loapush 14

Chapter 14Forging the National Economy, 1790–1860

Theme 1:Theme 1:

AntebellumAntebellum society in society in American culture was strongly American culture was strongly influenced by Irish and German influenced by Irish and German immigration, which led to the rise immigration, which led to the rise of a powerful nativism movement.of a powerful nativism movement.

I. The Westward Movement

– The rise of Andrew Jackson, the first president from beyond the Appalachian Mountains, exemplified the inexorable westward march.

• The Republic late 1850s:– Half of Americans were under the age of 30 – By 1840 the “demographic center” of the

American population map had crossed the Alleghenies (see Map 14.1).

• By the eve of the Civil War, it had marched across the Ohio River.

I. The Westward Movement(cont.)

• Life across the Ohio River:– Life was downright grim for most pioneer

families• Perpetual victims of diseases, depression, and

premature death• Unbearable loneliness, especially for the women• Breakdowns and madness were all too frequent• Frontier life could be tough and crude for men as well

I. The Westward Movement(cont.)

– Pioneering Americans, marooned by geography, were often ill-informed, superstitious, provincial, and fiercely individualistic.

– Popular literature abounded with portraits of unique, isolated figures.

– Even in the days of “rugged individualism” there were exceptions.

– Pioneers called upon their neighbors for help and upon the government for internal improvements.

Map 14-1 p277

II. Shaping the Western Landscape

• The westward movement also molded the physical environment:– The American West felt the pressure of

civilization:• By the 1820s American trappers were trapping in the

vast Rocky Mountain region• The fur-trapping empire was based on the

rendezvous (French for “meeting” system– Trappers and Indians would come together to trade beaver

pelts for manufactured goods from the East.


(cont.)– The beaver had all but disappeared from the region– The buffalo eventually were totally annihilated– On the California coast, other traders brought sea-otter

pelts, driving to the point of near-extinction.

• Some historians called this aggressive and heedless exploitation of the West’s natural bounty ecological imperialism.

• Yet Americans in this period revered nature and admired its beauty.

– Many found the wild, unspoiled character of the land, especially the West, to be among the young nation’s defining attributes.


(cont.)• America had the pristine, natural beauty,

unspoiled by human hands – This national mystique inspired literature and

painting and a powerful conservation movement.

• George Catlin, a painter and student of Native American life, was among the first to advocate the preservation of nature as a deliberate national policy.

• He proposed the creation of a national park, beginning with Yellowstone Park in 1872.

III. The March of the Millions

• As the American people moved West, they also multiplied at an amazing rate:– By midcentury the population was doubling

every twenty-five years (see Figure 14:1)– By 1860 the thirteen colonies had more than

doubled in numbers; 33 stars graced the flag– The United States was the fourth most populous

nation in the western world:• Exceeded only by Russia, France, and Austria.

III. The March of the Millions(cont.)

• Urban growth continued explosively:– 1790 only two American cities that could boast

populations of 20,000—Philadelphia, New York– 1860 there were 43 and 300 claimed over 5,000– New York was the metropolis; New Orleans, the

“Queen of the South;” and Chicago, the swaggering lord of the Midwest—destined to be “hog butcher for the world.”


• Over-rapid urbanization brought undesirable by-products:– It intensified the problems of smelly slums,

feeble street lighting, inadequate policing, impure water, foul sewage, ravenous rats, and improper garbage disposal

• Boston (1823) pioneered a sewer system• New York (1842) abandoned wells and cisterns for a

piped-in water supply, thus eliminating the breeding place for many disease-carrying mosquitoes


• A continuing high birthrate accounted for the increase in population:– By the 1830s the rate of increase was 60,000 a

year– The influx tripled in the 1840s and then

quadrupled in the 1850s– During the 1840s and 1850s a million and half

Irish, and nearly as many Germans came (see Table 14.1)


