AP Success - AP US History: Hamilton's Report on Manufacturing
Founding Father Alexander Hamilton had many opinions regarding the American economy.
It is not uncommon to meet with an opinion that though the promoting of manufactures, may be the interest of a part of the union, it is contrary to that of another part. The northern and southern regions are sometimes represented as having adverse interests in this respect. Those are called manufacturing, these agricultural states, and a species of opposition is imagined to subsist between the manufacturing and agricultural interests...The idea of an opposition between those two interests is the common error of the early periods of every country, but experience gradually dissipates it...Particular encouragements of particular manufactures may be of a nature to sacrifice the interests of landholders to those of manufacturers; but it is nevertheless a maxim well established by experience, and generally acknowledged, where there has been sufficient experience, that the aggregate prosperity of manufactures, and the aggregate prosperity of agriculture are intimately connected...Perhaps the superior steadiness of the demand of a domestic market for the surplus produce of the soil, is alone a convincing argument of its truth…In countries where there is great private wealth much may be effected by the voluntary contributions of patriotic individuals; but in a community situated like that of the United States, the public purse must supply the deficiency of private resource.
Hamilton, Alexander. "Report on the Subject of Manufactures," 1791.
Question 1
Briefly identify one perspective about manufacturing expressed in the excerpt.
Question 2
Briefly identify one economic trend that influenced states reliant on agriculture.
Question 3
Briefly explain one way the ideas presented in the excerpt influenced the sectional divide between North and South.
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