The Real Cause of the U.S. Civil War
Niles Weekly Register, May 12, 1828
Reasons Why the System of Auctions Should be Abolished
Lewis Tappan helped draw up the constitution and actively participated at meetings in New York City of the men seeking legislation to abolish the auction system. This was yet another activity in the man's long career that evidenced a pernicious pattern of behavior. That is, he engaged in public propaganda campaigns designed to bring legislation that would tax or restrict the commerce of others for his own financial benefit.
This is text of a sixteen-page pamphlet produced by the New York Anti-Auction Committee.
Hezekiah Niles reprinted the entire text in the columns of the June 14, 1828 edition of his Niles Weekly Register on pages 258-260.
The Niles Register was the nation's leading political newspaper. Its articles were frequently reprinted by country newspapers holding similar political views. Niles was a fierce advocate of tariff protection and had been an anti-slavery agitator at least since 1822 when he was the Baltimore subscription agent for Benjamin Lundy's anti-slavery newspaper The Genius of Universal Emancipation
This pamphlet was vicious and false propaganda intended to deceive the public into believing that auctioneers were an "odious monopoly, wholly incompatible with the free institutions of the country."
Although auctioneers were licensed, there were a significant number of auctioneers operating in New York City all competing for the business. There was nothing unconstitutional about their business. They had evolved a cheaper way of making wholesale sales of textile fabrics, much to the delight of retail shops and their country customers. This cheaper way of doing business, however, was depriving the "regular merchants," as they called themselves, of their fat profits.
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Niles Weekly Register available in many libraries and also GoogleBook