• Why did they come?• Partly because Europe seemed to be running out of

room; had “surplus people”• Majority headed for the “land of freedom and

opportunity”• The introduction of transoceanic steamships meant

that immigrants could come speedily and cheaply• The United States received a far more diverse array

of immigrants than other countries• The United States beckoned them from dozens of

different nations

Figure 14-1 p279

Table 14-1 p279

IV. The Emerald Isle Moves West

• Ireland was prostrated in the mid-1840s:– 2 million perished as a result of the potato famine– 10,000s fled the Land of Famine for the Land of

Plenty in the “Black Forties”– Ireland’s great export has been population, they

took their place beside the Jews and the Africans as a dispersed people: (see “Makers of America: The Irish,” pp. 282-283)

– Many swarmed into the larger seaboard cities.

B. Irish immigrants (part of the “Old Immigration”)

1. Irish Potato Famine (1840s)

-- 2 million deaths

IV. The Emerald Isle Moves West(cont.)

• Boston and particularly New York became the largest Irish city in the world

• The Irish did not receive red-carpet treatment• The friendless “famine Irish” were forced to fend for

themselves– The Ancient Order of Hibernians, a semisecret society

founded in Ireland to fight rapacious landlords, served in America as a benevolent society, ailing the downtrodden

– It also helped to spawn the Molly Maguires, a shadowy Irish miner’s union that rocked the Pennsylvania coal districts in the 1860s and 1870s

IV. The Emerald Isle Moves West(cont.)

• Irish conditions in America:• They tended to remain in low-skill occupations• Gradually improved their lot, usually by acquiring

modest amounts of property• The education of children was cut short• Property ownership counted as a grand “success” • Politics attracted these Gaelic newcomers• They gained control of powerful city machines,

notably New York’s Tammany Hall, and reaped the patronage rewards

Irish eventually climbed up the social ladder by buying property

Came to control political machines in large cities

-- Tammany Hall in NYC

Iv. The Emerald Isle Moves West(cont.)

• American politicians made haste to cultivate the Irish vote:

• Especially in the politically potent state of New York• Irish hatred of the British lost nothing in the

transatlantic transplanting• Nearly 2 million arrived between 1830 and 1860—

and Washington glimpsed political gold in those emerald green hills

Population Density of

People Born in Ireland,

1872

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=irish+immigration&hl=en&sa=X&qscrl=1&nord=1&rlz=1T4ADFA_enUS410US410&biw=1080&bih=505&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnsb&imgrefurl=http://s3nr6qc.edu.glogster.com/irish-immigration-mvara/&tbnid=-vuVVmK3F7oboM&docid=5bo-YCdI0ZYsBM&ved=0CAwQhRYoAg&ei=fZDkT_D0NoTs0gGtnvHTCQ&dur=3994

V. The German Forty-Eighters

• The influx of refugees from Germany between 1830 and 1860 was hardly less spectacular than that from Ireland– Over a million and a half Germans stepped onto

American soil (see “Makers of America: The Germans,” pp. 286-287)

• The bulk were uprooted farmers• Some were liberal political refugees• Germany’s loss was America’s gain

V. The German Forty-Eighters(cont.)

• Germans:• Carl Schurz was a relentless foe of slavery and public

corruption• They possessed a modest amount of materials goods• Most pushed to the lush lands of the Middle West,

notably Wisconsin for farming• They formed an influential body of voters whom

American politicians wooed• They were less potent politically since they were

more widely scattered


– The hand of the Germans in shaping American life was widely felt:

• The Conestoga wagon, the Kentucky rifle, and the Christmas tree were all German contributions

• They warmly supported public schools, including their Kindergarten (children's garden)

• They did much to stimulate music and the arts• They were relentless enemies of slavery


• They were sometimes dubbed “damned Dutchmen”:

