ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the evolution and development of American economic thinking from the declaring of independence to the founding of the American Economic Association in 1885, an event that can be viewed as the beginning of the modern era of American economic thought. Growth, the attribute evident in virtually every aspect of the American experience during the nineteenth century, was nowhere more apparent than in the sheer geographic size of the country. Paralleling the tectonic shifts in national economic policies occurring during the early nineteenth century were changes in American economics which, though not as seismic, were important nonetheless. By around 1850 the term 'economics' increasingly became the single-word descriptor of the course formerly labelled 'political economy'. In nineteenth-century America the economy was not the only thing expanding at a frenetic clip; knowledge was also growing briskly due to a combination of interrelated factors including rising literacy rates, rapid urbanization, and improving methods of communication and transportation.
