1806. · New York
by Columella" [pseudonym]: [Moore, Clement Clarke]
New York: Printed by D. and G. Bruce, for E. Sargeant, 1806.. 61,[1]pp. Dbd., removed from a bound volume with remnants of old binding on spine. Contemporary presentation inscription in top margin of titlepage. Moderate toning throughout, light staining to the title page and light staining and foxing to the final three pages, light tideline in upper margin of final six leaves of text. Minor pest damage to the lower corners of the final two leaves, a narrow open tear to the final leaf that does not affect the text. Good. A criticism of the American carrying trade during the Napoleonic Wars, by the then twenty-seven-year-old Clement Clarke Moore, who took the pseudonym Columella. Moore was a Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature in New York and a writer who would later would later gain fame for his poem "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" (1823).
The present pamphlet was one of two of pamphlets critical of Thomas Jefferson and his administration that Moore wrote between 1804 and 1806. The specific issue addressed by Moore in this pamphlet was the "carrying trade", a situation wherein the produce of a nation at war was transported under the flag of a neutral nation. In this case, American traders were shipping commodities from the French West Indies to Europe, allowing France to enjoy the benefits of its colonial empire during its war with Great Britain without relying on their navy or merchant marine to guard their colonial trade (Callaway, p.11). This, in turn, inflamed tensions between the United States and Great Britain.
Moore was opposed to the conflation of the trade in American agricultural commodities and the carrying trade, which he felt would be a danger to the fledgling republic: "there are foul vices growing and flourishing among us, and they deserve to be vigorously struck at. Those who, by their unlawful procedures...have implicated their country in a dispute with which the community in general has not immediate concern, except the dread that its consequences may be generally ruinous." (p.30). A scarce pamphlet revealing an unknown side of Moore as a Federalist pamphleteer. BAL 14336. SABIN 50335. SHAW & SHOEMAKER 10893. GAINES 06-17. CUSHING, INITIALS AND PSEUDONYMS, p.65. Patrick Callaway, "The Cost of Being In- Between War, Peace, and Trade Management in Jefferson's Second Administration, 1805-9" in MARINE CORPS UNIVERSITY JOURNAL (Quantico. 2019), Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 2019. (Inventory #: WRCAM57852)
The present pamphlet was one of two of pamphlets critical of Thomas Jefferson and his administration that Moore wrote between 1804 and 1806. The specific issue addressed by Moore in this pamphlet was the "carrying trade", a situation wherein the produce of a nation at war was transported under the flag of a neutral nation. In this case, American traders were shipping commodities from the French West Indies to Europe, allowing France to enjoy the benefits of its colonial empire during its war with Great Britain without relying on their navy or merchant marine to guard their colonial trade (Callaway, p.11). This, in turn, inflamed tensions between the United States and Great Britain.
Moore was opposed to the conflation of the trade in American agricultural commodities and the carrying trade, which he felt would be a danger to the fledgling republic: "there are foul vices growing and flourishing among us, and they deserve to be vigorously struck at. Those who, by their unlawful procedures...have implicated their country in a dispute with which the community in general has not immediate concern, except the dread that its consequences may be generally ruinous." (p.30). A scarce pamphlet revealing an unknown side of Moore as a Federalist pamphleteer. BAL 14336. SABIN 50335. SHAW & SHOEMAKER 10893. GAINES 06-17. CUSHING, INITIALS AND PSEUDONYMS, p.65. Patrick Callaway, "The Cost of Being In- Between War, Peace, and Trade Management in Jefferson's Second Administration, 1805-9" in MARINE CORPS UNIVERSITY JOURNAL (Quantico. 2019), Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 2019. (Inventory #: WRCAM57852)