one of the most important, there was relatively little
manufacturing apart from the household crafts. These household
industries had increased during the war, but as it was with the
individual so it was with the whole country; the general course
of industrial activity was much the same as it had been before
the war.

A fundamental fact is to be observed in the economy of the young
nation: the people were raising far more tobacco and grain and
were extracting far more of other products than they could
possibly use themselves; for the surplus they must find markets.
They had; as well, to rely upon the outside world for a great
part of their manufactured goods, especially for those of the
higher grade. In other words, from the economic point of view,
the United States remained in the former colonial stage of
industrial dependence, which was aggravated rather than
alleviated by the separation from Great Britain. During the
colonial period, Americans had carried on a large amount of this
external trade by means of their own vessels. The British
Navigation Acts required the transportation of goods in British
vessels, manned by crews of British sailors, and specified
certain commodities which could be shipped to Great Britain only.
They also required that much of the European trade should pass by
way of England. But colonial vessels and colonial sailors came
under the designation of "British," and no small part of the
prosperity of New England, and of the middle colonies as well,
had been due to the carrying trade. It would seem therefore as if
a primary need of the American people immediately after the
Revolution was to get access to their old markets and to carry
the goods as much as possible in their own vessels.