This document provides an overview of westward expansion and immigration in the United States between 1790-1860. It discusses the movement of settlers beyond the Appalachians to the Ohio River Valley and beyond, noting the hardships of frontier life. It also examines the impacts on the environment through trapping and the near-extinction of beavers and buffalo. Large numbers of Irish and German immigrants arrived during this period, with over 1 million each from Ireland and Germany between 1830-1860. The Irish faced discrimination and settled in large cities, gaining political control. Germans were more rural and influenced American culture and opposed slavery. Their influx led to nativist and anti-Catholic movements like the Know-Nothing Party
Nativism in Antebellum America (AP US History)Tom Richey
http://www.tomrichey.net
This PowerPoint was designed to accompany a lecture on antebellum "Nativism" (resistance to Irish and German immigration) in my AP US History course. In response to the wave of Irish immigration in the 1840s, Native-born Americans mobilized first as mobs (Philadelphia Nativist Riots), and then politically in the form of the "Know Nothing" Party in the 1850s.
Nativism in Antebellum America (AP US History)Tom Richey
http://www.tomrichey.net
This PowerPoint was designed to accompany a lecture on antebellum "Nativism" (resistance to Irish and German immigration) in my AP US History course. In response to the wave of Irish immigration in the 1840s, Native-born Americans mobilized first as mobs (Philadelphia Nativist Riots), and then politically in the form of the "Know Nothing" Party in the 1850s.
How the original migration of people from Europe to North America occurred. From 1500 AD through the 19th century, the displacement and migration of 50 million people.
The 2nd and 3rd lectures for 1st year's students of English are devoted to the history of immigration to the United States from the Pilgrim Fathers to most recent legislation on immigration
2. Theme 1:
Antebellum society in
American culture was strongly
influenced by Irish and German
immigration, which led to the rise
of a powerful nativism movement.
3. I. The Westward Movement
– The rise of Andrew Jackson, the first president
from beyond the Appalachian Mountains,
exemplified the inexorable westward march.
• The Republic late 1850s:
– Half of Americans were under the age of 30
– By 1840 the “demographic center” of the
American population map had crossed the
Alleghenies (see Map 14.1).
• By the eve of the Civil War, it had marched across
the Ohio River.
4. I. The Westward Movement
(cont.)
• Life across the Ohio River:
– Life was downright grim for most pioneer
families
• Perpetual victims of diseases, depression, and
premature death
• Unbearable loneliness, especially for the women
• Breakdowns and madness were all too frequent
• Frontier life could be tough and crude for men as well
5. I. The Westward Movement
(cont.)
– Pioneering Americans, marooned by geography,
were often ill-informed, superstitious, provincial,
and fiercely individualistic.
– Popular literature abounded with portraits of
unique, isolated figures.
– Even in the days of “rugged individualism” there
were exceptions.
– Pioneers called upon their neighbors for help
and upon the government for internal
improvements.
7. II. Shaping the Western
Landscape
• The westward movement also molded the
physical environment:
– The American West felt the pressure of
civilization:
• By the 1820s American trappers were trapping in the
vast Rocky Mountain region
• The fur-trapping empire was based on the
rendezvous (French for “meeting” system
– Trappers and Indians would come together to trade beaver
pelts for manufactured goods from the East.
8. II. Shaping the Western
Landscape
(cont.)
– The beaver had all but disappeared from the region
– The buffalo eventually were totally annihilated
– On the California coast, other traders brought sea-otter
pelts, driving to the point of near-extinction.
• Some historians called this aggressive and heedless
exploitation of the West’s natural bounty ecological
imperialism.
• Yet Americans in this period revered nature and
admired its beauty.
– Many found the wild, unspoiled character of the land,
especially the West, to be among the young nation’s
defining attributes.
9. II. Shaping the Western
Landscape
(cont.)
• America had the pristine, natural beauty,
unspoiled by human hands
– This national mystique inspired literature and
painting and a powerful conservation
movement.
• George Catlin, a painter and student of Native
American life, was among the first to advocate the
preservation of nature as a deliberate national policy.
• He proposed the creation of a national park,
beginning with Yellowstone Park in 1872.
11. III. The March of the Millions
• As the American people moved West, they
also multiplied at an amazing rate:
– By midcentury the population was doubling
every twenty-five years (see Figure 14:1)
– By 1860 the thirteen colonies had more than
doubled in numbers; 33 stars graced the flag
– The United States was the fourth most populous
nation in the western world:
• Exceeded only by Russia, France, and Austria.
12. III. The March of the Millions
(cont.)
• Urban growth continued explosively:
– 1790 only two American cities that could boast
populations of 20,000—Philadelphia, New York
– 1860 there were 43 and 300 claimed over 5,000
– New York was the metropolis; New Orleans, the
“Queen of the South;” and Chicago, the
swaggering lord of the Midwest—destined to be
“hog butcher for the world.”
13. III. The March of the Millions
(cont.)
• Over-rapid urbanization brought undesirable
by-products:
– It intensified the problems of smelly slums,
feeble street lighting, inadequate policing,
impure water, foul sewage, ravenous rats, and
improper garbage disposal
• Boston (1823) pioneered a sewer system
• New York (1842) abandoned wells and cisterns for a
piped-in water supply, thus eliminating the breeding
place for many disease-carrying mosquitoes
14. III. The March of the Millions
(cont.)
• A continuing high birthrate accounted for
the increase in population:
– By the 1830s the rate of increase was 60,000 a
year
– The influx tripled in the 1840s and then
quadrupled in the 1850s
– During the 1840s and 1850s a million and half
Irish, and nearly as many Germans came (see
Table 14.1)
15. III. The March of the Millions
(cont.)
