitalism. On closer examination, northern manufacturers relied on the steady supply of southern staples—harvested, processed, and packaged by enslaved men and women—and the demand for finished goods in southern markets. Bankers, insurance agents, commission merchants, shippers, jobbers, and speculators, facilitating interregional exchanges, made fortunes that subsequently helped finance new production plants and infrastructure projects. Nowhere were the connections between the growth of slavery and American capitalism more evident, or indeed more ambivalent, than in New York City. As New Yorkers emancipated their own slaves and gradually embraced free-labor rhetoric, local economic fortunes increasingly relied on the planter’s whip. From the prolonged conflict over the 1828 tariff and nullification to the mid-1840s, the American Institute was the most powerful industry lobby in the country, and as such an influential proponent of the expanding market economy. An examination of the institute’s early history allows us to assess how friends of industry contributed to what revisionist historians now label “slavery’s capitalism.”Footnote ¹²

Interest group politics is arguably as old as government. Throughout the colonial and revolutionary eras, loosely organized groups of merchants, artisans, seamen, or common laborers would occasionally come together to draft petitions, march through the streets, and in other ways manifest their grievances. Such outbursts of collective action served to strengthen group identity and advance new repertoires of protest, yet these tended to be temporary, ad hoc arrangements.Footnote ¹³ U.S. manufacturing grew considerably as a result of prolonged interruptions of foreign trade from the Embargo Act of 1807 and throughout the War of 1812. As hostilities ended, friends of industry sought to organize and convince elected officials of the necessity of protecting newly erected manufacturing establishments from foreign competition. Mobilization, however, proved difficult. The American Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Manufactures (ASEDM) in New York City, formed in early December, 1816, and similar associations elsewhere were only able to overcome problems of coordination, finance, and internal disputes for shorter periods, typically during parts of a congressional session. For students of collective action, this should come as no surprise. Disruptions, economic or political, might provide an environment conducive to group mobilization, but discontent does not automatically translate into action. Individuals have to band together, mobilize resources, and identify opportunities. Group members have to formulate a common agenda and agree on methods to pursue that agenda. All these steps involve considerable difficulties. Once formed, moreover, the group needs to put mechanisms in place to sustain internal cohesion and counter what nineteenth-century Americans referred to as the problem of “apathy.”Footnote ¹⁴

The American Institute is central to the history of U.S. interest politics and the development of representative democracy more broadly. In contrast to earlier industry associations, including the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts as well as the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures, the institute managed to establish an organizational structure and assemble the necessary resources for sustained mobilization. Besides, groups active before the late-1810s tended to be, as Lawrence Peskin points out, “odd hybrids, part voluntary associations and part industrial corporations.”Footnote ¹⁵ While bringing attention to the potential of manufacturing, they primarily served to advance specific enterprises rather than any broad pro-industry agenda. The early history of the American Institute is of particular significance, moreover, because the group’s ascendancy marked a widening differentiation in terms of how parties and interest groups approached politics. Whereas emerging Whig and Democratic party organizations adapted to the democratization of the political system by employing mass rallies, parades, and “Log Cabin-Hard Cider” type of campaigns, the American Institute pursued alternative ways to build support for its agenda. The annual fairs provided opportunities to practice a politics of persuasion without resorting to mass meetings and demagoguery.

Recognizing that the institute rejected some practices of mass politics, and consistently employed an antipartisan rhetoric, is not to suggest that leading members lacked party allegiances. Quite the contrary, a quick glance reveals that several institute officers ran as candidates on party (mostly, but not exclusively, Whig) tickets, wrote partisan editorials, served on ward committees, or managed party meetings. Their personal connections with men in power and firsthand knowledge of the intricacies of party politics were no doubt vital assets to the institute. However, industry friends saw advantages in operating outside party structures. To be sure, Whigs tended to be more favorable to the government taking an active role in the economy than their Democratic opponents, yet both parties remained diverse and often unwieldy coalitions. Democrats, moreover, retained considerable support among important groups of manufacturers, notably iron makers, well into the 1850s.Footnote ¹⁶

Looking at Congress, it seems evident that agitation over federal support of domestic manufacturing largely subsided in the years following the Compromise of 1833, and remained dormant until late 1841. The structure of the compromise, which called for a gradual reduction of import duties, in combination with rapid economic expansion and concerns about reviving sectional conflict, effectively tabled debates over the tariff.Footnote ¹⁷ Industry advocates, who had primarily been active during congressional sessions, now seemingly lacked a focal point of mobilization. Accordingly, historians interested in tariff debates, most recently Daniel Peart, tend to portray the remainder of the 1830s as a hiatus in the protracted struggles over commercial policy.Footnote ¹⁸ Yet it was precisely in these years that the American Institute managed to build a broad membership base, steady revenue flows, a functioning bureaucracy, and a network of supporting institutions and allies. Its growth was nothing short of spectacular. Increasing revenues from membership fees and exhibitions funded office space and meeting rooms, salaries, and extensive publication campaigns. In time, the American Institute had amassed the funds to purchase its own building. The fairs—bringing industry friends together and attracting new members, providing revenues from tickets sales, generating publicity, and forging close connections with the city’s political and financial elites—were pivotal to overcoming fundamental obstacles to political mobilization. Retaining considerable duty rates for nearly nine years, the Compromise of 1833 was favorable to manufacturers, and institute officers were determined to use the time to sway public opinion.

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In terms of both leadership and objectives, the American Institute was a successor of the long defunct American Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Manufactures. No complete membership roll of that society has survived, but brief newspaper accounts suggest that it was an exclusive group of elite members. Daniel D. Tompkins, governor of New York and soon-to-be vice president, and “the Last Patroon” Stephen Van Rensselaer, who served multiple terms in the state and federal legislatures, presided over the first meeting. After the society was properly organized, revolutionary war hero William Few, president of the City Bank and former governor and senator of Georgia, served as its president. Other prominent members included Thomas Morris, son of financier Robert Morris; distinguished lawyers William Sampson, Thomas Addis Emmet, and Cadwallader D. Colden, later mayor of New York and U.S. representative; wealthy merchant Gilbert Aspinwall; and famed physician and naturalist Samuel L. Mitchill.Footnote ¹⁹