• Were regarded with suspicion• Seeking to preserve their language and customs, they

sometimes settled in compact “colonies”• Keeping aloof from the surrounding communities• Accustomed to “Continental Sunday” and uncurbed

by Puritan tradition, they made merry on Sunday• Their Old World drinking habits spurred advocates of

temperance to redouble their efforts

Distribution of German Immigrants, 1890

Uncle Sam’s Lodging HouseUncle Sam: "Look here, you, everybody else is quiet and peaceable, and you're all the time a-

kicking up a row!“

VI. Flare-ups of Antiforeignism

• The invasion of the immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s inflamed the prejudices of American “nativists”

• They feared they would outbreed, outvote, and overwhelm the old “native” stock

• They took jobs from “native” Americans• They were Roman Catholics

– The Church of Rome was regarded as out of line by many old-line Americans as a “foreign” church.

VI. Flare-ups of Antiforeignism(cont.)

• Roman Catholics were on the move:• To avoid Protestant indoctrination in public schools,

they began in the 1840s to construct an entirely separate Catholic educational system:

• Very expensive undertaking, but revealed the strength of their commitment

• With the Irish and German influx, the Catholics became a powerful religious group

• In 1840 they ranked fifth behind the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists

A Know Nothing Flag


• Know-Nothing Party—organized by American “nativists” for political action:– Agitated for rigid restriction on immigration and

naturalization– Agitated for laws authorizing the deportation of

alien paupers – Promoted a lurid literature of exposure, much of

pure fiction– Example: Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures


• There was even occasional mass violence against Catholics:– Burning their churches and schools– Some killed and wounded in days of fighting

• Immigrants were undeniably making America a more pluralistic society:– One of the most ethnically and racially diverse– Thus the wonder that cultural clashes occurred


• The American economy:– Attracted immigrants and ensured them of the

share of American wealth without jeopardizing the wealth of others

– They helped fuel economic expansion– Immigrants and the American economy needed

each other– Together they help bring the Industrial

Revolution

A Soap Advertisement

seeks to seize on the popularity of

the Know Nothings in the early 1850s

Theme 2:Theme 2:In the early nineteenth century, In the early nineteenth century,

the American economy developed the American economy developed the beginnings of industrialization. the beginnings of industrialization. The greatest advances occurred in The greatest advances occurred in transportation, as canals and transportation, as canals and railroads bound the Union together railroads bound the Union together into a continental economy with into a continental economy with strong regional specialization.strong regional specialization.

VII. Creeping Mechanization

• Gifted British inventors in 1750s perfected a series of machines for mass production of textiles:

• They harnessed steam to usher in the modern factory system—the Industrial Revolution

• Resulting in a spectacular transformation in agriculture

• As well as in methods of transportation and communication

VII. Creeping Mechanization(cont.)

• The factory system spread from Britain— “the world’s workshop”.– Why was America to become an industrial

giant?• Land was cheap in America• Labor was scarce• Money for capital investment was not plentiful

– The future of industrialization had to wait until the middle of the nineteenth century in America

VIII. Whitney Ends the Fiber Famine

• Samuel Slater— “Father of the Factory System”– After memorizing the plans for the machinery,

he escaped to America– He won the backing of Moses Brown, a Quaker

capitalist in Rhode Island:• Laboriously reconstructing the essential apparatus in

1791 he put together the first efficient American machinery for spinning cotton thread

VIII. Whitney Ends the Fiber Famine (cont.)

• Where was the cotton fiber:– Insatiable demand for cotton riveted the chains of

the downtrodden southern blacks– Slave-driving planters cleared more land for cotton– Cotton Kingdom pushed westward– Yankee machines put out avalanches of cotton– The American phase of the Industrial Revolution,

first blossomed in cotton textiles, was well on its way.


• Factories first flourished in New England:– Then branched out to New York, New Jersey,

Pennsylvania– The South:

• Increasingly was wedded to the production of cotton• Had little manufacturing• Its capital was bound up in slaves• Its local consumers for the most part were

desperately poor

VIII. Whitney Ends the FiberFamine (cont.)

• New England was singularly favored as an industrial center because:– Its narrow belt of stony soil made farming

difficult and manufacturing attractive• a relatively dense population provided labor and

accessible markets• shipping brought in capital• seaports made easy the import of raw materials and

the export of the finish product


– The rivers, notably the Merrimack in Mass., provided abundant water power.

