The Transformation of American Society, 1815-1840

• Economic and social changes that took place in the United States between 1815 and 1840

• 1.) What were the main elements of the market revolution?

• 2.) How did the market revolution spark social change?

• 3.) How did the meaning of American freedom change in this period?

• 4.) How did the market revolution affect the lives of workers, women and African Americans?

• Growth of the population in the old Northwest• The removal of the Indians• the high prices and escalating demand for wheat and corn

• Growth of the population in the old Southwest• 1793=Eli Whitney’s cotton gin• Boundless need of the British textile industry for raw cotton

• After the War of 1812• Southeasterners poured into AL and MS• Drove up land prices• Tripled the nation’s cotton production

• By 1836, cotton accounted for 2/3’s of America’s foreign exports

• Introduction• High crop prices after the War of 1812 tempted more farmers than ever before to switch from subsistence to commercial agriculture.• Commercial agriculture opened new opportunities for western farmers• It also exposed them to greater risks• Many had to borrow $$$$ to buy land and to survive

until they could sell their first crops• Once in debt, the commercial farmers were particularly

vulnerable because they had no control over fluctuations in price, supply, and demand in world markets

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNftCCwAol0&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMwmepBjTSG593eG7ObzO7s&index=12

• Jeffersonian Republicans introduced land policies aimed at a speedy transfer of the public domain to small farmers

• Between 1800 and 1820• The govt. cut the minimum price per acre and the minimum # of acres that could be purchased•Most govt. land was sold at auction• Speculators often bid the price up far above the minimum• Speculators believed that the price of land would soon shoot

up in value

• The easy availability of credit encouraged this speculation

• Many poor settlers who did not have the money to buy at auction simply squatted on govt. land

• They exerted mounting pressure on Congress to grant them preemption rights over speculators

• They won their demand in 1841• Squatters quickly turned to commercial

agriculture• They wanted to accumulate the cash to buy their

farms• Many western farmers, after exhausting the soil’s

fertility growing cash crops, simply moved on to new land

• Before 1820, available transportation facilities were unsatisfactory

• Existing roads were adequate for transporting people, but moving bulky loads over them by horse-drawn wagons was slow and costly

• Robert Fulton’s steamboat• Allowed the great rivers west of the Appalachian Mountains that flowed north to south became two-way streets for commerce• By 1855, 727 steamboats were providing regular ferry service on all the western rivers

• Rivers did NOT always exist where they were most needed for trade

• Americans began to build canals in 1820’s• Erie Canal• 1817 to 1825 it was built• State of New York constructed it• Connected Albany on the Hudson River with Buffalo on Lake Erie• Lowered freight rates to a fraction of what they had been •Made NYC a leading outlet for Midwestern production

• The Erie Canal’s success encouraged dozens of other state-supported projects

• The canal-building boom deflated with the depression of the late 1830’s

• Railroads• By 1840 some 3,000 miles of railroad track had been laid• trains were beginning to supplement and compete with canal shipping

• This transportation revolution stimulated the development of towns and cities

• River port cities (steamboat)• Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, New Orleans

• Lake port cities (canals)• Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee

• The period from 1820 to 1860 saw the most rapid urbanization in American history

• Introduction•Early industrialization stimulated urbanization•The first cotton mill in the U.S.A. opened in Pawtucket, RI • Skilled mechanic Samuel Slater managed

to sneak out of Britain and arrived in America with his ability to reproduce Richard Arkwright’s spinning frame• Slater’s 1st mill opened in 1790

•Soon joined by many other manufacturing textiles and shoes

• The rapidity of industrialization varied from region to region•New England leading the way•The South lagged far behind• Planters preferred to put their capital in

land and slaves

• Industrialization began to change people’s lives•Forced workers to regulate their labor by the clock and pace of the machine•Downgraded the position of skilled artisans•Cheaper machine-made products were available in greater amounts to working-class Americans

• Embargo Act of 1807• Induced merchants barred from foreign trade to divert their capital to founding factories

