Forging a National Economy ANTEBELLUM AMERICAN SOCIETY

Forging a National Economy ANTEBELLUM AMERICAN SOCIETY

FORGING THE NATIONAL ECONOMY Theme 1: The American population expanded and changed in character as more people moved to the West, cities, and immigrant groups such as the Irish and Germans arrived in great numbers. Theme 2: The American economy developed the beginnings of industrialization with the greatest advances coming in the area of transportation - canals and railroads united the nation.

THE MARCH WESTWARD Europe stretches to the Alleghenies, America lies beyond - Ralph Waldo Emerson The young America (half of all Americans were under the age of 30) was expanding westward at a rapid pace. The geographic center of population is the point at which half of the population is east, half west, half north and half south. In 1790, this point was in Maryland (near Baltimore). By 1820, it had moved to what is today West Virginia (along 39 N). By 1840, the center of West Virginia, and by 1860 it was in the center of southern Ohio.

POPULATION GROWTH 1790-1860 30,000,000 25,000,000 20,000,000 15,000,000 10,000,000 White Non-White 5,000,000 0 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860

GROWTH OF THE CITIES In 1790, there were only 2 cities with populations over 20,000 - New York and Philadelphia. By 1860, there were forty-three and about 300 other cities had populations of at least 5,000 inhabitants. Broadway, looking North, in New York City, 1834. These walkup buildings held the workshops and boarding houses for Irish and German immigrants who provided mostly semi-skilled labor.

CHANGING CITIES At first the laborers in the textile, garment, and steel mills were of American birth, many of them agricultural laborers who moved into nearby towns looking for work as soil exhaustion and a series of economic crises pushed them off the land. But in the two decades after a serious blight destroyed Ireland's potato crop in 1845, two million Irishmen left their island for jobs in England and the U.S.

IMMIGRATION BY DECADE 1,000,000 900,000 800,000 700,000 600,000 500,000 400,000 300,000 200,000 100,000 0 1831-1840 1841-1850 1851-1860 1861-1870 1871-1880 Irish German

KEY DIFFERENCES Irish Immigrants Fleeing crop failure and starvation Young (under 35) and literate in English Catholic Poor (could not buy land in the west) Concentrated in east coast cities, such as NY and Boston German Immigrants Fleeing crop failure and seeking political asylum Spoke German (and preserved their language) Protestant - but not Puritan Modest wealth ( middle class ) Scattered across the Midwest on purchased farms; sometimes created German communities

NATIVE REACTION Many of the immigrants of the 1840s and 1850s were Catholics. Irish Catholic immigrants flooded into coastal cities, accepting lower wages than native workingmen, creating economic grievances that were added to suspicions against Popery. One of the early large-scale public outbreaks of anti-catholicism occurred in the "City of Brotherly Love" during the presidential election campaign of 1844. This led to the establishment of the Know-Nothing Party, who supported strict limitations on immigration and naturalization.

INDUSTRIALIZATION BEGINS Britain began mechanization in the 1750s in the textile industry. Didn t allow their colonies to develop the machines. Samuel Slater, a British machinist, left England for America in the late 1780s and brought with him memorized plans of how the British machines were constructed.

INDUSTRIALIZATION BEGINS He established the first American textile mill in 1790 at Pawtucket, Massachusetts where the rivers could provide power to the mill. The early mills only produced cotton yarn which had been a huge problem until the invention of the cotton gin.

INSTEAD OF

TEXTILE MILLS USED

THE LOWELL MILLS The textile mills, concentrated in New England employed mostly young farm girls who were seeking to raise money before they were married. The Boston Associates mill at Lowell, Massachusetts was a prime example. Girls would work for a number of years in a rigidly controlled environment to save up money for a dowry.

THE LOWELL MILLS

THE COTTON GIN Eli Whitney, a Yale College graduate who was tutoring in the South, designed an engine that would speed up seed removal. This simple machine was 50 times faster than hand-picking the seeds and soon spread throughout the south, making cotton a very profitable crop.

COTTON GIN

COTTON GIN

TEXTILE INDUSTRY By 1860, more than 400 million pounds of cotton poured into more than 1000 northern mills annually. But just who was working in these mills? In 1820, half of the nation s industrial workers (not just in the mills) were UNDER 10 years of age. There were few opportunities for women to be selfsupporting (mostly nursing, domestic service, and teaching) but eventually, significant numbers of industrial workers were women. About 10 % of white women worked for pay outside of the home in 1850 and about 20% of all women had been employed at some point before they married.

CHANGES ON THE FARM The growth of farms changed the look of America. Initially, farms were self-sufficient for families but as transportation improved, northern trans-allegheny farms began to produce large amounts of corn. As they moved westward in search of more land to cultivate, their wooden plows failed to cut through the prairie sod. In 1837, John Deere (IL) produced a steel plow that could handle the tough sod. It was doubly effective because it could be pulled by horses instead of oxen. In the 1830s, Cyrus McCormick (VA) created the cotton gin of the west - the mechanical mower-reaper.

EARLY PLOWS

PRAIRIE BREAKERS Prairie sod was particularly difficult to break through and needed a very study, steel plow (strong enough to hold a sharpened edge). Usually, these were pulled by teams of oxen.

