1 st federally funded highway in US National Road or Cumberland Road was one of the first major improved highways in the United States to be built by

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4 1 st federally funded highway in US National Road or Cumberland Road was one of the first major improved highways in the United States to be built by the federal government. Construction began in 1811 at Cumberland, Maryland, on the Potomac River. It crossed the Allegheny Mountains and southwestern Pennsylvania, reaching Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) on the Ohio River in Plans were made to continue through St. Louis, Missouri, on the Mississippi River to Jefferson City, Missouri, but funding ran out and construction stopped at Vandalia, Illinois in A chain of turnpikes connecting Baltimore, Maryland, to the National Road at Cumberland was completed in 1824, forming what is referred to as an eastern extension of the National Road. In 1835 the road east of Wheeling was turned over to the states for operation as a turnpike. It came to be known as the National Pike The approximately 620-mile (1000 km) road provided a connection between the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and a gateway to the West for thousands of settlers. In 1830 President Andrew Jackson ( ) gave the project a boost when he appropriated (set aside for a specific purpose) $130,000 to extend the road farther westward; by 1852 it crossed Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, ending in Vandalia, east of St. Louis, Missouri. 4

5 1825 Governor Dewitt Clinton The Erie Canal proved to be the key that unlocked an enormous series of social and economic changes in the young nation. The Canal spurred the first great westward movement of American settlers, gave access to the rich land and resources west of the Appalachians and made New York the preeminent commercial city in the United States. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Allegheny Mountains were the Western Frontier. Within 15 years of the Canal's opening, New York was the busiest port in America, moving tonnages greater than Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans combined. The impact on the rest of the State can be seen by looking at a modern map. With the exception of Binghamton and Elmira, every major city in New York falls along the trade route established by the Erie Canal, from New York City to Albany, through Schenectady, Utica and Syracuse, to Rochester and Buffalo. Nearly 80% of upstate New York's population lives within a 25 miles of the Erie Canal. The Erie Canal's success was part of a Canal-building boom in New York in the 1820s. 5

6 Between 1823 and 1828, several lateral Canals opened including the Champlain, the Oswego and the Cayuga-Seneca. Today called the NY state canal system 5

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9 1 st commercially successful steamboat Application of steam power Not the 1 st person to use steam power to navigate North River Steamboat renamed the clermont 1807 Led to a steam boat movement (69 in 1820) to 536 in 1850 Steamboat became an american symbol Much greater speed than prior boats steam navigation colonized the West Evidence of a new mechanical age emerging 8

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12 Took advantage of the need for manufacturing during Jefferson s embargo act of 1807 Pawtucket, RI first cotton mill Established a pioneering cotton spinning mill - 3 different mills by (15 textile mills in US) 1810 (87) 11

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14 1 st to transform raw cotton into cotton cloth 13

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17 Mills equipped with self-acting machinery that took little skill to operate = cheap labor Workers = cheap, easier to intimidate to follow rules, and workers had less bargaining strength b/c unskilled 16

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20 Boston Associates sought to govern their mills through more stringently enforced rules and regulations 20 mills, 6,000 workers Mostly female, 85% single women (15-29) avg. 24 Single New England in need of guidance (i.e. lady like manners, female education) Helping the family s finances (e.g. to pay for brother to attend university) Desperate for the income 19

21 Lived apart from families in dormitories Lowell intended as a social experiment to foster moral and spiritual growth of women workers Rules: No drinking No Sabbath-breaking No foul language Required to show dissolute manners Strict curfew lived year-round. men were generally not allowed inside. About 25 women lived in each boardinghouse, with up to six sharing a bedroom. One worker described her quarters as "a small, comfortless, half-ventilated apartment containing some half a dozen occupants". Trips away from the boardinghouse were uncommon; the Lowell girls worked and ate together. Could get time off if another worker agreed to work extra spinners Newcomers were mentored by older women in areas such as dress, speech, behavior, and the general ways of the community. The Lowell girls were expected to attend church and demonstrate morals befitting proper society and their role in it. The 1848 Handbook to Lowell proclaimed that "The company will not employ anyone who is habitually absent from public worship on the Sabbath, or known to be guilty of immorality. 20

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28 Developed fully mechanized mills, not needing human assistance 1780s 27