• After the War of 1812=fledgling industries received protection from high tariffs• Especially in the 1820’s

• Transportation improvements opened distant markets to manufactures

• Relatively high wages paid to American workers•Made employers eager to adopt laborsaving techniques•Eli Whitney’s interchangeable parts•Other new technology

• New England was the 1st region to industrialize • Its merchants were particularly hard hit by foreign trade disruptions• It had swift-flowing rivers for waterpower• It had excess female farm population for labor

• Textile manufacturing became its leading industry

• The Waltham and Lowell mills in MA were the first to concentrate on total cloth production within the factory

• Originally 80% of the mill operatives were unmarried young women• Lived in company housing under the strict supervision of management• During the 1830’s, these Lowell women staged 2 of the largest strikes in American history to that date. (1834 and 1836)

• With 2-3 people discuss what you read about. Make a T-chart of 5 reasons why the mills improved women’s lives and 5 reasons why they did not.• Write a thesis answering the following

question: •Did the Industrial Revolution provide more economic opportunities for women in the 1830s?

• New York City and Philadelphia• Shoes, saddles, clothing• Done in small shops as well as factories• Much of the work was still done by hand

rather than by machine• But increasingly production was subdivided

into small specialized tasks• Done by low-paid, semiskilled or unskilled laborers (often women)

• This resulted in a declining importance for skilled artisans• in protest in the late 1820’s, formed trade unions and “workingmen’s” political parties

• Urban Inequality: The Rich and the Poor•The gap between the rich and the poor grew during the 1st half of the 19th century•The extremes were especially obvious in the cities• Mansions of the wealthy line the fashionable

avenues• The poor crowded into noxious slums like New

York’s Five Points district

•1833 in Boston=the richest 4% of the population owned almost 60% of the land

• The Sweep West•By 1821 the following states were added• VT, KY, TN, OH, LA, IN, MS, IL, AL, ME, MO

•Between 1790 and 1820• Pioneer families clustered near the navigable

rivers•1820’s and 1830’s• With the development of canals and railroads,

families could afford to fan out•Tended to settle near others who had come from the same region back east•Settled mostly between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River

• Before 1830, life was crude and difficult• Easterners often looked down on

westerners’ lack of refinement• Westerners in turn resented eastern

pretensions to gentility

• Adventurous pioneers traveled across the continent• Fur-trading and animal trapping• “mountain men”

• Midwestern settlement was encourage by:•Ordinance of 1785•Northwest Ordinance•Louisiana Purchase•Transcontinental Treaty of 1819•Land warrants given to War of 1812 veterans•Extension of the National Road into IL by 1838•Removal and declining strength of the Native Americans (by 1820 were no longer receiving Spanish and British aid)

• Overwhelming discrimination kept most free blacks in poverty

• They were generally denied the vote• Educated in inferior segregated schools (if

at all)• Forced to use separate and unequal

facilities• Kept out of all but the lowest-paying, least

skilled occupations

• In response to this pervasive discrimination, northern blacks founded their own churches• Richard Allen started the first of these• African Methodist Episcopal Church• In Philadelphia• 1816

• By 1822, there were AME congregations all over the North

• The black churches engaged in antislavery activities and ran schools and mutual-aid societies

• The majority of white Americans were neither rich nor poor

• Belonged to what was then called the middling classes

• For most people in that group the standard of living rose between 1800 and 1860

• Members of the middle class experienced a lot of insecurity

• They also exhibited a high degree of transience, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city, and region to region

• The Attack on the Professions•One sign that economic changes were disrupting traditional relationships and forms of authority could be seen in the intense criticism of professionals (doctors, lawyers, ministers) between 1820 and 1850•The denial that professionals had any special expertise was particularly prevalent on the frontier

• From New England, the Second Great Awakening moved rapidly to frontier areas

• Thousands gathered at religious camp meetings• These frontier revivals helped to promote law and order • Diminished the violence prevalent in new western areas