Among the most active members were a group of grocers and general merchants around Pearl and Water Streets, men who managed to take advantage of new economic opportunities created by the restrictive system and the war. Shipping lists and advertisements suggest that ASEDM officers Peter H. Schenck, Jacob T. Walden, Ichabod Prall, Samuel Tooker, and Thaddeus B. Wakeman did extensive business with southern ports—marketing flour and tobacco from Richmond as well as sugar and molasses from Savannah, Mobile, Blakeley, New Orleans, and Charleston. After investing in textile production—Schenck in the Matteawan Company in Dutchess County, Walden in the Wallkill Company in Orange County, and Prall and Tooker in the Westchester County Manufacturing Society—they also began buying cotton in large quantities. A graduate of Yale College and lawyer by trade, Wakeman moved to New York City just prior to the War of 1812 to establish a mercantile business trading in southern cotton. A projector of the Oneida Manufacturing Company and the Onondaga Manufacturing Company, producing cottons and woolens, and an associate in the Commission Company, which marketed domestic manufactures in the city, primarily textiles, Wakeman also served as director of the New-York Manufacturing Company, incorporated for “the manufacture of Iron and Brass Wire, and of Cotton and Wool Cards.” Schenck and his partners had agents in both Natchez and New Orleans buying up fibers and promoting the Matteawan Company’s wide assortment of coarse goods.Footnote ²⁰ Those who managed to weather the postwar depression could take advantage of rapidly improving machinery and communications. The Matteawan extended its operations, and Schenck also invested heavily in woolen production. Backed by a group of wealthy investors, including John Jacob and William B. Astor, he set up the Glenham Woolen factory, capitalized at $140,000. Considering that the largest woolen establishment listed in the 1820 census had a capital below $50,000, this was a major undertaking. Southern markets were crucial to this expansion. By 1830, there were packet lines between New York City and several southern ports—Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans, and Savannah—along with nine lines to Europe, facilitating the movement of increasing volumes of cotton, sugar, cotton and woollen textiles, and a range of other goods.Footnote ²¹

Although competitors for markets, skilled labor, and new technology, ASEDM members were closely connected through common business ventures. Peter H. Schenck & Co. marketed goods from Matteawan as well as other mid-Atlantic and New England factories, as did the Commission Company. Immediately after the war, the firm of T. B. Wakeman & Co. advertised sales of substantial volumes of yarn and “American Negro cloth,” including sheetings and shirting from Matteawan and the Ramapo Works. A major proprietor of the latter establishment was Isaac Pierson, a member of the ASEDM’s committee of correspondence.Footnote ²² Members formed and controlled the Manhattan Fire Insurance Company.Footnote ²³ Several officers—including Pierson and Few as well as Prall, Tooker, and their principal business partners Jasper Ward and Henry Fanning—also served on the board of the City Bank.Footnote ²⁴

The ASEDM quickly organized committees with specified responsibilities, and published petitions and secured the support of newspaper editors. Its representatives visited like-minded societies in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and initiated correspondence with several others. In 1819, members established an auxiliary organization, the New-York County Society for the Promotion of Agriculture and Domestic Manufactures, seemingly with the objective of initiating cooperation with like-minded agricultural societies throughout the state. The leading members in the two organizations were men of influence, talent, and considerable capital. However, during its brief spurts activity, the ASEDM failed to secure a steady revenue. Its officers even lacked a permanent location from which to conduct business. Advertisements suggest that meetings took place at venues like Tammany Hall or Washington Hall, where the society presumably rented a room for an evening. There were no salaried officers, and there is no evidence that the few active members were ever remunerated for services performed. Regular meetings were limited to four times a year, and attendance still seems to have been irregular. Formally, the society may have been active until late 1820 or early 1821, but for long stretches before the final dissolution, there is no evidence of any activity.Footnote ²⁵

After the demise of the ASEDM, several of the projectors behind the American Institute were also involved in the Mechanical and Scientific Institution, which, in several respects, provided a model for later efforts. Both the institute and the Mechanical and Scientific Institution propagated a vision of industrial production in which the interests of owners and managers were congruent with those of operatives. Both associations embraced, at least in theory, an egalitarian project including education for broader segments of the population and an emphasis on social elevation. Both officially denounced party politics. Unlike the American Society and, later, the American Institute, the Mechanical and Scientific Institution never advanced any particular vision of political economy and it remained largely detached from politics. Although—or perhaps because—leading New York industry friends had long been active in factional strife, there was a decidedly antipartisan tint to the postwar associational impulse, something Daniel Peart also notes in his study of Pennsylvania industry friends. Leading members of the American Society belonged to rival factions; indeed, they repeatedly competed for public office. Given the frequent, and often baffling, shifts in allegiances, and the intense discord characteristic of New York politics, the survival of voluntary associations was premised on rejecting partisanship.Footnote ²⁶

The first recorded meeting of the American Institute took place at Tammany Hall on February 19, 1828. Over the following weeks, members adopted a constitution, elected officers—a president, five vice presidents, a treasurer, and two secretaries—and established executive and corresponding committees. The officers subsequently added committees to handle finances, the organization of the fair, and other responsibilities. Several of the men present at the initial meetings later identified Wakeman, a veteran of the ASEDM, as the prime mover, and as corresponding secretary and superintending agent, he would remain a towering figure in the institute’s affairs until his death in 1848. Among the founding members were also Schenck, Prall, and Walden.Footnote ²⁷

The American Institute operated in a political landscape that was substantially different from that of its predecessor. Historians focusing on political parties have examined these changes, but their findings have not been integrated into studies of the tariff battles or other forms of interest politics. In the decades after the Napoleonic Wars, the interconnected forces of economic development, large-scale immigration, westward migration, and urbanization combined to upend the established social order. As traditional authority structures eroded, mob action and public disturbances seemingly became regular features of urban life. Elite members of society anxiously observed rising violence and crime, which they saw as reflective of a growing assertiveness on the part “the laboring classes.”Footnote ²⁸ Meanwhile, changes in voting rights and broadened access to office brought changes to the practice of politics. Candidates for national office, who traditionally had relied on relations with local elites, now had to court broader segments of the population. Extended suffrage, moreover, meant that candidates needed to formulate agendas that were both understandable and compelling to less educated and engaged voters. In order to galvanize the public, party operatives distributed propaganda, organized mass rallies and parades, and introduced various other innovations. Although there is some disagreement among scholars as to the actual expansion of voting rights in the Jacksonian era, no one can deny that the late 1820s and early 1830s was a time of extraordinary popular mobilization, involving not only a protracted conflict over the tariff and nullification but also sizeable strikes and the appearance of “Working Men” associations in a number of urban centers. Parties and interest groups alike had to adapt to the new political reality. The American Institute managed to do so; other like-minded associations did not. The Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Manufactures and the Mechanic Arts initiated the 1827 Harrisburg Convention, but did not remain a political force into the 1830s. Several industry friends in Philadelphia joined the Franklin Institute, with which the American Institute developed a close relationship, but the former organization remained decidedly nonpolitical.Footnote ²⁹

At this moment of heightened social tension and political agitation, the American Institute took form. In the short term, the primary objective was to put pressure on Congress, then in session, to modify the tariff. The Harrisburg Convention in the previous summer and extensive petition campaigns throughout the fall and winter had built considerable momentum for a revision of U.S. commercial policy. Wise of previous disappointments, the leading men behind the institute well understood that a reorganized manufacturing interest, if it was to survive and thrive, would have to take heed of ongoing changes in the political environment. From the outset, the founding members began considering alternative ways of building sustained popular support for a pro-industry agenda. In a public letter, issued in March 1828, they affirmed a shared commitment to encouraging “American skill and American industry,” asserting that “[i]n a government like ours, the basis on which all legislative encouragement to national industry can alone repose, must be the information and wishes of the people.” They firmly believed that the American Institute’s success in the end hinged on devising efficient methods of guiding “public sentiment.” A stated priority, accordingly, was to extend operations beyond traditional elite politics and provide broader segments of the population with “a more thorough and intimate knowledge” with respect to national resources and the factors conditioning economic development.Footnote ³⁰