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31 In 1825, the city of New York commissioned Morse for $1,000 to paint a portrait of Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, in Washington. In the midst of painting, a horse messenger delivered a letter from his father that read one line, "Your dear wife is convalescent". Morse immediately left Washington for his home at New Haven, leaving the portrait of Lafayette unfinished. By the time he arrived she had already been buried. [4] Heartbroken in the knowledge that for days he was unaware of his wife's failing health and her lonely death, he moved on from painting to pursue a means of rapid long distance communication. [5] That year, Morse was traveling to the United States from Europe on a ship, when he overheard a conversation about electromagnetism that inspired his idea for an electric telegraph. Though he had little training in electricity, he realized that pulses of electrical current could convey information over wires. The telegraph, a device first proposed in 1753 and first built in 1774, was an impractical machine up until that point, requiring 26 separate wires, one for each letter of the alphabet. Between 1832 and 1837 he developed a working model of an electric telegraph, using crude materials such as a home-made battery and old clock-work gears. He also acquired two partners to help him develop his telegraph: Leonard Gale, a professor of science at New York University, and Alfred Vail, who made available his mechanical skills and his family's New Jersey iron works to help construct better telegraph models. Morse's first telegraph device, unveiled in 1837, did use a one-wire system, which produced an EKG-like line on tickertape. The dips in the line had to be de-coded into letters and numbers using a dictionary composed by Morse, this assuming that the pen or pencil wrote clearly, which did not always happen. By the following year he had developed an improved system, having created a dot-and-dash code that used different numbers to represent the letters of the English alphabet and the ten digits. This coding system was significantly better, as it did not require printing or decoding, but could be "sound read" by operators. In 1838, at an exhibition of his telegraph in New York, Morse transmitted ten words per minute using the Morse code that would become standard throughout the world. In 1842, Morse convinced Congress to provide $30,000 in support of his plan to "wire" the United States. the Federal funds he raised had allowed him to string a wire from Baltimore to Washington. On May 11, 1844, Morse sent the first inter-city message. Soon thereafter, he gave the first public demonstration, in which he sent a message from the chamber of the Supreme Court to the Mount Clair train depot in Baltimore. The message itself was borrowed from the Bible by the daughter of the Commissioner of Patents and said, "What hath God wrought? By 1846, private companies, using Morse's patent, had built telegraph lines from Washington to Boston and Buffalo, and were pushing further. The telegraph spread across the US more quickly than had the railroads, whose routes the wires often followed. By 1854, there were 23,000 miles of telegraph wire in operation. Western Union was founded in 1851, and in 1866, the first successful trans-atlantic cable link was established. Though Morse didnt invent the telegraph and did not single-handedly create Morse Code, he may have been telegraphy's greatest promoter, and undoubtedly contributed to its rapid development and adoption throughout the world. Before the line had reached Baltimore, the Whig party held its national convention there, and on May 1, 1844, nominated Henry Clay. This news was hand-carried to Annapolis Junction (between Washington and Baltimore) where Morse's partner, Alfred Vail, wired it to the Capitol. This was the first news dispatched by electric telegraph. 30

32 Cyrus West Field (November 30, 1819 July 12, 1892) was an American businessman and financier who led the Atlantic Telegraph Company, the company that successfully laid the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean in The cable broke down three weeks afterward. [1] In 1866, Field laid a new, more durable trans-atlantic cable which provided almost instant communication across the Atlantic. 31

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34 A general incorporation law allows corporations to be formed without a charter from the legislature. It also refers to a law enabling a certain type of corporation, such as a railroad, to exercise eminent domain and other special rights without a charter from the legislature. Designed to encourage manufacturing changed the role of the corporation 33

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37 Grain Steamboats Engines (steamboat) Rivers The Midwest is a cultural crossroads. Starting in the early 1800s easterners moved there in search of better farmland, and soon Europeans bypassed the East Coast to migrate directly to the interior: Germans to eastern Missouri, Swedes and Norwegians to Wisconsin and Minnesota. The region's fertile soil made it possible for farmers to produce abundant harvests of cereal crops such as wheat, oats, and corn. The region was soon known as the nation's "breadbasket." Most of the Midwest is flat. The Mississippi River has acted as a regional lifeline, moving settlers to new homes and foodstuffs to market. The river inspired two classic American books, both written by a native Missourian, Samuel Clemens, who took the pseudonym Mark Twain: Life on the Mississippi and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 36

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42 In the nineteenth century, Americans saw Irish people very differently than we might today. Large numbers of Catholic Irish began arriving in the US in the 1850s numbers in the millions, driven from Ireland by poverty and famine. These immigrants were typically very poor, unskilled, and illiterate. Significant numbers spoke little or no English. The United States was predominantly a Protestant country, and native whites often saw the Irish Catholics as a danger Irish immigrants are shown as ape-like or as racially different caricatures of immigrants were common. Germans were stereotyped in beer halls; Chinese immigrants were mocked in caricatures and cartoons; African Americans were almost constantly the subject of demeaning comic stereotypes. The point is not that Irish people suffered more or less than any other group: rather, the remarkable thing is how differently irish people were seen. Irish Americans and African Americans shared many of the same jobs the low paying, low status jobs native whites avoided. 41

43 This cartoonist called attention to what he saw as the similarity between Irish and African immigrants, and the possibility that in America, they would turn into each other. 41

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45 The Know Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to U.S. values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, The movement originated in New York in 1843 as the American Republican Party. It spread to other states as the Native American Party and became a national party in In 1855 it renamed itself the American Party. [3] The origin of the "Know Nothing" term was in the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member was asked about its activities, he was supposed to reply, "I know nothing." [4] 43

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