1. Lecture 8 – Northern Society in the
Nineteenth Century
2. Part I – From Farm to Wage
Labor, ~1790-1830s
o Republican Ideology
o Rural Society in the North
o Towns and Commerce &
wage laborers
o The Industrial Revolution &
Strikes
o The Second Awakening
3. “Venerate the Plough” – Plowing his way to prosperity
Republican Ideology- in
order to preserve the
republic, voters should be
politically and economically
“independent,” i.e. own
property –
North and South shared
assumption
4. Idealized Representation of an Eighteenth-century Farm
Edward Hicks, The Residence of David Twining, 1787.
Thomas Jefferson - “Farmers” were
“the chosen people of God”
John Adams - “best men”
Jefferson - “natural aristocracy”
5. Rural Society in the North
Land Ownership – dream
Small farms, family farms Economic independence
Husbands & sons – worked the fields
Women & girls
• picking, spinning wool,
• making chairs, braiding baskets,
• milking cows
• Raising children,
• nursing the sick, caring for the elderly
Farm families linked – kinship, religion, ethnicity
6. The United
States at the
Beginning of
the Nineteenth
Century
Towns and Commerce -
Northern merchant
elite – transatlantic
commerce &
importers of trade
with China
7. Erie Canal (1817-1825)
364 mile Erie Canal links the Great Lakes & Ohio Valley to the
Hudson River, NYC & transatlantic trade
3K laborers to build, 8K men employed in moving goods along the
canal
8. The Mobility of Goods
and People, 1800
1800 – NYC – Western NY
– 1 week of travel
9. The Mobility of Goods and
People, 1857
1850s – NYC – Chicago 1 day
10. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, 1855
10K miles of railroad tracks
George Inness, The Lackawanna Valley (Western Railroad), 1855
11. Wage Labor force – U.S.
1800 – 12%
1860 – 40%, majority in the north
U.S. President Jefferson - $25K
Seamstress - $55
12. New Technological
Inventions
o Sewing machines
o The telegraph
o Railroads
o The Clock:
Eli Terry’s 1816 invention of a
new box or shelf clock
(only 20 inches tall)
transformed the clock
industry and the notion of a
clock.
14. Hundreds of unions, hundreds of strikes…
over wages, hours, rent, conditions…
for mostly white men
1820s & 30s – Lake Erie Canal workers – nonpayment – federal troops suppress
1824 – Pawtucket weaver strike – piece rates & workday hours
1827 – workingmen’s parties movement spread from Philadelphia to other
regions
1827 – Philadelphia Journeymen Carpenters struck – 12 – 10 hour work days
1831 – New York Tailoresses’ Society – 1600 women to fight a series of wage cuts
1833 – NY Journeymen carpenters strike for better wages – with 15 other unions
joining in.
1834 – NY’s General Trades Union – wages & conditions among bakers, hatters,
ropemakers, sailmakers, weavers, and leatherworkers…
1834 & 1836 – Lowell mill strike – women operative wages/rents
1834 – National Trades Union representing 25K workers started.
Strikes and Protests
15. Lecture 8 – Part II
Immigration,
Urban Life, &
Social Reform
in the Free-Labor North 1840–1860
•Urban Cities
•The Second Great Awakening
•Immigrants
21. The Second Great Awakening
Strong resurgence of evangelical Protestantism. Sources?
• Democratic thought and economic development
• Changes in family life
Evangelicals wanted to bridge widening social divisions
• Perfecting the individuals, rather than reforming society
• Important to the antislavery movement
• Class distinctions shaped evangelical activism
• Employers pushed church attendance for worker discipline
• Middle-class women should stay at home
22. Immigration to the United States, 1820–1860
1840-1860
1.7 million Irish
1.35 million Germans
24. The Irish Harvest
1845 potato fungus starts the Irish famine, 1 million Irish
died & 1-2 million others emigrated to the U.S. or Canada
“Evidence of prosperity”?
25. Bridget Murphy & Patrick Kennedy
Poor Irish Immigrants arrive in Boston, 1849
Two generations later, produce
President J.F. Kennedy &
Presidential hopeful Robert
F. Kennedy
26. “Let the Public Look at These Plague-Spots”
New York Illustrated
News, February 11,
1860
27. National Origins and American Jobs
o Irish – unskilled and temporary – day laborers &
domestic servants & textile factories (women)
o Germans – skilled revolutionaries – farmers,
shopkeepers, & skilled tradesmen (pianos, furniture,
printing, cigars, baking, brewing beers & butchering).
o Swedes, Norwegians – farmers
o English, Scottish & Welsh - farmers & industrial
workers – skilled, English language – integrate to
American society
o Small numbers of Chinese - railroad workers, gold
rush seekers, laundry mat & restaurant owners
28. Steinway & Sons (Steinwig) – NYC – 1860s
Donation to the White House under President Roosevelt
30. Lecture 8 – Part III
Racial Discord & Politics in the
North
•African Americans in the Free-
Labor North
•Class Conflicts – “high” and
“low” cultures or Immigrant or
Native American cultures
•Racial Discord & Nativist Attacks
•Politics
31. African Americans in the Free-Labor North
• Immigration affected African Americans the
most – job disadvantages & discriminations
• Higher standards of residency & property
qualifications
• Segregated educational facilities, theaters,
churches, housing
• Trade unions excluded Blacks
• Churches offered community & solace
32. Black Churches: African Methodist Episcopal
o First independent
denomination in the U.S.
o Nurtured distinctive African
American forms of worship
o Provided education for black
children
o Burial sites for families
excluded from white
cemeteries
1794 – first Mother Bethel African
Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in
Philadelphia
33. A Black Joke- 1854 racist cartoon from Yankee Notions
34. Frederick Douglass
A skilled caulker, but struggled as a common laborer, a
coachman, waiter, until 1847, when he became an
abolitionist editor in Rochester, NY
37. Nativist Attacks on Immigrants,
African Americans, and Workers
• American Party –
“Know-Nothings” –
secret anti-immigrant &
anti-Catholic party
• Open challenges to Irish
American citizenship
papers and voting
privileges
• Burning of Ursuline
Convent in
Charlestown, MA –
August 1834.
38. 1840s New York Herald ad
“Wanted, a Cook, Washer and Ironer;
who perfectly understands her
business; any color or country except
Irish.”
39. Chicago Advertisement:
“Wages of whiteness…” Irish
counterattack, against African Americans
Roediger, David R. Working Toward
Whiteness: How America's
Immigrants Became White : the
Strange Journey from Ellis Island to
the Suburbs. New York: Basic
Books, 2006.
41. Communal Experiments & Cooperative
Enterprises, Christian Utopians
Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, pencil drawing, Nashoba, April 19, 1828.
Started by Frances Wright, an interracial utopian community, near Memphis,
Tennessee
Most famous &
controversial,
Oneida, NY, John
Humphrey Noyes, 1848
Shared labor, equal wages &
sexual reform
43. Two political parties?
Whigs
• Northern commercial farmers,
financiers and industrial
craftsmen and proprietors
• Middle class ideal, rooted in
urban and rural property holder
interests
• Expand the federal government,
encourage industrial
commercial development,
promote temperance &
education
Democrats
• Rural planters, proprietors in
the South and Southwest,
urban poor, and some
Northern businessmen
• attacked “privilege” and the
threat of “aristocracy”
• Appeal to wage earners and
immigrants
• Favored using state power to
expand economic
opportunities, but wanted
westward expansion
