Industry and SectionalismChapter 7 Section 2

• Analyze why industrialization took root in the northern part of the United States.

• Describe the impact of industrialization on northern life.

• Analyze the reasons that agriculture and slavery became entrenched in the South.

Objectives

Jefferson and Industry

• Democratic Republican policies in contributed to the growth of American industry in the early 1800s.

• The embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812 cut off the supply of British goods, leading to the growth of American industry.

• The Tariff of 1816 protected American industry by increasing the price of imported goods. American manufacturers benefited from the tariff, but the higher prices hurt farmers.

Sectional Differences

• North embraced industry• Factory owners had

access to capital, or money, for investment.

• Immigrants provided inexpensive labor.

• Swiftly flowing rivers provided cheap power.

Labor Unions

• In the early nineteenth century, workers tried to unite but were not very successful.

• The Workingmen’s Party supported the right of workers to form labor unions, organizations that unite to improve pay and working conditions.

• Early labor unions focused primarily on helping skilled tradesmen, such as carpenters and printers.

• The Lowell girls were forced to accept pay cuts when their protests failed in 1834 and 1836.

• Factory owners frequently turned to sympathetic judges for assistance.

• A New York court convicted twenty tailors of conspiracy for forming a union in 1835.

Early attemptsto force employersto raise pay through strikes seldom succeeded.

Middle Class

• The industrial revolution brought about the emergence of a middle class.

• Made up of managers, clerks, accountants, and retailers, who worked in offices outside the home.

• The middle class moved away from the crowded city, which led to socially segregated neighborhoods.

• Middle class women began to stay at home.

Immigration

• Most immigrants came to Northern cities. Few went to the South.

• Immigration grew from 600,000 per year in the 1830s to 2,800,000 per year in the 1850s.

The Irish arrived following a potato famine.

The Germans came for economic opportunity.

For the first time, many immigrants were Catholic or Jewish.

Many Protestants distrusted the Catholic Church and resented immigrants as competitors for jobs.

Nativist politicians in the new Whig Party exploited ethnic prejudices and campaigned against immigration and immigrants.

In response, most Catholic and Jewish immigrants joined the Democratic Party.

•The rapid influx of people caused social, economic and political strains in cities.

•Various immigrant groups and free Africans competed for jobs and for housing in shabby neighborhoods.

•This competition led to riots in Philadelphia in 1844 and in Baltimore in 1854.

Most immigrants became urban laborers, though some set up businesses or moved to the Midwest.

City problems

Slavery Expands

• Three developments caused cotton production to surge, making slavery very profitable in the Deep South.

#1 The invention of the cotton gin.

# 2 The expansion of cotton production westward

#3 Huge demand for cotton because of industrialization

Importation of slaves was abolished in 1808, causing a huge increase in the cost of a slave from $600 in 1802 to $1,800 in 1860.

The slave population grew from 1.5 million in 1820 to 4 million in 1860.

The new plantations filled a demand from factories in the Northeast and Europe as “King Cotton” soon accounted for half the value of all U.S. exports.

King Cotton

– Unlike the North, the South saw very little urban growth. Few immigrants were attracted to the South.

– The South failed to develop the commercial towns common in the Northeast and Midwest.

As the North’s urban population grew, the South lost political power, especially in the House of Representatives.

Southerners feared that Northerners would threaten their investment in slavery.

Little was done for poor whites. Illiteracy was three times the rate in the North.

Southerners rationalized that slavery was a positive that Christianized and helped Africans.

Slaveholders

• Slaveholders were actually a small minority.

• In 1860, only one in four southern families owned slaves.

• The typical slaveholder lived in a farmhouse and worked beside his four or five slaves.

Defending the Slave System

• Most aspired to acquire slaves and a plantation.

• Southern whites shared a sense of racial superiority and pride in their independence.

• Most believed that slaves were better off than poor northern factory workers.

• Most feared that freed blacks would seek a bloody revenge.

Jefferson, Madison, and Washington apologized for slavery as a necessary evil. But by the 1850s, proslavery Southerners defended slavery as a positive good.