Institute officers’ determination to appeal to broader segments of the population is evident in efforts to reframe the debate over economic policy. Recognizing the inflammable and complex nature of the tariff, they carefully sought to divert attention to other issues. Opponents of high import duties skillfully portrayed the protective policy not only as a regional injustice but as an economic doctrine for the enrichment of the few.Footnote ³¹ Eleazar Lord, whom the ASEDM had dispatched as a lobby agent to Washington in 1820, sought to put the focus on currency, arguing that a money supply better adjusted to market demand would give greater security to all assets while preventing sudden and ruinous fluctuations. Monetary policy, however, much like the tariff, proved difficult to explain in a simple language.Footnote ³² A more promising strategy was to focus on auction sales and customs frauds. Anti-auction meetings in New York and other cities drew considerable crowds, holding out the prospect of forming a powerful alliance with merchants, mechanics, and laboring people.Footnote ³³ Industry friends played a prominent role in the New York Anti-Auction committee, which denounced auctions as monopolies that advantaged foreign commercial agents over honest American importers.Footnote ³⁴ The New York Working Men, which organized in the fall of 1829 and which was subsequently overtaken by members of the American Institute, came out publicly for the abolition of credits on import duties and restrictions of the auction system.Footnote ³⁵

How to establish efficient communication channels, formulate a winning message, and boost visibility remained important considerations, but leaders of the American Institute were equally concerned about resolving the organizational problems that had undercut previous efforts. There were obvious benefits of an extensive membership. Convincing the city’s mechanics and other groups to join would not only provide much-needed funds in the form of admission fees and annual dues but also in the form of labor (a crucial resource as the fairs expanded). In addition, a large following would strengthen the American Institute’s claims to public patronage while giving credence to assertions of representing productive industry in general rather than the interest of a small group of privileged manufacturers.Footnote ³⁶ Yet a large organization would not automatically translate into unity of action and strength. Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, understood as much. A firm proponent of the American System and a prominent member of the Home League movement in the early 1840s, Greeley agreed that an extensive membership might give permanence and help “concentrate an influence.” At the same time, he recognized the challenges of directing an organization with “a democratic character.” The larger the association, the greater the number of opinions and, consequently, the greater risk of conflict and disintegration. Party animosity, in particular, Greeley warned, might erupt and render the association “like a ship without ballast.”Footnote ³⁷ Institute officers clearly perceived this risk and, while making great efforts to obtain the backing of a broad and numerous following, they at the same time implemented mechanisms designed to ensure that a small group of trusted industry friends would remain in control. This strategy was largely successful. Although the total membership by 1840 exceeded fifteen hundred, officers continued to be drawn from a narrow circle of confidants.Footnote ³⁸

According to its own journal, members of the American Institute were “mostly business men, in competent circumstances, of the middle classes.” Superintending Agent Wakeman later claimed that the initial objective was to enlist “men in slender circumstances,” primarily “businessmen” who could not afford, or lacked the requisite social credentials, to join the city’s most exclusive societies.Footnote ³⁹ A cross-check of membership records with city directories suggests that a fair number of men who might be categorized as mechanics—hatters, fender makers, perfumers, and so on—joined the institute in the first few years, yet this group did not constitute more than 20 percent of the total. More than 40 percent of those who joined in 1828, and who are possible to identify, were either merchants or attorneys, and the rest were manufacturers or prominent professionals. The directories, however, are but imperfect guides to assessing an individual’s socioeconomic status. James P. Allaire, for instance, listed as a brass and iron founder, at this time already employed about two hundred men at the Allaire Works. Hatter and jeweler James Benedict had served in the state assembly, owned a residence on Maiden Lane, and sat on the boards of one bank and two insurance companies.Footnote ⁴⁰ Another, even greater, problem is that officers most likely inflated the rolls. Edwin Williams, the institute’s recording secretary in the 1830s, later testified that “a great proportion” of the early members were admitted without “the request or consent of the persons named.” The rolls from the early years, then, probably reflect the officers’ ambitions for the institute rather than its actual membership.Footnote ⁴¹

For these reasons, it is problematic to draw general conclusions as to the composition of members in the early years. It is evident, however, that those who governed the American Institute throughout the 1830s and 1840s were by no means “men in slender circumstances.” Rather, they were men who owned considerable wealth, held lucrative public offices, and moved in the city’s elite social circles. Schenck, one of the vice presidents and chair of the finance committee, continued to invest heavily in the production of cotton and woolen textiles as well as machinery. The Matteawan Company was incorporated in 1822 with an initial capitalization of $100,000—subsequently raised to $150,000 in 1823, to $200,000 in 1833, to and $300,000 in 1835, in order to finance investments in new structures and machinery.Footnote ⁴² By the mid-1830s, Schenck and his partners oversaw a manufacturing complex that included several cottons and woollens mills, a foundry, and a machine shop. In total, some 2,200 people were “[c]onnected with these factories and employed therein.”Footnote ⁴³ The Matteawan Company continued to expand, producing steam engines, cotton and woolen machinery of every description, mill gearing, turning lathes, and cutting, plaining, and drilling machines. In 1832, the value produced by the machine shop already vastly exceeded that of the cotton establishment.Footnote ⁴⁴

Institute officers typically developed interests in a variety of businesses. The first president, William Few, served as president of the City Bank and the Manhattan Fire Insurance Company and on the board of the Saving Bank of New-York.Footnote ⁴⁵ In his own estimate, he owned property valued around $100,000 in 1816 and drew an annual income of about $6,000.Footnote ⁴⁶ First vice president John Mason was a major stockholder in several financial institutions, including the Bank of America, the American Insurance Company, and the National Insurance Company, and throughout the 1830s was the president of the Chemical Bank, which came to handle the institute’s deposits. In 1828, he belonged to the exclusive group of New Yorkers with a personal wealth assessed at $100,000 or more. Officers also included prominent attorneys and civic leaders Henry M. Western and Joseph Blunt as well as former U.S. representative John B. Yates, brother of a former New York governor and business associate of wealthy merchant and political leader Archibald McIntyre.Footnote ⁴⁷ Second vice president Curtis Bolton built a lucrative business partnership with his brother, John Bolton, the president of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company and partner with Peter H. Schenck in the Bronx Bleaching and Manufacturing Company. Curtis Bolton, moreover, served as director of the Bank of the United States and was, in the mid-1830s, placed at the head of the firm Curtis Bolton, Fox, and Livingston, which owned the Union Line, running packets between New York City and Havre.Footnote ⁴⁸

