[Louisiana Purchase]: "Americanus" [pseudonym]:

$3,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

DIRECT TAX [caption title]. A scarce Federalist broadside from New Hampshire, encouraging voters to oust the Democratic-Republicans by positioning the debt incurred by the Louisiana Purchase against the loss of revenue induced by the Embargo Act of 1807.Following a quotation from Washington's Farewell Address (lauding "the pursuits of Commerce, and the cultivation of the Soil"), the anonymous author (who signs the broadside "Americanus") launches immediately into a cordially-worded invective: "Having been accustomed to hear men talk of Fifteen Millions of Dollars [the sum given for Louisiana] as of Fifteen Cents, I have constructed the following table, as a proportion of that sum in the United States, to each town in the State of New-Hampshire." In three columns of text surrounding a table with every town in New Hampshire's due proportion of said $15 million, he argues that there is no way for the government to finance this purchase without resorting to the dreaded Direct Tax, particularly because of the economic downturn caused by the Embargo. Such a sum must be:"obtained by additional duties, by borrowing money, by sale of western lands, or by a land tax. Additional duties cannot be productive, till Commerce is liberated....If the western lands be now sold, it must be at a great sacrifice; the settlement of the western country not being yet in a state to make such a sale productive. If we borrow money, equal to all demands of government, we rob posterity, and may pave the w

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