Tench Coxe participated in or commented on most of the major events
in American history from the Revolution to the 1820s. His long
career of public involvement embodies many of the significant
historical themes of the time: he was a Philadelphia aristocrat, a
loyalist out of opportunism, a merchant during the period of
economic adjustment in the 1780s, a grandiose land speculator, a
Federalist with Alexander Hamilton and later a Republican with
Thomas Jefferson, a nationalist theorist, a major prophet of
industrial growth, and a prolific journalist. As this biography
conclusively demonstrates, Coxe's role was considerably more
consequential in the early history of the nation than has hitherto
been supposed.
Coxe's career is more interesting because it is paradoxical.
Although he persistently aspired to fame as a public official, the
posthumous recognition he has received is the result of his
extensive writings on economic and mercantile policy. This volume
expecially emphasizes Coxe's farsighted views and achievements as a
political economist: his support of protective tarrifts, his
advocacy of laborsaving machinery, and his prescient belief that
cotton growing was the key to American economic independence and
industrialization.
Based on more than a decade's work in the voluminous collection of
Coxe Papers, to which Jacob Cooke was given exclusive access, this
biography provides much information on the operations of the
Treasury Department under Alexander Hamilton, whom Coxe served as
assistant secretary, and on the development of political parties. A
Federalist apostate, Coxe was representative of a small but
historically significant wing of his party that enthusiastically
endorsed the fiscal policies of Hamilton while championing the
commercial policies of Jefferson. Coxe openly became one of the
Virginian's most active supporters, as a state party leader,
national campaign coordinator, and partisan polemicist.
Originally published in 1978.
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Yet in the course of his career Coxe managed to alienate Jefferson
and most of his other powerful associates, including Hamilton and
John Adams. These men and others have left damaging portraits of
Coxe. Professor Cooke examines the paradox presented by such
uncomplimentary assessments of a man of uncommon ability and
conspicuous accomplishments and at the same time opens for readers
many new views of the stage upon which Tench Coxe played out his
frustrated ambitions -- the whole political and economic life of
the early Republic.