– By 1860 more than 400 million pounds of southern cotton poured into the mills, mostly in New England.

IX. Marvels in Manufacturing

• As the factory system flourished it embraced numerous other industries:– The manufacturing of firearms and the

contribution of Eli Whitney:• Interchangeable parts adopted in 1850• Became the basis of modern mass-production,

assembly-line methods• It gave the North the vast industrial plant that

ensured military preponderance over the South

IX. Marvels in Manufacturing(cont.)

– Ironically Whitney, by perfecting the cotton gin, gave slavery a renewed lease on life

– By popularizing the principle of interchangeable parts, Whitney helped factories to flourish in the North, giving the Union a decided advantage.

– The sewing machine:• Invented by Elias Howe in 1846• Perfected by Isaac Singer• Gave strong boost to northern industrialization• Became the foundation of the ready-made clothing

b.Interchangeable parts

(widely adopted in 1850’s)

i. Basis of modern mass-production assembly line methods

ii. Mass-produced muskets for the U.S. Army

Whitney’s Gun Factory near New

Haven, Connecticut

3. Sewing machine

a. Elias Howe, 1846

b. Isaac Singer, 1851

c. Significance:

Isaac Singer

4. Telegraph -- Samuel F.B. Morse

-- Significance:

“What Hath God Wrought?”


• Drove many seamstresses from the shelter of the private home to the factory—human robot—tended the clattering mechanisms

– Each new invention stimulated still more imaginative inventions:

• Decade ending in 1800: only 306 patents were registered in Washington

• Decade ending in 1860: there were 28,000• In 1838 the clerk of the Patent Office resigned in

despair, complaining that all worthwhile inventions had been discovered


• Technical advances:– Changes in the form and legal status of business

organizations:• The principle of limited liability aided the

concentration of capital• The Boston Associates was created by 15 Boston

families• Laws of “free incorporation” meant that businessmen

could create corporation without applying for individual charters from the legislature


• Samuel F. B. Morse:– Inventor of the telegraph– Secured from Congress an appropriation of

$30,000 to support his experiment with “talking wires”

– In 1844 he strung a wire 40 miles from Washington to Baltimore and tapped out the historic message, “What hath God wrought?”

IX. Marvels in Manufacturing (cont.)

• By the time of the London World’s Fair in 1851, known as the Great Exhibition:– American products were prominent among the

world’s commercial wonders – Fairgoers crowded into the Crystal Palace to see:

• McCormick’s reaper, Morse’s telegraph, Colt’s firearms, and Charles Goodyear’s vulcanized rubber goods.

X. Workers and “Wage Slaves”

• The factory system created an increasingly acute labor problem:– Manufacturing had been done in the home:

• Master craftsman and his apprentice worked together

• The Industrial Revolution submerged this personal association into impersonal ownership of stuffy factories in “spindle cities”

• Around these the slumlike hovels of the “wage slaves” tended to cluster

X. Workers and “Wage Slaves”(cont.)

• Workers’ conditions:– Working people wasted away at their benches– Hours were long, wages were low, meals skimpy

and hastily gulped– Workers forced to toil in unsanitary buildings,

poorly ventilated, lighted, and heated– They were forbidden to form unions to raise

wagesThus there were only 24 recorded strikes before 1835


• Exploitation of child labor:– In 1820 a significant number of the nation’s

industrial toilers were children under ten– Victims of factory labor, many children were

mentally blighted, emotionally starved, physically stunted, and brutally whipped in special “whipping rooms”

– Samuel Slater’s mill of 1791: the first machine tenders were 7 boys and 2 girls, all under 12.


