Over the course of the 1783-1815 period, in the context of endemic warfare in Europe and uncertain nation-building at home, federal and state governments moved to fortify the eastern seaboard, focusing on major American seaports. Conventionally, these fortifications are thought of as a top-down project fostered by far-thinking executives and engineers, but I will argue that they actually reflect a bottom-up political movement arising in American seaports—a straightforward link between the desire of seaport inhabitants to protect themselves and the construction of fortifications that accomplished that goal.
As the balance of power in the new Republic was worked out, the populations of coastal cities found themselves in a troubled situation—an outvoted minority in terms of population and federal structure although a major source of taxes. Much attention has been given to sectional and party struggles, but the bloc of seaports cut across region and political party—wealthy cities that found themselves paying for expensive western land grabs and being dragged into European wars demanded that their homes, businesses, banks and communities receive direct protection by fortifications. Rural populations and representatives, dominant in congress and many state governments, were largely skeptical and uninterested in laying out large sums of money to protect cities—many of which had been lost to a maritime invader well within living memory during the War of Independence. Rural people articulated a different grand military strategy—one in which cities would be evacuated in wartime and victory won through guerrilla warfare in the hinterland.
Putting newspaper records and legislative records alongside more traditional military sources, I uncover a surprisingly fervent grassroots political movement in seaport communities that used representation at the federal, state and local levels alongside protest and direct action to get their towns fortified. Seaport citizens drafted petitions, volunteered their labor, wrote fortification-building songs, published glossaries of fortification terminology for general education and aggressively lobbied their representatives on a single-issue basis. Meanwhile, urban-affiliated/representing state and federal legislators thundered and fulminated in favor of harbor forts, threatening pan-urban secession from the fledgling American union and speaking in the language of rights and popular sovereignty. Urban newspapers communicated with each other, repeating fortification news and information while publishing major congressional pro-fort speeches regardless of section or party. (Sidenote: Any time one sees a Democratic-Republican newspaper in 1806 publish a speech by a Federalist politician with the heading "I know X is a Federalist but..." something interesting is going on.)
Research on this surprising little historical moment has implications for how we think about political movements, warfare, maritime history, federalism, capitalism and urban-rural divisions in American history.