Mathew Carey was an Irish-born American publisher and economist who lived and worked in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In Dublin, he had engaged in the cause of parliamentary reform, and in America, attracting the wrath of Federalists, retained his democratic sympathies. However, he broke with the emerging Democratic Party and its southern constituency by offering a defense of economic protectionism. He was the father of economist Henry Charles Carey.
Mathew Carey by John Neagle (detail), 1825
Henry Charles Carey was an American publisher, political economist, and politician from Pennsylvania. He was the leading 19th-century economist of the American School and a chief economic adviser to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase during the American Civil War.
Henry Charles Carey
Carey's father, Mathew, was a leading economist in Philadelphia.
Karl Marx referred to Carey as the "only American economist of importance" and his theories as the chief obstacle to communist revolution in the United States. He pledged to wage "hidden warfare" against Carey.
Carey served as a trusted adviser to President Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, and Representative Justin Smith Morrill, among others. His thinking was the basis for the Morrill Tariff and the National Banking Act of 1863.
