During the early to mid-1800s, the United States experienced rapid economic, technological, and population growth that transformed it into a market economy. Key developments included the expansion of commercial farming in the Midwest, the transportation revolution of canals and railroads, the rise of manufacturing in the North, and large-scale immigration. However, this period also saw social tensions emerge between native-born Americans and Catholic immigrants, as well as economic divisions growing between the industrial North and agricultural South. Rapid advances in transportation and communication further integrated the national economy but also exacerbated regional differences leading up to the Civil War.

1. America’s Economic Revolution

2. Ch. 10 Overview:The Market Economy
Era of Rapid Technological, Economic and Urban Growth,
1800s - 1860s
✤ Important changes:
✤ The Missouri Compromise
✤ Development of Commercial Farming
✤ Transportion revolution
✤ Early urbanization
✤ The Rise of manufacturing and early industry
✤ Growth and impact of immigration
✤ Drawbacks of the new market economy

3. PopulationTrends
✤ Rapid Growth - largely because of
improved public health
✤ 1. Population Growth
✤ 1790 was 4 million
✤ 1820 was 10 million
✤ 1840 was 17 million
✤ 1808 importation of slaves
banned; ratio of black to white
changes
✤ Immigration becomes important
after 1830
✤ 2. Westward Movement
✤ 3. Urbanization

4. Immigration in the
1840s and 50s
✤ Nativism:
✤ 1830-1860 population increase from 12,866,000 to
31,443,000
✤ More than five million were immigrants
✤ America was sparsely settled with a big demand for
workers.
✤ Push factors
✤ 1850s - 300,000 from Britain, Germany, Ireland and
Scandinavia
✤ 1845-1860 Irish potato famine and Germans
escaping political persecution brought poor and
illiterate working population (northern factories)

7. ✤ Irish Workers compete with free blacks
for the jobs no one else wanted.
✤ Men - railroad building, mining,
factory work
✤ Women - servants, washers, factory
work
✤ Between 1800 and 1830, New York's
population jumped from 60,489 to
202,589.
✤ Many city politicians also offered to assist
immigrants in exchange for votes. The
politicians set up organizations to help
new arrivals find housing and work.
Immigration in the
1840s

8. Protestant vs.
Catholics
✤ Nativist (1850s) feared pollution of Anglo-
Saxon nation. America was a pure Protestant
country.
✤ Feared the clannish adherence of old world
customs, poverty and crime in slums, and
burden on welfare.
✤ Also feared competition for jobs but primary
reason was anti-Catholicism
✤ Fear that the papacy was trying to interfere
in American politics
✤ Protestant vs. Catholic rivalry

9. Know-Nothings
✤ Know-Nothings: Secret anti-Catholic
organizations sworn to secrecy.
Nativists peaked between 1854 and
1856 capturing several state
legislatures.
✤ Movement lost credibility when it
divided over expansion, slavery and
caused anti-foreign riots
✤ Members promised not to vote for any
Catholics or immigrants running for
political office.

10. Philadelphia Riots of 1844

12. Know-
Nothings
✤ If asked about their secret group,
they said, "I know nothing about it."
✤ In the 1850s, nativists started a
political party. Because of the
members' answers to questions
about their party, it was called the
Know- Nothing Party.
✤ It wanted to ban Catholics and the
foreign-born from holding office. It
also called for a cut in immigration
and a 21-year wait to become an
American citizen.

14. Transportation Revolution: Canals• With the mid-West growing into the
breadbasket of the Northeast, the
two regions grew physically closer.
•Originally, transport routes west of
the Appalachians (waterways) ran
west and south.
•However, agricultural produce was
needed in the more densely settled,
more urban Northeast.
✤ Transportation systems: changing
from dominance of southern
waterways to northern waterways
like Erie Canal and Michigan Canal
✤ Erie Canal was a major financial
success upon its completion.
✤ New York replaced New Orleans as
main port of export.

16. Transportation Revolution: Rail
•Starting in the 1830s and booming after 1850,
railroads provided efficient transport
independent of waterways.
Railroads surpass water travel in the North.
✤ Increase in railroad track - 1840 (2,818 mi.) to
(30,627 mi) by 1860.
✤ Mostly united East to West not North to South
•By 1859 US rails carried 2.6 Billion TONS of
freight, and 1.5 billion passengers
•By 1869 the Transcontinental RR is completed
•By 1840 both gauge and width of rails is
standardized at 4’4”
•4 standard time zones created

18. The Rise of Manufacturing
• With the war of 1812, Northeast shifts increasingly to manufacturing.
• Tariffs protected domestic manufacturing.
• Esp. ready-made clothes, shoes, but also many other things.
• Production techniques include:
– traditional workshops
– the breaking down of one task into
many small ones
– Early water- and steam-powered
industrialization.
• The Am. System of Manufacturing revolutionized production.
• Developed by Eli Whitney in 1798.
• Precision-crafted, interchangeable parts made the production of
guns, but also locks, watches, etc. much easier and faster.
• Before, parts were hand-crafted for one individual product only, now
they were machine-tooled and could easily be assembled.
• The Am. System allowed for the mass production of quality
consumer goods.