Despite their evident elite standing, the officers made sure to depict themselves as men of the people. A prepared Fourth of July toast described Clarkson Crolius, a member of the executive committee as “a ‘mechanic and working man’—a practical friend of the American System.” More accurately, he owned a prosperous stoneware manufacturing establishment and had served several terms in the state legislature. James Tallmadge, who was elected president in 1831 and continued to serve in that position over the following two decades, was, in an institute publication, portrayed as “a journeyman mechanic, and laboring with his hands,” before managing to render himself “independent of his circumstances.” A graduate from Brown University, Tallmadge grew up in a prominent family in Dutchess County, served in Congress and as lieutenant governor of New York, and owned considerable stock in several bank and insurance corporations, including the Farmers Fire Insurance and Loan Company.Footnote ⁴⁹

The leadership carefully supervised admissions in order to ensure that the American Institute remained true to its initial objectives. A prospective member first needed an endorsement from an existing member. The recording secretary then processed the application and presented it at the next regular meeting, where approval required a four-fifths majority of those present. The founding members also established bylaws allowing the election of “distinguished characters” as “honorary members.” These men were exempted from dues, and in the following decades, the officers took advantage of this mechanism to induct a large number of honorary, and later also, “corresponding” members as a way to augment the institute’s respectability and initiate contacts with associations and prominent individuals in other localities.Footnote ⁵⁰ An examination of the officer rolls makes evident that a small group remained in firm control. The long tenures of Wakeman, Tallmadge, Blunt, and a few others ensured stability. The low rotation of officers can in part be attributed to the fact that the leadership proved capable, but it was also a consequence of the small number of members voting in the annual elections. There were only fifty ballots in 1832, 28 in 1833, and 28 in 1834, and despite a large increase of members in the late 1830s and early 1840s, a mere forty-seven voted in 1844. Those who did vote tended to be aligned with the leadership, and early on it became common practice to publicize an official ticket. When faced with complaints, Wakeman openly admitted that he was “[p]rocuring members to attend, favorable to my views,” so as to “raise the respectability and esteem” of the association.”Footnote ⁵¹

Over the first few years, the institute struggled. One member, likely Wakeman, later reminisced how “the banner of free trade waved over the whole city” at the time of the first meeting. Short of funds and endorsements from “the rich and the powerful,” the account continued, many believed the institute would falter. The projectors, moreover, fought intensely among themselves and many, “after a few meetings, abandoned it as hopeless.” Yet “[a] few held on, and persevered.”Footnote ⁵² The account is partially misleading. Although the institute indeed encountered difficulties during the early years, it survived thanks to the support from a small group of wealthy members.Footnote ⁵³ The officers, however, clearly recognized the need to attract broad support and establish the institute on a firm foundation. A select committee was appointed to consider the best mode of approaching merchants, agriculturalists, and manufacturers and “make a lasting impression upon their minds” as to the expediency of protecting and promoting national industry. In a report, which appeared in late August, the committee concluded that the lingering difficulties in “attaching a vast majority of the people at large to the American System” stemmed from industry friends’ repeated failures to relate their agenda to “the business of individuals.” To address the problem, the committee proposed that the institute from time to time establish special committees charged with “investigating & reporting in detail upon the various important branches of national wealth & industry.” A standing committee would coordinate the efforts, receiving and referring proposals while also selecting topics for examination.Footnote ⁵⁴

Whereas the proposed reports intended to appeal to specific producer groups, they were unlikely to reach a broader readership. In the spring and summer of 1828, the American Institute primarily focused on winning support from the city’s mercantile community. In line with these efforts, the executive committee proposed biannual exhibitions of domestic manufactures. A report, presented by attorney and editor of the American Annual Register Joseph Blunt, elaborated at length on how the exhibitions would promote commercial interests. New York City, Blunt projected, would “reap the advantages … by an increase in its trade, and by the influx of strangers, in crowds, either to exhibit their fabrics, or as purchasers.”Footnote ⁵⁵ In late October, the institute organized it first fair at the Masonic Hall, on Broadway between Duane and Pearl Streets. Compared to subsequent years, this appears to have been a rather inconspicuous event. The limited number of exhibited articles could all be deposited at the store of Maiden Lane merchant David H. Haight and his business partner, Richard K. Haight (likely a relative). Another merchant supplied the lion’s share of the funding. Preparations began on short notice, and the managers of the fair seemingly paid little attention to display. A reporter from the New-Statesman dryly described how “some Merino shawls were suspended” near the entrance. There were no processions or speeches. At the end of the fair, the exhibited articles were offered for sale. For the American Institute, the event was a decided failure—one newspaper reported a total loss of $1,000—and there were evident organizational problems.Footnote ⁵⁶ The managers did not hand out awards to winning exhibitors until the fair the following year.Footnote ⁵⁷ Faced with these setbacks, the officers of the American Institute quickly scrapped the original plan for biannual exhibitions, and there was considerably hesitation about whether to carry on. The institute did not make a formal decision about another fair until September 21 the following year, only three weeks before its opening.Footnote ⁵⁸

An important reason to continue the fairs despite the initial financial losses was that they generated positive coverage in local newspapers, and editors in other parts of the United States subsequently reprinted these accounts. Pro- and anti-tariff newspapers alike praised the effort as a patriotic endeavor that would promote technical advancement while dampening social and factional strife. “This mode of encouraging manufactures has a wonderful influence in stimulating skill and industry, and all can join, without conflicting principles,” a reporter for the New-York Spectator asserted. Although the American Institute’s leadership seized on every opportunity to declare its commitment to the promotion of domestic manufacturing, and very consciously designed the fairs to popularize its agenda, the city’s political and financial elites, prominent civic leaders, and local newspapers, almost without exception, came to support the annual festivities. Several editors and publicists, including Alden Spooner of the Long-Island Star, William L. Stone of the Commercial Advertiser and the New-York Spectator, Horace Greeley of the New-York Tribune, and William A. Mercein of the New-York Statesmen, even joined the institute. The fairs provided entertainment, and the growing number of visitors generated considerable business for the city’s tavern keepers, hoteliers, and retailers. Even the New York Herald, which by the early 1840s had become highly critical of Wakeman and his circle, and regularly denounced the American Institute as “a mere political machine,” continued to write glowing reviews of the fairs.Footnote ⁵⁹

For exhibitors and city merchants, the fairs helped advertise goods and promote sales. One account claims that the organized sales following the first fair attracted “an immense crowd of spectators and purchasers.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Remarking on the exhibition two years later, one newspaper, published by a member of the American Institute, asserted that “a laudable spirit of emulation was excited to make further improvements; capitalists were induced to encourage and assist intelligent artists, which has produced mutual benefits; and sales of a considerable amount were made in consequence of the excellence of the samples produced.”Footnote ⁶¹ Unsurprisingly, several leading members of the institute figured prominently in the lists of premium winners and clearly took advantage of the marketing opportunities afforded by the fairs. Vice President Peter H. Schenck, for instance, made sure that the cloths and machinery produced at his Matteawan and Glenham factories in Dutchess County obtained the best possible display. At the 1829 fair, a “handsome loom made at the Matteawan factory, for the use of Glenham [broadcloth]” was placed on the right of the entrance. In fact, the institute paid Schenck for showcasing the loom. In its original design, it was driven by waterpower, but at the fair “[a] very pretty girl tended upon its motions.” In the executive committee’s final report, the machine was praised as “a most beautiful and perfect Machine” and it won the first premium award for machinery. Productions from Schenck’s companies won several other premiums that year and in the following years, as did goods manufactured by several other officers of the institute.Footnote ⁶² From the outset, the marketing of goods went hand in hand with the institute’s political ambitions.Footnote ⁶³ Catalogues of exhibited articles not only contained names of firms and information of where purchases could be made but also listed the import duties for each article. This, the managers of the fair explained, “was deemed useful, to show the practical benefits of protection.”Footnote ⁶⁴

