-
8. Business Friendships and Individualism in a Mercantile Class of Citizens in Charleston
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
8 Business Friendships and Individualism in a Mercantile Class of Citizens in Charleston Jennifer L. Goloboy In 1809, Charles Machin was robbed by his business partner. Nearly destitute, lacking even a winter coat, Machin fell into a state of melancholy. While he was in this condition, his friend William Parker discovered him. [Parker] expostulated with me, on my want of firmness, to which I listened a, a mere statute [sic] unable to speak. His arguments were impressive and his noble Soul expanded when he pourtrayed to me the situation of others, far worse than mine. I felt its force and as if posessed of new life, springing from my seat I was caught in his embrace and in the fervency of the Strongest Affection he clasped me to that heart, which knew how to beat in simpathy for the distresses of another. And with a Soul too large to inhabit so small a space, he vowed Eternal Friendship. With the enthusiasm of men bewildered, whos hearts were ready to burst from thier narrow limits, we embraced each other, the warmth of which was sensibly felt. And as if the same feeling possessed each Soul, our acknowledgements were expressed by the grasp of Friendship.1 Parker then gave Machin the money he needed to cover his debts. Today this reminiscence might seem unusual, overwrought, and unintentionally erotic. But Machin’s initial desperation would have been understood by his contemporaries . He lived in an era nearly without institutional safety nets, even for men who had once been economically comfortable. Parker, we are meant to understand, saved Machin from privation and possibly imprisonment. Machin’s memoir was shaped not only by the Romantic language of sympathy , but also by the real and omnipresent danger lurking for middle-class entrepreneurs . Friendship and family provided security in an unstable world. Many merchants in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Atlantic World built friendships as strong as Parker’s and Machin’s for sound business reasons. They fostered personal connections to secure reliable business partners and to find assistance in times of trouble. Within a century, however, matters and perceptions changed considerably. By the late nineteenth century , merchants often envisioned themselves (and other members of their class) as self-made. They sensed a dog-eat-dog work world composed of hostile competitors, among whom only the independent-minded could prosper. They thought they had created their own success, without the assistance of patrons or family members. The letters of merchants in Charleston, South Carolina suggest how conditions in Revolutionary America and the new nation helped to shape the ethos of the middling sort.2 The men in this study would not have characterized themselves as “middle class,” since the term was not commonly used in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet, they often described themselves as a separate “class of citizens,” and they frequently embraced values that would come to be identified with the middle class.3 They believed in working hard and deferring pleasure in the hope that they would earn enough to educate their children and retire comfortably. They passed along similar ideals to their children, teaching them to be useful members of society . Often religious, they still emphasized self-control and self-restraint rather than religious enthusiasm.4 As products of a post-Malthusian world, the mercantile class of citizens acknowledged few limits on their capacity to become rich, and, accordingly, they spent considerable money on fashionable clothing and houses.5 Nevertheless , the historian Margaret Hunt is correct to emphasize the limits of middle-class ambition.6 While many of the merchants lived luxuriously, they rarely perceived themselves as men of leisure or seldom allowed their children to escape the world of work. Even many of the wealthiest men, such as Henry Laurens and Christopher Fitzsimons, ensured that their sons received educations enabling them to support themselves. The merchants’ perceptions about their economic condition shaped their definition of themselves and of their business partners and other class members. If they worked hard enough in their youth and manhood, and if fate did not turn against them, they would earn a retirement of independence and leisure. Laziness, lack of skill, or pure bad luck would doom them to a lifetime of work. They adopted the ethos that seemed most likely to protect them.7 Some Revolutionary-era merchants, as Andrew Schocket argues in the following chapter, moved into the economic elite—deeply influenced by British merchants—where they wielded considerable regional and even...