I believe that Bradley Bateman's criticism of Peter Boettke misses or
understates some important points. He may be using the term "laissez faire"
differently from its originators and early champions.

1. R.T. Ely, like many young economists of the era, trained in Germany.
German training was the acme of prestige in those years. Germany was
Bismarckian. German education aimed at training men to enter the civil
service. The German historical school did not track the English classical
school closely, if at all. Friedrich List, of course, was a noted
protectionist who explicitly rejected the English school.
2. U.S. policy, like German, was heavily protectionist, quite the opposite
of laissez faire. It was also dirigiste, exemplified by the r.r. land
grants, The Desert Land Act of 1877, etc. As to domestic trade, the U.S.
Treasury supported the Federal government mainly from excise taxes, exactly
what Quesnay et al., who coined the term laissez faire, opposed. Few
academics took a strong stand for free trade, either internationally or
domestically. Non-academic Henry George, who did, was traduced and sneered
down by the academics.
3. A few isolated quotes from Dunbar or Walker do not make a case about the
general run of thinking. Walker was quite bombastic and prone to overextend
himself. Spencer, whom an earlier commenter quoted, was not an American, and
extreme and polar, rather than typical, in his views. He makes a good foil,
but not an example.
4. After 1891 there was a strong current of Thomist economics at work on
American Catholics. It was ignored within the closed circle of the
academic-economic subculture, but since there are many more Catholics than
economists, this may have been a strategic miscalculation. Certainly FDR
could count, and he incorporated it in his Wagner Act, price controls,
NRA-AAA, etc. This strain of thought has its own life, independent of
Keynes, although occasionally meshing with him.
5. Bateman seems to incorporate some of the above in his closing, but his
main argument seems to point the other way, which is confusing (to me,
anyway).

None of that is to excuse Krugman's overstatement of Keynes' relative
importance; but I think Boettke is just trying to save us from overreacting
to the overstatement, and deserves a more sympathetic hearing.

Mason Gaffney