Friedrich List
Exile in United States: 1825–1833

After serving five months of his sentence at Hohenasperg, List was pardoned in exchange for agreeing to emigrate to the United States of America. He initially worked as a farmer, with little success. After one year, he sold his farm and moved to Reading, Pennsylvania, where he became editor-in-chief of the German-language Reading Adler from 1826 to 1830.

After discovering a coal deposit in 1827, he and several partners founded a coal mine. In 1831, they also founded the Little Schuylkill Navigation, Railroad and Coal Company, which opened a railroad line to transport the coal, making List an early American railroad pioneer. Through these ventures, he gained a certain amount of wealth and financial independence, which he lost again in the wake of the Panic of 1837.

While in the United States, List further developed arguments for economic nationalism, joining American entrepreneurs in demanding the introduction of protective tariffs in 1827. List also came into contact with the ideas of Alexander Hamilton and contributed, among other works, to the 1827 publication Outlines of American Political Economy, in which he provided economic support for the demand for trade protections. He began to distance himself from Adam Smith 's theories of free trade as the basis for his customs union proposals, instead arguing that protective tariffs would empower the United States and Germany, which lagged behind England in industrialization, to develop domestic economic sovereignty. In Outlines of Political Economy, List drew heavily on Jean-Antoine Chaptal 's work De l’industrie française (1819) and the emerging historical school of economics to argue that economic policy should vary depending on the needs of individual states. Some argue (e.g., Chang, 2002) that List's American exile inspired his pronounced " National System ", which found realization in Henry Clay 's American System. Others deny this (e.g., Daastøl, 2011), since List argued for a German customs union as early as 1819 and his views in the United States were framed as pragmatic rather than dogmatic and were influenced by liberal protectionists such as Chaptal and Adolphe Thiers.

The protectionist campaign brought List into the presidential election of 1828, in which he supported Andrew Jackson. Jackson granted List American citizenship in 1830 and appointed him consul to Hamburg in 1830, though this appointment was not confirmed by the United States Senate, and the Grand Duchy of Baden at Leipzig in 1833, providing him diplomatic immunity and protection from prosecution in Württemberg. However, the position did not provide a fixed salary, and List soon neglected his duties. While in Leipzig, List traveled frequently to Paris to promote American-French trade relations. He met frequently with Heinrich Heine and, through his daughters, befriended the musicians Robert and Clara Schumann.
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