19. New EnglandTextile Industry
•Textile production was the most
industrialized segment of the
economy before the Civil War.
•Concentrated in New England,
massive looms were at first powered
by water, later by steam.
•Textile mills concentrated all
production steps under one roof.
•Production was efficient, the
resulting clothing was cheap.
•The most important example of
early NE textile mills were the mills
in Waltham and Lowell, Mass.
•Typical hours: 12 hours per day/ 6 days a week (309 days per
year)
•40 cents per day but had to pay for rent and food
•Forced to go to church on Sundays. No drinking allowed. No
sex allowed. 80% female 15-29 yrs old.

20. Contrast between
North and South
✤ Growth of cities -
✤ North 26% lived in cities over 2500
✤ South fewer than 10%
✤ Rise of Industry - cheap raw materials,
spread of factory system and use of
machinery
✤ Industry begins to merge with farming -
no longer plowing on your own - instead
use a John Deere plow or a Cyrus
McCormick reaper.
✤ By 1850s US surpassed nearly all other
countries in the manufacturing of
goods produced with precision
machines.
✤ Machine factories needed only
unskilled workers (immigrants) and
the relationship between the workers
and employer became very
impersonal.
✤ Wages of $6 per week for 15 hour
days. Unions were called conspiracies
and received unfavorable public
opinion. “landless
proletariat” (Commonwealth v. Hunt)

21. Contrast between South
and North
✤ North specialized in farming shipped on rails. (Economy of
Scale)
✤ Southern tobacco, sugar and cotton based on slave labor in
the deep South. Southern, non-slaveholding, farmers
remained outside the market economy.
✤ Rumors of a Northern conspiracy made up of bankers,
merchants, manufacturers who kept the South as a colony.
✤ Robert Toombs of Georgia thought that the North had
become powerful because the government had given the
North monopolistic favors. Government subsidies had
made it “a perpetual fertilizing stream to them and their
industry, and a suction-pump to drain away our substance
and parch up our lands.”

22. Farmers Become
Dependent on the East
• Commercial farming was directly tied to technological innovations, such as steel
plows or the McCormick reaper.
• Farmers invested money in advanced tools.
• As the orientation towards a cash income increased, farmers also bought ready-
made clothes, shoes and other goods.
• Therefore, commercial farming was tied to the other key factor of the market
economy: manufacture.
• Between 1820-60, the area now known as the mid-West saw rapid settlement.
• In accordance to the Jeffersonian ideal, most settlers engaged in farming.
• However, farmers increasingly shifted from subsistence farming to cash crops,
most importantly wheat.
• As farmers worked towards a cash income, they became part of of the growing
market economy.

23. InternationalTrade
✤ Following the economic depression after the
Panic of 1837, cotton production fueled the
recovery of American trade
✤ Exports and imports went from $222 million in
1840 to $687 million in 1860.
✤ By 1860, the global economy was built around
the American cotton industry.
✤ International trade with China: Open Door
trade. Post Opium War Treaty of Wanghia
(1854)
✤ Trade with Japan: Open via Commodore Perry,
1852

24. The Communication
Revolution
✤ May 24th, 1844
✤ First telegraph message sent
✤ Symbolic of the technological
revolution that the United
States had undergone over the
past several decades
✤ Growth of technology was
particularly notable in
transportation and
communication.

25. “What hath God wrought”
✤ The choice of words is perhaps a perfect reflection of
the time period in general
✤ Convergence of conservatism (small town,
religious) and liberal thought (urban, industrial,
innovative)
✤ Consider that Andrew Jackson rode into
Washington DC by horse and carriage but left
office by railroad.
✤ Also, more immediate access to news and
information increased the influence of large
markets over small ones. This created a national
identify but led to aggressive resistance in the
South.
✤ Historians argue that the rapid communications and
transportation changes further propelled the nation
towards division and ultimately war.
✤ Considering our current communications revolution - can
we predict something similar within our own time?