The American Institute early on made a priority of maximizing the number of visitors. Ticket prices remained modest, and only a fraction of visitors—in 1829, a mere 20 percent of an estimated thirty thousand—actually paid to enter. Men and women attended “from mere motives of curiosity at first,” the executive committee remarked, predicting that future fairs would further boost investments in manufacturing and extend support for the institute’s political agenda.Footnote ⁶⁵ Participating manufacturers and merchants had obvious reasons for wanting to attract the largest possible number of people. Moreover, the officers soon recognized that the fairs offered a unique opportunity to engage in popular politics. When agitation intensified after the passing of the 1828 tariff, industry advocates initially organized mass meetings to rally crowds behind a pro-industry agenda. Ten days before the start of the fair in 1828, Wakeman, James Lynch, Curtis Bolton, and several other prominent members of the American Institute organized a “Great Meeting of the Friends of the American System” at the Masonic Hall. A committee, consisting of institute members, drew up resolutions that called for sufficient protection of domestic manufactures and denounced the injurious effect of the auction system. A contemporary account, which estimated the crowd to between 1,200 and 1,500, described the proceedings as orderly, yet noted the presence of both “tariff and anti-tariffites, and mild and modest Adams men mingling with fierce looking Jacksonians.”Footnote ⁶⁶ In light of rising socioeconomic and political tensions, large-scale public events involved considerable risks. Mobs rowing and brawling in the streets had become a regular feature of urban life, and, as historian Paul Gilje points out, participants in these public disturbances were increasingly made up of men and women who owned little or no property. During the struggles over the 1824 tariff, crowds disrupted public meetings, and factional tensions widened in subsequent years. Elections and celebrations, notably New Year’s Eve and Fourth of July, repeatedly led to riots and destruction of property.Footnote ⁶⁷ Two weeks after the first fair, fighting broke out at Tammany Hall during a nominating meeting, which had attracted several thousand people.Footnote ⁶⁸ Mounting tensions over the tariff, combined with factional strife and labor protests, produced a highly combustible environment. Industry advocates organized a series of meetings in the summer of 1832 that attracted thousands of people. However, although great turnouts indicated widespread support, it would soon become evident that this method of conducting politics was failing and that popular “excitement” thwarted rational debate. As mass meetings began descending into chaos, leading institute members, including Schenck, advised against further agitation of this kind.Footnote ⁶⁹

When Congress passed the Compromise of 1833, the American Institute had already removed mass rallies from its repertoire of action. While partisan politics continued to be volatile and often violent, the institute’s leadership instead focused on expanding and refining the annual fairs. Carefully staged events, the fairs provided a controlled, nonconfrontational, environment in which to convince the broader public of the benefits of industrial growth. Whereas anti-Southern and antislavery rhetoric did erupt during some of the tumultuous public meetings in the early 1830s, the fairs propagated a message of sectional and social harmony. In advertisements and addresses, the officers consistently depicted the institute’s activities as occasions where “all occupations and all classes convene and contribute.” Allied editors echoed this message. The exhibitions occasioned “excitement,” the New-York Spectator noted, but not of a violent kind, rather an excitement that stimulated ingenuity and emulation among “all classes and handicraftsmen down to the humblest workman.”Footnote ⁷⁰

Ideally, a stunning display of consumer goods and machinery would convince regular men and women of the great potential of domestic manufacturing and boost support for the institute’s political agenda. In the carefully decorated exhibition halls—far removed from cotton fields and crowded, poorly ventilated, and poorly lit workshops and mills—visitors easily let themselves be awed and entertained by machinery of ever-greater capacity. In a time of increasingly visible socioeconomic differentiation, institute officers consistently presented the annual fairs as a leveling experience. Reiterations that the annual “jubilee” was an opportunity for high, low, and “middling” to “come together, and commune,” were both meant to strengthen the institute’s cross-class credentials and impress the message that industrial development was a matter above petty partisan politics and socioeconomic strife. Just as northern manufacturers and southern planters shared common interests, so did employers and operatives. The public address of the 1831 New York Convention, which the institute hosted, insisted that labor was no “mere instrument of capital.” On the contrary, labor was “the partner and sharer in the increase of wealth produced by the united action of both.”Footnote ⁷¹

Heightened tensions initially contributed to the American Institute’s growth. At the 1831 fair, organized just before the highly publicized tariff convention in New York City, the number of exhibitors increased significantly, and the managers could report a considerable surplus. Over the next couple of years, finances steadily improved and a gradual accumulation of capital made further consolidation possible.Footnote ⁷² At first, members did not have a steady meeting place. Instead, they typically gathered at the Shakespeare Hotel, a popular retreat of the city’s literati.Footnote ⁷³ By the late winter of 1831, accruing revenues made it possible to rent “a convenient and pleasant room” from the Clinton Hall Association. For an annual cost of seventy-five dollars, the institute gained access to the room two nights a month. Seemingly a trifle achievement, this was the first time a pro-industry group in the United States had managed to secure a fixed location. Within a few years, funds were sufficient to remunerate a few officers as well as acquire offices and meeting rooms.Footnote ⁷⁴ A low frequency of meetings, as in the case of the American Society, had greatly hampered previous efforts to organize a manufacturing interest. The American Institute, by contrast, managed to establish an infrastructure for continuous action in the political arena and, equally important, continuous interactions among its members and allied associations.Footnote ⁷⁵ Another initiative toward this end was the lecture series, proposed by the executive committee in late 1831. Intended to strengthen internal cohesion and attract new members, the lectures also provided a forum for the leadership to propagate its views. Because funds were insufficient to pay for lecturers, the committee instead relied on prominent members, including attorneys James Lynch and Ralph Lockwood, who at the time were actively engaged in tariff agitation. Existing records reveal little of the content of these lectures other than they focused “on the objects of the Institute.”Footnote ⁷⁶