• The Methodists were the largest, most successful denomination on the frontier

• Early 1800’s to 1840’s

• By the 1820’s, the center of religious revivals had moved east again

• It was particularly strong in an area of western New York known as the Burned-Over District• Mostly along Erie Canal

• Charles G. Finney• Revivalist leader• Preached humans were capable of living

without sin• Humans needed to experience an emotional

religious conversion

• Introduction• Pre-Civil War decades were affected and transformed

American life by:• The steam engine• Cotton gin• Reaper• Sewing machine• Telegraph

• This new technology increase productivity and eased travel and communication• Also it brought down costs and prices

• Most Americans between 1840 and 1860 enjoyed improved standards of living

• But the new technology hurt other Americans• The cotton gin encouraged the expansion of the plantation-

slave economy• Sewing machines and new manufacturing techniques

rendered traditional crafts and the artisans who practiced them obsolete

• Between 1830 and 1860, settlers moved onto the grasslands of IN, MI, and IL

• John Deer’s steel-tipped plow was developed in 1837• Used to break up the tough

prairie soil

• Cyrus McCormick• 1847• Massed produced mechanical

reapers• Farmers could harvest grain 7

times faster than before and use 1/2 the labor

• Wheat became the dominat crop of the Midwest

• Americans quickly adopted these laborsaving inventions

• But they generally farmed wastefully • Rapidly depleted the soil• Then moved on to virgin land

• In the East some farmers introduced fertilizers• Increased their yields so they could compete with the new

western fields• In the South farmers had little incentive to invest in

laborsaving machinery (used slaves)

• By 1860, the United States had 30,000 miles of track• More than the rest of the world combined.

• Most of the new rail lines linked the East and Midwest.• Much of the produce of the Midwest was now shipped via

railroads radiating from Chicago eastward.

• Positives of the railroad growth:• simulated the settlement of the Midwest• Growth of wheat farming• Aided the development of cities, towns, and industry

• Several states barred funding of the railroads• Encouraged a shift toward private investment

• Wrote mostly essays• Transcendentalism• American brand of romanticism• Emerson rejected the importance of

education and reason in seeking the truth• He contented that every individual is capable of

knowing God, truth, and beauty by following his feelings

• Young, democratic America had nothing to learn from Europe• American could produce its own great literature and art

• Emerson’s disciple• Not only expressed his radical insights

but lived them• He went to jail rather than pay taxes

to support what he considered the “evil” Mexican War

• He defended the right to defy unjust govt. policies in his essay “Civil Disobedience” (1849)

• Walden• “he seems to have wanted most to use words to force

his readers to rethink their own lives”

• Children became more inclined to question parental authority

• Young men left home at an earlier age and struck out on their own

• Young women increasingly made their own choice of whom to marry or even whether to marry

• Relations between spouses also were evolving

• Wives continued to be legally subordinate to their husbands

• But under the doctrine of separate spheres, middle-class women were demanding and winning greater voice in those areas where they were deemed to be particularly• Exerting moral influence on the family• Creating within the home a calm refuge from the harsh, competitive world outside

• Middle-class women gained more control over the frequency of their pregnancies• The size of white middle-class families declined markedly

• The birthrate remained high among black and immigrant women

• Authority of fathers, husbands, professionals, and other social “superiors” waned

• New relationships among persons in similar positions were forged through the spread of voluntary associations• Temperance and moral-reform societies of white middle-class women, union, and workingmen’s parties and black fraternal, and other clubs encouraged sociability among members• Also these were attempts to enhance their influence on outside groups

• After 1815, white Americans’ westward movement speeded up due to a heightened European demand for agricultural products• especially cotton

• Federal govt. policies also hastened western settlement• Removal of eastern Indians to west of the Mississippi River• The sale of land on more generous terms

• Improved transportation facilitated the shipment of western farmers’ produce to eastern and European markets•Steamboat, canals, railroads

• This transportation revolution encouraged the growth of cities, commerce, manufacturing, and industrialization

• The economic transformations made some American wealthy and impoverished others• Affected social relations within the

family and society