Historians trace the origins of protectionist thought to the pre-Civil War period during which time the U.S. transitioned into a more industrial capitalist society. Protectionists presented tariffs as the essential policy to quicken the development of manufactures as well as a remedy to the social ills that afflicted the emerging industrial working class. Proponents argued that tariffs would shield American workers from the socially deleterious consequences of the industrial revolution that were already observable by the early 19th century in Europe, especially in Britain.

Although the 1791 publication of Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures initiated America’s support for tariffs, it was Henry Carey (1793-1879), a Philadelphia printer who later became President Abraham Lincoln’s economic adviser, who united what had been a set of disparate ideas about trade policy into an all-encompassing ideology. Carey focused various strains of American economic, political, social and cultural values towards a single principle: protectionism. And in the process, Carey became America’s most influential economic thinker.

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