The institute’s leadership reflected the increasing complexity of the city’s economic elite. As U.S. textile establishments became more competitive, and less dependent on government protection, proprietors of these establishments became less active. Already by 1833, the number of exhibitors of cotton goods at the fairs had declined considerably.Footnote ⁷⁷ Men with interests in textile production, and directly dependent on southern raw materials and markets, remained active but did not dominate the institute’s affairs to the extent that they had dominated the ASEDM. Edwin D. Plimpton, who served several terms as manager of the fair and as recording secretary, was a partner in Wales & Plimpton, commercial agents for Dudley Woolen Manufacturing Company in Dudley, Massachusetts. He was also a partner in Hastings & Plimpton, a carpet manufacturing firm.Footnote ⁷⁸ Another long-serving manager, Jonathan Amory, was described by an institute publication as “selected from the class of merchants employed in the sale of domestic articles in the city of New-York.” Until the firm failed in 1840, he and his partner sold on consignment throughout the United States.Footnote ⁷⁹ Another member of Wakeman’s circle, Joseph Titcomb, had previous experience in the textile trade, but pursued other business opportunities. After the War of 1812, the firm Titcomb & Co. sold “American Cloths” and “Domestic Goods” at its Pearl Street store, including a wide assortment of various types of cotton and woolen textiles, yarn, boots, and shoes as well as raw cotton and wool. In 1822, Titcomb joined with a group of associates, including Jacob T. Walden, in the New-York Coal Company “for the purpose of exploring, digging, and vending coal,” and a few years later, he associated in the Rosendale Manufacturing Company, manufacturing and shipping cement to major ports along the East Coast and the West Indies. In the 1830s, city directories list his occupation as a manufacturer of cabinet ware.Footnote ⁸⁰

Over time, most of the leading members diversified their interests, investing in various lines of manufacturing as well as mining, banking, and insurance. Anson G. Phelps, an active industry friend from the early 1830s, started out with limited means. After apprenticing at his brother’s saddlery shop in Hartford, he set up his own business, marketing groceries, stoneware, and other articles. Before traveling to New York in 1814, he also worked as “a tinman,” peddling various articles throughout the southern states. In 1818, he formed a partnership with fellow New Englander Elisha Peck, whose father-in-law owned a woolen factory near Paterson. Phelps & Peck made a fortune primarily dealing in cotton and metals, but gradually diversifying their business operations. Phelps also served as director of the Mercantile Insurance Company of New-York, the Fulton Bank, the North American Trust and Banking Company, and several other financial and transportation corporations, including the New York and Erie Railroad Company.Footnote ⁸¹ James B. Murray, who served the institute in several capacities, made a fortune with his father in the mercantile firm of John B. Murray & Son and with George Gallagher in the firm of Murray & Gallagher, one of the largest mercantile firms in the city. Gallagher had served on the corresponding committee of the ASEDM, and Murray enjoyed extensive business connections with several other members of the New York group.Footnote ⁸² In the early 1820s, he invested in the Peru Iron Company at Clintonville, Clinton County. At the time, this was the most extensive iron establishment in the region, employing just under three hundred workers. Steadily developing its distribution network, the company marketed products as far as Alabama and Louisiana.Footnote ⁸³ Other institute officers seemingly had no direct connection to southern slave economies, yet invested in and managed businesses that benefited from expanding interregional financial and commodity exchanges.

For the economic elite that led the institute, the fairs provided a focal point of activity. Steadily growing in size, the annual celebrations of domestic industry required cooperation throughout the year. Having outgrown the Masonic Hall, the managers moved the fair in 1834 to the larger premises at Niblo’s Garden, where it remained until that establishment burned down in 1846. According to the institute’s own estimate, more than 60,000 people attended in 1835, and four years later visitors had swelled to 150,000. In view of the evident bias, the numbers may be inflated, but increasing revenues confirm the overall trend.Footnote ⁸⁴ The astonishing growth was in part a result of strenuous efforts to forge connections with like-minded associations elsewhere. By the late 1830s, fair managers in New York City were coordinating arrangements with committees in Brooklyn, Poughkeepsie, Albany, and Utica as well as several towns in New Jersey and the New England states.Footnote ⁸⁵ The number of visitors grew rapidly and membership expanded in tandem. Sheer size afforded the American Institute a position of leadership among pro-industry associations in the United States. Niblo’s Garden, its own journal explained, “is the place, of all others, for the meeting and intercommunion of inventors and ingenious men” as well as “the officers of government, and distinguished personages from all parts of our republic.”Footnote ⁸⁶ About 180 joined in 1828, but the addition of new members remained modest over the next few years, averaging perhaps 50 or 60. From the mid-1830s enrollment picked up, with 249 new members in 1835, 99 in 1836, 136 in 1837, and 338 in 1838.Footnote ⁸⁷

American Institute Annual Fairs, 1835-1842

Source: Statement of Receipts from Sales of Ticket and Expenditures […], 1835–1842, American Institute Records, Box 79, Folder 5, NYHS.

Growing revenues provided the means for further consolidation. In the summer of 1833, the institute began planning for the establishment of a library. In the initial design, this would primarily be a “Statistical Library,” yet its significance went far beyond assisting the various committees in preparing reports and petitions. The library was central to the leadership’s long-term ambitions to attract new members and strengthen the sense of common purpose. Wakeman and his allies clearly recognized that not all subscribers to the library would join the institute, nor indeed support the institute’s political agenda, yet calculated that those who bought shares would nevertheless become committed to the institute’s well-being. As Wakeman explained, the library would give the American Institute a “more certain perpetuity.” Open to members and “special contributors,” the library offered a place to meet and exchange ideas while strengthening claims to respectability and public patronage.Footnote ⁸⁸ For the same reasons, the leadership also initiated the formation of a repository, containing “machine models & specimens of the great annual exhibitions of American productions.” Expenditures for the repository regularly exceeded revenues, but it served as a permanent exhibition and advertisement for the institute, providing distraction and entertainment to visitors and promoting sales and business connections. Both the library and the repository had an educational purpose. They would afford striving mechanics and artisans with “the means of useful knowledge.”Footnote ⁸⁹ Yet their primary significance—Wakeman was unambiguous on this matter—was that they “created the means” for the institute to pursue its overarching commitment to promoting and protecting domestic manufacturing. This agenda reverberated through every speech, every circular, and every report.Footnote ⁹⁰

Wakeman always envisioned the American Institute as “one great central institution” of industry mobilization, and he and his allies worked determinedly to build an extensive network of allied associations. The fairs were pivotal to these efforts. Every fall, the events at Niblo’s Garden provided opportunities for “occasional intercourse” with industry advocates from other localities, and much of the correspondence between the American Institute and other associations centered on matters related to the exhibitions. Institute officers helped promote fairs in other cities and made special arrangements to help exhibitors move goods between the fairs in Boston and New York City.Footnote ⁹¹ After delegations from the American Institute and the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia had visited each other’s exhibitions, James Tallmadge confidently projected that “the interchange of civilities” would promote “the great common cause in which both are engaged.”Footnote ⁹² With the aim of facilitating communications and coordination, the officers early on sought to establish a journal. A select committee, which included Wakeman and Lynch, met with an editor in the summer of 1830 to discuss a prospectus for a semimonthly magazine, but the project fell through for lack of funds.Footnote ⁹³ Another five years went by before the American Institute was in a position to launch its own publication. Wakeman, who readily assumed the chief editorial responsibilities, exulted when the first issue of the Journal of the American Institute appeared in October 1835. The institute, he explained, could “effect but little good” as long as its transactions were “only known to the comparatively few who attend the meetings.”Footnote ⁹⁴ Ideally, the journal would open a channel of communication to a potentially growing group of subscribers and provide useful information with respect to patents, new production processes, market opportunities, and other items of interest to manufacturers and traders of domestic goods.Footnote ⁹⁵ A stable outlet for messaging, moreover, helped strengthen the leadership’s command over the institute. As the main editor, Wakeman adroitly used the journal to draw attention to his and his allies’ accomplishments and initiatives, frame debates, and formulate the American Institute’s policy positions.Footnote ⁹⁶