• Lot of adult wage workers in 1820s-1830s:– Many states granted the laboring man the vote– He first strove to lightened his burden through

workingmen’s parties– Many workers gave their loyalty to the

Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson:– In addition to goals of ten-hour day, higher wages, and

tolerable working conditions, they demanded public education for their children and an end to inhuman practice of imprisonment for debt


• Employers:– Fought the ten-hour day

• Argued reduced hours would lessen production• Increase costs, and demoralize the workers• Laborers would have so much leisure time that the

Devil would lead them to mischief

– In 1840 President Van Buren established the ten-hour day for federal employees on public works.

• In ensuing years many states began reducing the hours of working people.


• Day laborers tried to improve their lot:– Their strongest weapon was to lay down their

tools– Dozens of strikes erupted in the 1830s and

1840s:• For higher wages, ten-hour days and goals such as

the right to smoke on the job• Workers usually lost most strikes than they won• Employers imported strike-breakers• Labor raised its voice against these immigrants


• Labor’s effort to organize:– Netted some 300,000 trade unionists by 1830– Suffered as a result of the severe depression,

1837– Toilers won a promising legal victory in 1842

• Commonwealth v. Hunt—Mass. Supreme Court—labor unions were not illegal conspiracies, provided that their methods were “honorable and peaceful.”

– This case did not legalize the strike overnight– Trade unions had a long road to go

XI. Women and the Economy

• Women became part of the clanging mechanism of factory production:– New factories undermined the work of women

in their homes– Some factories offered work to those displayed– Factory jobs promised greater economic

independence for women– And the means to buy the manufactured

products of the new market economy

XI. Women and the Economy(cont.)

• “Factory girls”– Toiled six days a week, twelve to thirteen hours

“from dark to dark”– Textile mill at Lowell, Mass. as a showplace:

– Workers were virtually all New England farm girls– Carefully supervised on and off the job by watchful matrons– Escorted regularly to church from their company

boardinghouses– Forbidden to form unions – Few opportunities to share their grueling working condition

Middlesex Company Woolen Mills, Lowell, MA, on the Merrimack River c. 1830s

6. Irish and German immigrants later replaced the Lowell Girls


• Factory jobs wee unusual for women:– Opportunities to be economically self-supporting

were scarce– Consisted mainly of nursing, domestic services,

and teaching– Catherine Beecher urged women to enter the

teaching profession—became “feminized”– Other “opportunities” beckoned in household

services


• Statistics:– One white family in ten employed poor white,

immigrant, or black women– 10 % white women worked outside their homes– 20% of all women had been employed at some

time before marriage– The vast majority of working women were single– Upon marriage they left their job to become

wives and mothers, without wages.


• Cult of domesticity:– A widespread cultural creed that glorified the

customary functions of the homemaker– From their pedestal:

• Married women commanded immense moral power– They increasingly made decisions that altered the character

of the family itself

– Women’s changing roles:• The Industrial Revolution changed life in the home of

nineteenth-century: traditional “women’s sphere.”


• Love, not parental “arrangement” determined the choice of a spouse—yet parents retained the power of veto

• Families became more closely knit and affectionate, providing the emotional refuge against the threatening impersonality of big-city industrialism

• Families grew smaller• The “fertility rate” dropped for women between 14

and 45• Birth control was still a taboo topic

IX. Women and the Economy(cont.)

• Women played a large part in having fewer children• This newly assertive role has been called “domestic

feminism”• Smaller families meant child-centered families• What Europeans saw in the American families as

permissiveness was in reality the consequence of an emerging new idea of child-rearing:

– The child’s will was not simply broken, but rather shaped

• Good citizens were raised not to be meekly obedient to authority, but to be independent individuals, making their own decisions on internalized morals

IX. Women and the Economy(cont.)

• The outlines of the “modern” family:– It was small, affectionate and child-centered– It provided a special area for the talents of

women– It was a big step upward from the conditions of

grinding toil—often alongside men in the fields.

