Stephen Colwell

Stephen Colwell (1800-1871) was born on March 25, 1800, in Brook County, West Virginia. He attended the old Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, where he received a classical education. Upon graduating in 1819, Colwell moved to Steubenville, Ohio, where he undertook further study in the law. He would later be admitted to the bar in 1821. Over the next seven years, Colwell practiced the law while residing in St Clairsville, Ohio, before moving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1828. Colwell continued his law practice while residing in Pittsburgh. Then, after the death of his first wife, Colwell remarried Sarah Bell Richards, the daughter of the wealthy Pennsylvanian iron manufacturer, Samuel Richards. This marked a major turning point in Colwell’s life. In 1836, Colwell ceased his law practice, and moved to Weymouth, New Jersey, where he became a manager of one of his father-in-law’s iron furnaces. Shortly after, Colwell moved again to Philadelphia, where he took control of another one of his father-in-law’s iron works based in the neighboring suburb of Conshohocken. It appears that after the death of Samuel Richards, Colwell would acquire at least some of his father-in-law’s assets. Having developed a reputation as an effective businessmen, Colwell would later serve as a director of various railroad companies, including the Camden, Atlantic, Reading, and Pennsylvania Railroads.

In addition to these commercial activities, Colwell was also involved in a number of public charities, associations, and societies. This includes his involvement in the African Colonization Society, an organization which advocated the ending of slavery and aided in the re-homing of former slaves to Liberia. He would also serve as a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, the Princeton Theological Society, and other theological associations and charitable institutions. During the outbreak of the American Civil War, Colwell would also supply Union army hospitals with supplies free of charge.

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The main elaboration of Colwell’s economic views, outside of monetary questions, is his 1850 pseudonymous piece entitled The Relative Position of Foreign Commerce, Domestic Production, and Internal Trade, his 1861 economic philosophical piece The Claims of Labor and Their Precedence to the Claims of Free Trade, and his introductory essay which was prefixed to the first American edition of Friedrich List’s National Systems of Political Economy, which appeared in 1856. This introductory essay would be published later as a separate publication in 1867. Other views of his can also be found in his four special reports contained within the Reports of a Commission Appointed for a Revision of the Revenue System of the United States, which appeared in 1866. These reports were written between 1865 and 1866, when Colwell was appointed to serve as a member of the Presidential Revenue Commission. Colwell’s special reports include (1) the Influence of the Duplication of Taxes on American Industry, (2) the Report Upon the Relations of Foreign Trade to Domestic Industry and Internal Revenue, (3) the Report on Iron and Steel, and (4) the Report of the United States Revenue Commission on Wool and Woolen Manufactures, the latter of which appears to have been a joint effort of both Colwell and Erastus B. Bigelow. All four of these reports mostly concern the burdensome effect of internal taxation on domestic industry. In addition to those listed, Colwell also wrote a fifth special report entitled Over-Importation and Relief, which was omitted from the final report.

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Colwell also wrote significantly on financial and monetary questions. The most important of these works was his major 1860 treatise The Ways and Means of Payment: A Full Analysis of the Credit System with its Various Modes of Adjustment, which spanned over 600 pages. He also wrote several smaller monetary tracts including Remarks and Suggestions Upon the State and National System of Banks which appeared in 1864, and his special report Upon High Prices and Their Relations with Currency and Taxation, which was also intended for, but never made it into, the final report of the 1866 revenue commission. Colwell’s other literary works mostly concern religion, the most important of these being his New Themes for the Protestant Clergy which appeared in 1851 and went through several editions. At the age of seventy, Stephen Colwell would pass away on January 15 or 16, 1871. Prior to his death, Colwell had bequeathed his library of over 5000 works on political economy to the University of Pennsylvania. It was said to be the most complete library of its kind in the United States at the time.