For several years after the Compromise of 1833, leading institute members did not focus on specific policy revisions—the official position was that the compromise was “a covenant of peace”—but on persuading the broader public of the benefits of domestic industry, and they were convinced that they were making headway. “Prejudices and determinations adverse to manufacturing industry, of long duration, arising from foreign associations, and partial interests, have been, to a great extent, removed, or changed,” Wakeman told members in early 1835. He and fellow officers were convinced that popular opinion was undergoing dramatic changes, and they took delight in the observation that this shift was occurring without violence and disorder. While partisans were brawling in the streets and at the polls, competitors at the fairs were engaged in “peaceable and wholesome conflicts”—productive rivalries that spurred innovation and promoted U.S. competitiveness and strength.Footnote ⁹⁷ Institute officers used the fairs to craft a narrative of progress according to which industrial development was not only producing wealth but also leading Americans into a higher stage of civilization. Every year’s arrangement was bigger and better than the previous. Seeking to attract visitors to the 1835 exhibition, the managers asserted that “[a]t no period have our manufactories progressed with more rapid strides than the last year.”Footnote ⁹⁸ Pro-industry editors consistently echoed the same theme. Mere amusements like firecrackers, military parades, and theater performances—“the same words have sounded ever since the days of Shakspeare [sic]”—offered but little variation, member and editor Horace Greeley wrote. Every fair, by contrast, amazed and astounded with new “productions from the exhaustless magazine of inventions.”Footnote ⁹⁹

Conflicts over commercial policy revived with the Panic of 1837 and the protracted depression that followed. Economic distress, however, is not sufficient to explain the mobilization of industry groups, nor the specific form this mobilization assumed. Leading friends of industry recognized that the economic depression opened opportunities. “The state of things in this country is well calculated to awaken reflection, and a propitious season now offers for infusing correct information into the public mind,” the Journal of the American Institute noted.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ That New Yorkers would seize the initiative was unsurprising in light of the organization, financial resources, political connections, and extensive network of allies they had managed to establish in the preceding years. As the financial panic spread, Wakeman and fellow officers immediately began devising a strategy. They were determined to avoid sectional and partisan issues that might derail their agenda, particularly slavery and banking. Moreover, they consciously avoided mass meetings and other manifestations that might produce popular excitement. Instead, institute officers initially opted for a “National Convention of Business Men,” and called on representatives of the “producing classes” of all parts of the union—“the cotton-growing as well as the grain-growing, manufacturing, and commercial”—to meet, deliberate, and disseminate “correct knowledge among the people.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ The initiative reflected not only Wakeman and his allies’ understanding of a harmony of interest, binding the union together, but also their belief in the growing support for the institute’s political economy. Little came of the initiative. Another convention met at Philadelphia in November, 1837, but with equally modest results.Footnote ¹⁰²

From the outset, the American Institute’s leadership promptly responded to attempts to taint the association as partisan. After the New-York Evening Post inserted a short note claiming that editor William L. Stone would chair an upcoming meeting and that Matthew L. Davis, a confidant of Henry Clay, would act as secretary, “another member of the Institute” immediately rebutted, asserting that Stone was not a member and that Davis very infrequently attended meetings and did not hold office. According to the membership rolls, Stone did not join officially until 1837, although by then, his paper had for several years consistently lent its support to the institute. “It is believed that the usefulness of this establishment would be destroyed if politics were admitted, as the members are from all parties,” the correspondent asserted.Footnote ¹⁰³ Against the backdrop of intensifying party strife, officers sought to preserve the institute’s nonpartisan credentials. James Tallmadge did not hold public after 1826; nor did Wakeman figure in party rallies or on party tickets. Several of the officers from the mid-1830s and onward, including George Titcomb, Edwin D. Plimpton, and George Bacon, indeed fit the Whig profile and may have voted for Whig candidates, but do not appear to have been open partisans. Stone’s paper endorsed both Whigs and Democrats for president. Henry Meigs was understood to be a Democrat, although rumors circulated in the fall of 1846 that he might challenge the regular Democratic candidate in the fifth congressional district.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Tallmadge’s successor, Mahlon Dickerson, served as secretary of the navy under both Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren and his interest in the iron industry prompted cooperation with industry friends of both Whig and Democratic persuasion.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Indeed, “the great Iron Interest” had, as the Tribune remarked, “in good part gone with ‘the party’ [the Jacksonians] in times past.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Wealthy banker and merchant James B. Murray was a long-time Jacksonian and prominent institute member.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ It was clearly in the institute’s interest to be conceived as nonpartisan. “Politics, Tylerism, Van Burenism, Calhounism, Mesmerism, Mormonism and all other isms, must give way before the American Institute-ism,” the often critical New York Herald explained.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ That said, several leading institute officers, including Peter H. Schenck, Joseph Blunt, Clarkson Crolius, and Adoniram Chandler were active Whigs.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

In the end, cooperation among “Business Men” proved difficult, in part because the depression exacerbated divisions between Whigs and Democrats and in part because of difficulties in getting the message out in time.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Whereas the crisis provided an opportunity for political action, it also strained the institute’s resources. Revenues from the fairs declined and a loss of subscribers, along with mounting arrears, forced a suspension of the journal.Footnote ¹¹¹ These difficulties, in turn, aggravated tensions within the institute and hampered its ability to lead.Footnote ¹¹² Opposition to the leadership’s methods had been brewing for a couple of years, and open conflict erupted in the spring of 1840. Internal strife, which largely centered on lack of transparency and charges of financial misconduct on the part of Wakeman and his confidants, left the American Institute paralyzed until the 1841 election of officers, when the leadership finally managed to reassert control.Footnote ¹¹³ Shortly thereafter, the Wakeman circle launched another offensive. In a public advertisement, circulating in late July, the board of managers announced their intention to organize “a convention of citizens of all parties” to assemble during the annual fair and deliberate on “the subject of home industry.” As in 1837, industry friends elsewhere turned to the institute for guidance. “Repeated applications” had convinced the board that the fair, where “the specimens of American skill and industry are spread out for the view of all,” was indeed the appropriate meeting place.Footnote ¹¹⁴

