ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the responses of British free traders to American protectionism in the antebellum period. Then, it examines the use of American protectionism as a propaganda tool to demonstrate the ruinous consequences of maintaining protective duties on American raw materials, particularly corn. American protectionism posed a dilemma for those whose promotion of free trade was accompanied by a belief in the benefits of democracy. According to the theories of Adam Smith, protection benefited a small number of producers but was inimical to the needs of the mass of consumers: for a supposedly democratic government to sacrifice the well-being of the greater part of its citizens in this way therefore required explanation. In 1840 American abolitionist James Gillespie Birney, with the support of Joshua Leavitt, editor of the influential New York Emancipator, founded the Liberty Party to campaign against slavery from within the political system.
