National Duties

This study of 19th century commerce and federal oversight “reveals the importance of customs houses in the creation of the federal government” (Choice).

In the wake of the American Revolution, the young nation found itself victorious, liberated, and in millions of dollars of debt. To address this founding financial crisis, the nascent federal government devised a system of taxes on imported goods and installed custom houses at the nation’s ports to collect the fees. But, as the United States became dependent on this revenue, the import merchants gained outsized influence over the daily affairs of the custom houses. As the United States tried to police this commerce in the early nineteenth century, the merchants’ stranglehold on custom house governance proved to be formidable.

In National Duties, Gautham Rao makes the case that the early development of the federal government and the modern American state lie in these conflicts at government custom houses—specifically in the period between the American Revolution and the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Rao argues that the contours of the government emerged from the push-and-pull between these groups, with commercial interests gradually losing power to the administrative state, which only continued to grow and lives on today.