In October, the convention established “The Home League for the Protection of American Labor, and the Promotion of Reciprocal Commerce,” an umbrella organization led by industry friends in New York. In a formal sense, this was a new association, financed by membership fees, but in essence, the Home League merely formalized the network of associations led by the American Institute. Joseph Blunt chaired the committee charged with drawing up its organizational structure. Another committee, consisting of Blunt and other institute members, wrote a public address, outlining the Home League’s objectives. Its officers consisted of a president, four vice presidents, a corresponding and a recording secretary, a treasurer, and a central committee of twelve. In every state, the Home League would set up a head association with auxiliary branches in the several counties and principal towns. The state associations would organize elections of delegates to annual meetings to be held in New York City during the annual fair. The central committee, the actual governing body, met at the offices of the American Institute and was almost exclusively composed of members of the same institute.Footnote ¹¹⁵

Under the direction of institute officers, the Home League launched an effective campaign, assisting and directing allied groups in a number of states. Throughout the late winter, its members convened once a week, and another committee sat “every day at the Repository, to receive and prepare information, chiefly statistical, to be forwarded to the appropriate Committee in Congress.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ Individual officers traveled to other states to help set up leagues.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Given the composition of the leadership, it is of no surprise that the Home League copied the American Institute’s modus operandi. A small group of trusted friends remained in control, and they were careful to avoid “party strife or to excite popular commotion.”Footnote ¹¹⁸ In the late summer of 1842, the New-York Tribune claimed that more than a hundred “auxiliary leagues” had been formed.Footnote ¹¹⁹

Throughout the 1830s, institute officers typically avoided slavery, but the depression revived sectional animosities and pro-industry rhetoric gradually drifted toward a free-labor position. In fact, industry advocates had long engaged in rhetoric juxtaposing the free and enterprising laborer with the oppressed pauper labor of Lancashire and other British manufacturing districts. When mobilization against protection continued after the passing of the 1842 tariff, institute members began insisting that higher import duties were needed to secure “free industry” against the “degrading competition” of both servile or pauper labor.Footnote ¹²⁰ “The great question,” wrote the central committee of the Home League, was “whether free American industry shall stand or fall.” The conflict between domestic and foreign labor morphed into a conflict between free and slave labor. Claiming to represent “every section of the country,” the committee nevertheless took a decided stance for northern producers’ “fair share of discrimination, in their favor.” In early 1843, industry friends reached out to free farmers, mechanics, and laborers, pitting their interest against those of the southern planters: “Our free workingmen cannot fail to view the advantage derived by slave labor, in any other light than a grievous monopoly.”Footnote ¹²¹ The confrontational stance signaled a dramatic departure from established pro-industry tropes. However, it proved to be temporary. Confident from the recent political triumph, and in possession of greater resources than ever before, New York industry friends would soon experience the demise of their organization.

***

The annual celebration of domestic industry became increasingly elaborate affairs as new features were added—pageants, boat races, conventions, evening addresses, concerts, and fireworks—that continuously expanded the exhibition space. Special demonstrations, for instance of steam-driven machinery, repeating rifles and batteries for harbor defense, and Morse’s electromagnetic telegraph were arranged to awe and amaze the crowds. Over the years, a range of supplementary attractions were established—plowing matches, horticultural displays, cattle shows—in order to attract more people and strengthen the ties to progressive agricultural societies. Through the antebellum period, steadily improving transportation systems brought increasing numbers of people from far and wide—manufacturers and artisans to exhibit, make sales, and compete for premiums; retailers and wholesalers to replenish their stocks; and visitors of different ranks to consume, find amusement, and catch a glimpse of the newest innovations. To maximize impact, the fair regularly opened a few weeks before the start of the congressional session, and the managers worked diligently to secure the attendance of prominent national and state politicians. From three days in late 1820s, the fair had expanded to sixteen by its twentieth anniversary in 1848. As the fairs grew in size and popularity, the American Institute’s membership and revenues increased.Footnote ¹²²

Mobilization on the scale that materialized before the passing of the 1842 tariff would have been inconceivable without the resources amassed and the infrastructure established by the American Institute in the preceding years. With the American Institute, New York industry friends for the first time succeeded in building a viable organization, but as it continued to grow its objectives gradually changed. After the successful campaign of 1841 and 1842, membership continued to expand and the fairs attracted more and more visitors. However, in the process, the institute overextended its commitments to the point that its organization and focus became increasingly fragmented. At the time of the formation of the Home League, there was already growing opposition within the institute’s ranks against taking a public stand for protection. Some of the “timorous friends” wanted to avoid conflicts, according to Greeley’s New-York Tribune. Footnote ¹²³

In the aftermath of the tariff struggle, new institute committees were formed, several with but a tangential connection to the founding members’ agenda. Efforts to strengthen cooperation with agricultural societies were successful, yet ultimately served to divert the institute’s focus. The Long-Island Star, whose editor, Alden Spooner, was a close ally of the Wakeman group, believed that a foundation had been laid for “a general movement” that would join “the farming interest” and industry friends and give an associational impulse to all parts of the country.Footnote ¹²⁴ Instead, the farming interest gradually assumed control over the institute. Even as the tariff battle raged on in the summer of 1842, the institute dispatched two officers to Washington to lobby for a national agricultural society.Footnote ¹²⁵ In the coming years, the managers of the annual fair devoted more and more time to the cattle show, the ploughing match, and the horticultural exhibition instead of promoting domestic manufacturing. After the passing of the 1842 tariff, a grand procession was added to the program. Led by a band of fifes and drums, and circling around lower Manhattan for more than two and half hours, the procession, however, was not a celebration of domestic manufacturing, but of agriculture. Governor Ellsworth of Connecticut, the invited speaker to the closing ceremony, “commanded the expedition.” Superintending Agent Wakeman, “next in authority, carried a carrot as a badge of honor.… Judge Thompson sat on a big cheese, alternately gouging into it with his jackknife, and eating crackers”Footnote ¹²⁶ The loss of focus was equally evident in other departments. With growing financial resources, the institute broadened its lecture program to include a wide range of issues—phrenology, the “theory of storms,” physical education (and in particular the benefits of dancing), education of the blind, naval architecture—seemingly with limited connection to questions of political economy or the institute’s initial political agenda.Footnote ¹²⁷ As Horace Greeley had warned several years earlier, the institute came to drift “like a ship without ballast.”

In May, 1853, Adoniram Chandler, who by then had succeeded Wakeman as superintending agent, asserted that the American Institute had never been stronger or more prosperous. It enjoyed a high reputation and was active in a number of areas—the meetings of its Farmers’ Club were particularly well attended—but, Chandler noted, “the arts, manufactures, and mechanical philosophy” had fallen into neglect. This trend would continue over the following decade. In 1860, corresponding secretary Thomas McElrath lamented that the repository, once so popular, had fallen into “neglect and disuse.” Most of its models and machines had been lost or given away. After the Civil War, when associations such as the Industrial League and the American Iron and Steel Association called for action to counter the activities of free trade leagues, the American Institute was busy organizing its strawberry exhibition.Footnote ¹²⁸