Why was New England the center of American industrialism?

1. Poor land for cash crop farming

2. Large pool of available labor

3. Strong shipping industry

4. Rapid rivers provided water power for textile factories.

D. Why did the South not industrialize?

1. Capital tied up in slaves

2. Smaller consumer market: Large poor white population could not afford finished

products

E. By 1850, industrial output eclipsed agricultural output

XII. Western Farmers Reap a Revolution in the Fields

• Flourishing farms were changing the face of the West:– The trans-Allegheny region—especially the Ohio-

Indiana-Illinois tier—was fast becoming the nation’s breadbasket

• Before long it would become a granary to the world.

– Pioneer families hacked a clearing out of the forest and then planted corn fields:

• The yellow grain was amazingly versatile.

XII. Western Farmers Reap a Revolution in the Fields (cont.)– Most western products were first floated down

the Ohio-Mississippi River system– Inventions came to the aid of the farmers:

• John Deere of Illinois in 1837 produced a steel plow that broke the stubborn soil:

– Sharp and effective, it was light enough to be pulled by horses, rather than oxen.

• 1830 Cyrus McCormick invented the mechanical mower-reaper

– It was to the western farmers what the cotton gin was to the South.

John Deere’s Steel Plow

"The People's Favorite! The World-Renowned McCormick Twine Binder! Victorious in over 100 Field Trials! New and

Valuable Improvements for 1884!“ -- The Abilene reflector, Kansas, May 29, 1884

XII. Western Farmers Reap a Revolution in the Fields (cont.)

– It could do the work of five men with sickles and scythes.

• The McCormick reaper:– It made ambitious capitalists out of humble plowmen, who

now scramble for more acres– Subsistence farming gave way to food production on a

large-scale (“extensive”); specialized, cash-crop agriculture came to dominate the trans-Allegheny West

– With it followed mounting indebtedness– Wanted more land and more machinery to work it– They dreamed of market elsewhere—in the mushrooming

factory towns of the East or across the faraway Atlantic– However, they were still landlocked—a need for a

transportation revolution

XIII. Highways and Steamboats

– In 1789, when the Constitution was launched, primitive methods of travel were still in use:

• Waterborne commerce was slow, uncertain, and often dangerous

• Stagecoaches and wagons lurched over bone-shaking roads

• Cheap and efficient carriers were imperative• In 1790s a private company completed the Lancaster

Turnpike in Pennsylvania, running 60 miles from Philadelphia to Lancaster

Transportation prior to the transportation revolution was very poor

D. Turnpikes

1. Lancaster, Penn. (1790)

-- Significance:

XIII. Highways and Steamboats(cont.)

• As driver approached the tollgate, they were confronted with a barrier of sharp pikes, which were turned aside when they paid their toll—turnpike.

• Western road building, always expensive, encountered many obstacles:

– Noisy states’ righters, who opposed federal aid to local projects

– Eastern states protested against being bled of their populations by the westward-reaching arteries

– Westerners scored a notable triumph in 1811 when the federal government started the construction of the National Road—known as the Cumberland Road.

Building the first macadam road in the U.S., Maryland. It later grew to become the Cumberland Road

2. National Road (Cumberland Road), 1811

-- Impact

There were numerous inns on the National Road where travelers could rest awhile and get a good meal for 25 cents.

3. Conestogas


• Robert Fulton started the steamboat craze:– Installed a powerful steam engine, the Clermont:

• It ran in 1807 from New York City up the Hudson River toward Albany—150 miles in 32 hours

• The success of the steamboat was sensational• Fulton had changed all of America’s navigable streams

into two-way arteries, doubling carrying capacity• By 1820 there were 60 steamboats on the Mississippi

and its tributaries• By 1860 there were one thousand.

Steamboat -- Robert Fulton

-- Significance:

The Champions of the Mississippi by Mrs. Frances Flora Bond Palmer, 1865


– In April 1865 the steamer Sultana blew up, killing seventeen hundred passengers, including many Union prisoners of war.