MCCORMICK MOWER-REAPER The mower-reaper was a horse-drawn machine that cut wheat that was ready to be harvested. It s major advantage was it s speed. It allowed one man to do the work of five men working with sickles and scythes.

CHANGES ON THE FARM Farmers rushed to cultivate more land so that more product could be brought to market. Essentially, wheat became a cash crop of the trans-allegheny west. There was still one major disadvantage the farmers in the west had to face - how to get their crops to market. They were still dependent on the North-South river systems to get their goods to the eastern cities. A transportation revolution was necessary...

THE TRANSPORTATION REVOLUTION Three Stages: Canals - man made waterways where horses could tow flat-bottomed barges Steamboats - ships that relied on the steam engine for power and could be used on rivers, canals or even on ocean-going ships Railroads - first using horse power then shifting toward steam powered propulsion

ROADS AND TURNPIKES Roads: Most were privately built and funded (often as toll roads) The National Road (aka the Cumberland Road) connecting Maryland to Illinois via Ohio and Indiana was funded with some federal money

ROADS IN 1825 The National Road (connecting Cumberland, MD to Wheeling, VA) was finished by 1818 Most were private toll roads due to differences between Federalists and Democratic- Republicans

CANALS DeWitt Clinton, governor of New York, used state money to build the first canal in America. It would allow western farmers direct access to bustling New York City via both rivers and canals. The Erie Canal promoted the development of routes for commercial trade with, and rapid settlement of, the newly-opened regions of the old Northwest, and the territories beyond the Mississippi.

CANALS The Appalachian mountain chain presented a barrier to continental transportation: rivers east of the mountains flowed toward the Atlantic, and those to the west flowed toward the Mississippi. The best location for a water link was through the Mohawk river valley gap in upstate New York, where a relatively short canal could link the port of New York with the vast water system of the Great Lakes. Clinton convinced the NY legislature to issue bonds for the construction of the Erie Canal in 1818. Here at Lockport, a deep gorge required a series of locks to move barges to the higher water level.

CANALS By 1825 the 364-mile-long canal was finished This system of locks and canals that connected to navigable rivers allowed farm produce from the west to reach consumers in NY by traveling only a few hundred miles rather that a few thousand miles down the Mississippi River and around Florida. 5 of the Erie Canal s 84 locks were here at Lockport, NY.

CANALS But the Erie Canal was not the only one built. Pennsylvania built a 395-mile canal between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; Ohio developed a series of canals which linked the Ohio river to Lake Erie; in the 1840s, Illinois funded a canal to link Chicago and the Great Lakes with the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Although not as profitable as investors wished, all of these canals played important roles in moving manufactured goods and raw materials, and in linking regional economies within the nation.

INTRODUCING STEAM POWER The age of steam-powered travel began in 1807 with the successful voyage up the Hudson River of the Clermont, built by Robert Fulton. Commercially operated steamboat lines soon made round-trip shipping on the nation s rivers both faster and cheaper. The ship above, the Walk-inthe-Water, operated on the Great Lakes in the 1820s and was typical of early steam ships.

INTRODUCING STEAM POWER The number of steamboats in service continued to grow throughout the 1830s and 1840s. Between 1811 and 1880, nearly 6,000 steamboats were built on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers; in St. Louis, 3,184 steamboat arrivals were recorded in 1852

STEAM POWER ON RAILS The need for more efficient systems to move goods over land led to experiments with rails laid on a road bed. The earliest rail cars were pulled by horses. But as others experimented with steam power for boats, others worked to harness steam to land transportation. In 1830 the Tom Thumb took part in a famous race with a horse-drawn rail car. Within a year the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, founded in 1827, had switched from horse to steam power.

STEAM POWER ON RAILS The Dewitt Clinton, built for the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad by the West Point Foundry, made the 17-mile trip from Albany to Schenectady on August 9, 1831 in the thenunheard-of time of less than an hour.

MORE TRANSPORTATION INNOVATIONS Fast sailing ships built beginning in late 1790s/early 1800s Many used a privateers in War of 1812 Clipper ships improved speed based on innovative design Often faster than steam ships Built for speed, not large cargo space

MORE TRANSPORTATION INNOVATIONS The Overland Stagecoach Often used for mail service but passengers would also travel via coach. Generally connected the Midwest to California

MORE TRANSPORTATION INNOVATIONS Pony Express Not established until 1860 Lasted only 18 months until the telegraph cable was completed Connected St. Joseph, MO to Sacramento, CA in a trip that only lasted 10 days Stations established every 10 miles to change horses

THE MARKET REVOLUTION Collectively all these changes transformed the US from an agrarian society to one that was primarily capitalist Primarily economic BUT also changed politics and culture The industrial revolution is a major component of the market revolution!

KEY NOTES Transportation improvements concentrated in the North - roads, canals, and railroads Factories concentrated in New England with textile mills dominating Massachusetts Western farms produced cash crops for the commercial markets in the East Cotton production transformed the South, increasing the need for slaves to work the fields to harvest the crop for overseas sale