– The chugging steamboats played a vital role in the opening of the West and South.

XIV. “Clinton’s Big Ditch” in New York

• A canal-cutting craze paralleled the boom in turnpikes and steamboats (see Map 14.2):– New Yorkers, cut off from federal aid by states’

righters, themselves dug the Erie Canal, linking the Great Lakes with the Hudson River

• Blessed by the driving leadership of Governor DeWitt Clinton, the project was called “Clinton’s Big Ditch” or “the Governor’s Gutter.”

XIV. “Clinton’s Big Ditch” in New York (cont.)

• Begun in 1817, the canal was 363 mi long• Went from Buffalo, on Lake Erie, to the Hudson River,

on to New York harbor• The water from Clinton’s keg baptized the Empire State• Shipping was sped up as the cost/time dropped

– Other economic ripples• The value of land along the route skyrocketed and new

cities, Rochester and Syracuse, blossomed• The new profitability of farming in the Old Northwest-

Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois—attracted European immigrants.

Original northern five step lock structure

crossing the Niagara Escarpment at

Lockport, now without gates and used as a cascade for excess

water.

XIV. “Clinton’s Big Ditch” in New York (cont.)

– Many dispirited New England farmers abandoned their rocky holdings and went elsewhere:

– Finding it easier to go west over the Erie Canal, some took new farmland south of the Great Lakes

– The transformation in the Northeast—canal consequences—showed how long-established local market structures:

» Could be swamped by the emerging behemoth of a continental economy

– American goods on the international market; far-off Europeans began to feel the effects of America’s economic vitality

The 5 double locks at Lockport, originally constructed 1824-1825, enlarged in 1842 (north tier) and 1849 (south tier)

Map 14-2 p298

XV. The Iron Horse

– The development of the railroad• It was fast, reliable, cheaper than canals to construct,

and not frozen over in winter• Able to go anywhere—it defied terrain and weather• First railroad appeared in 1828 and new lines spread

with amazing swiftness– Faced strong opposition from canal builders– They were prohibited, at first, to carry freight– Considered a dangerous public menace

• Other obstacles:– Brakes were so feeble that engineers might miss the station– Arrivals and departures were conjectural

“Tom Thumb”

XV. The Iron Horse(cont.)

– Numerous differences in gauge—required passengers to make frequent changes of trains

• Improvements came:– Gauges gradually became standard– Safety devices wee adopted– The Pullman “sleeping palace” was introduced in 1859.

• America at long last was being bound together with braces of iron, later to be made of steel.

August 28, 1830, Peter Cooper’s “Tom Thumb” and a horse race along two railroad tracks.

Map 14-3 p299

XVI. Cables, Clippers, and Pony Riders

– Other forms of transportation and communi-cation were binding the United States and the world:

• Cyrus Field in 1858:– What he called “the greatest wire-puller in history”– The stretching of a cable from Newfoundland to Ireland– Later a heavier cable (1866) permanently linked the American

and European continents

• Donald McKay:– The development of the new craft called clipper ships– They sacrificed cargo space for speed– Their hour of glory was relatively brief.

XVI. Cables, Clippers, and Pony Riders (cont.)

• Eve of the Civil War the British won the world race for maritime ascendancy with their iron tramp steamers

– They were steadier, roomier, more reliable and more profitable.

• Stagecoaches:– Immortalized by Mark Twain’s Roughing It– Their dusty tracks stretched from the banks of the muddy

Missouri River clear to California (see Map 14.4).

• Pony Express (1860):– to carry mail speedily the 2,000 lonely miles from St.

Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California; ten day trip– Lasted only 18 months

XVI. Cables, Clippers, and Pony Riders (cont.)

• The express riders were unhorsed by Samuel Morse’s clacking keys

– Which began to tap messages to California in 1861

• The swift ships and the fleet ponies ushered out a dying technology of wind and muscle

• In the future, machines would be in the saddle

Map 14-4 p301

XVII. The Transport Web Binds the Union

– The transportation revolution:• Was stimulated by the desire of the East to tap the

West– Western region drained southward to the cotton belt– Steamboats reversed the flow of finished goods to the

western arteries and helped bind the West and South together

– Three decades after the Civil War, canals and railroads out from the East, over the Alleghenies and into the blossoming heartland

– An impressive grid of “internal improvements” was laid

• By the eve of the Civil War, a truly continental economy had emerged.

XVII. The Transportation Web Binds the Union (cont.)– The principle of division of labor was applied on a national

level– Each region specialized in a particular type of economic activity

» The South raised cotton» The West grew grain and livestock» The East made machines

• The economic pattern had fateful political and military implications:

– Many southerners regarded the Mississippi as a chain linking the upper valley states to the southern Cotton Kingdom

– They believed that some or all of these states would secede with them or be strangled

XVII. The Transportation Web Binds the Union (cont.)– They overlooked the man-made links that bound the upper

Mississippi Valley to the East; intimate commercial union– Southern rebels would not only have

» to fight Northern armies,» but the tight bonds of an interdependent continental

economy– Economically, the two northerly sections were conjoined

twins

VII. Regional Specialization

A. East: Industrial

B. South: Cotton/slavery

C. West: Grain & Livestock to feed East & Europe

D. Political implications: sectionalism!

VIII. Social results of industrialization

A. Division of labor

-- Reduction of craft workers

B. Growth of cities

C. Increased social stratification

1. Major gap in wealth

2. U.S. relatively well off to Europe

D. Immigration due to the high demand for labor

XVIII. The Market Revolution

– The Market Revolution:• Transformed a subsistence economy of scattered farms

and tiny workshops:– Into a national network of industry and commerce (see Map 14.5)

• Greater mechanization and robust market-oriented economy raised new legal questions:

– How tightly should patents protect inventions?– Should the government regulate monopolies?– Who should own the technologies and networks?

• Chief Justice John Marshall:– The U.S. Supreme Court protected contract rights by requiring

state governments to grant irrevocable charters.

XVIII. The Market Revolution(cont.)

• Monopolies easily developed, as new companies found it difficult to break into markets

• Chief justice Roger B. Taney argued that “the rights of the community” outweighed any exclusive corporate rights (Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837))

– His decision opened new entrepreneurial channels– And encouraged greater competition– So did the passage of more liberal state incorporation laws.

• The self-sufficient households of colonial days were transformed:

– Now families scattered to work for wages in the mills– Or they planted just a few crops for sale at market– Used the money to buy goods made by strangers in far-off factories.


– Store-bought products replaced homemade products– Caused a division of labor and status in the households– Traditional women’s work was rendered superfluous and

devalued– The home grew into a place of refuge from the world of

work that increasingly became the special and separate sphere of woman.

• Revolutionary advance in manufacturing and trans-portation brought increased prosperity:

– They widened the gulf between the rich and the poor– Several specimens of colossal financial success were

strutting across the national stage.– John Jacob Astor left an estate of $30 million in 1848.


• Cities bred the greatest extremes of economic inequality:– Unskilled workers fared worst– Became floating mass of “drifters.”– These wandering workers accounted for up to ½ the population

of the brawling industrial centers– They are the forgotten men and women of American history

• Many myths about “social mobility:”– Mobility did exist in industrializing America– Rags-to riches success stories were relatively few– American did provide more “opportunity” then elsewhere– Millions of immigrants packed their bags and headed for New

World shores.– General prosperity defused potential class conflict.

In Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, the Court ruled that the charter of the Charles River Bridge Company did not exclude the state of Massachusetts from chartering another bridge nearby. To the Left is a rendition of the Charles River Bridge from the early 19th century.

Reproduction courtesy of the Library of Congress

Map 14-5 p303

loapush 14

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