• Why did they come?
• Partly because Europe seemed to be running out of
room; had “surplus people”
• Majority headed for the “land of freedom and
opportunity”
• The introduction of transoceanic steamships meant
that immigrants could come speedily and cheaply
• The United States received a far more diverse array
of immigrants than other countries
• The United States beckoned them from dozens of
different nations
19. IV. The Emerald Isle Moves West
• Ireland was prostrated in the mid-1840s:
– 2 million perished as a result of the potato
famine
– 10,000s fled the Land of Famine for the Land of
Plenty in the “Black Forties”
– Ireland’s great export has been population, they
took their place beside the Jews and the Africans
as a dispersed people: (see “Makers of America:
The Irish,” pp. 282-283)
– Many swarmed into the larger seaboard cities.
20. B. Irish immigrants (part of the “Old
Immigration”)
1. Irish Potato
Famine
(1840s)
-- 2 million
deaths
22. IV. The Emerald Isle Moves West
(cont.)
• Boston and particularly New York became the largest
Irish city in the world
• The Irish did not receive red-carpet treatment
• The friendless “famine Irish” were forced to fend for
themselves
– The Ancient Order of Hibernians, a semisecret society
founded in Ireland to fight rapacious landlords, served in
America as a benevolent society, ailing the downtrodden
– It also helped to spawn the Molly Maguires, a shadowy
Irish miner’s union that rocked the Pennsylvania coal
districts in the 1860s and 1870s
23. IV. The Emerald Isle Moves West
(cont.)
• Irish conditions in America:
• They tended to remain in low-skill occupations
• Gradually improved their lot, usually by acquiring
modest amounts of property
• The education of children was cut short
• Property ownership counted as a grand “success”
• Politics attracted these Gaelic newcomers
• They gained control of powerful city machines,
notably New York’s Tammany Hall, and reaped the
patronage rewards
24. Irish eventually climbed up the social
ladder by buying property
Came to control political machines in
large cities
-- Tammany Hall in NYC
25. Iv. The Emerald Isle Moves West
(cont.)
• American politicians made haste to cultivate
the Irish vote:
• Especially in the politically potent state of New York
• Irish hatred of the British lost nothing in the
transatlantic transplanting
• Nearly 2 million arrived between 1830 and 1860—
and Washington glimpsed political gold in those
emerald green hills
28. V. The German Forty-Eighters
• The influx of refugees from Germany
between 1830 and 1860 was hardly less
spectacular than that from Ireland
– Over a million and a half Germans stepped onto
American soil (see “Makers of America: The
Germans,” pp. 286-287)
• The bulk were uprooted farmers
• Some were liberal political refugees
• Germany’s loss was America’s gain
30. V. The German Forty-Eighters
(cont.)
• Germans:
• Carl Schurz was a relentless foe of slavery and public
corruption
• They possessed a modest amount of materials goods
• Most pushed to the lush lands of the Middle West,
notably Wisconsin for farming
• They formed an influential body of voters whom
American politicians wooed
• They were less potent politically since they were
more widely scattered
31. V. The German Forty-Eighters
(cont.)
– The hand of the Germans in shaping American
life was widely felt:
• The Conestoga wagon, the Kentucky rifle, and the
Christmas tree were all German contributions
• They warmly supported public schools, including their
Kindergarten (children's garden)
• They did much to stimulate music and the arts
• They were relentless enemies of slavery
32. V. The German Forty-Eighters
(cont.)
• They were sometimes dubbed “damned
Dutchmen”:
• Were regarded with suspicion
• Seeking to preserve their language and customs, they
sometimes settled in compact “colonies”
• Keeping aloof from the surrounding communities
• Accustomed to “Continental Sunday” and uncurbed
by Puritan tradition, they made merry on Sunday
• Their Old World drinking habits spurred advocates of
temperance to redouble their efforts
35. Uncle Sam’s Lodging House
Uncle Sam: "Look here, you, everybody else is quiet and peaceable, and you're all the time akicking up a row!“
36. VI. Flare-ups of Antiforeignism
• The invasion of the immigrants in the 1840s
and 1850s inflamed the prejudices of
American “nativists”
• They feared they would outbreed, outvote, and
overwhelm the old “native” stock
• They took jobs from “native” Americans
• They were Roman Catholics
– The Church of Rome was regarded as out of line
by many old-line Americans as a “foreign”
church.
37. VI. Flare-ups of Antiforeignism
(cont.)
• Roman Catholics were on the move:
• To avoid Protestant indoctrination in public schools,
they began in the 1840s to construct an entirely
separate Catholic educational system:
• Very expensive undertaking, but revealed the
strength of their commitment
• With the Irish and German influx, the Catholics
became a powerful religious group
• In 1840 they ranked fifth behind the Baptists,
Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists
39. VI. Flare-ups of Antiforeignism
(cont.)
• Know-Nothing Party—organized by
American “nativists” for political action:
– Agitated for rigid restriction on immigration and
naturalization
– Agitated for laws authorizing the deportation of
alien paupers
– Promoted a lurid literature of exposure, much of
pure fiction
– Example: Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures
40. VI. Flare-ups of Antiforeignism
(cont.)
• There was even occasional mass violence
against Catholics:
– Burning their churches and schools
– Some killed and wounded in days of fighting
• Immigrants were undeniably making
America a more pluralistic society:
– One of the most ethnically and racially diverse
– Thus the wonder that cultural clashes occurred
41. VI. Flare-ups of Antiforeignism
(cont.)
• The American economy:
– Attracted immigrants and ensured them of the
share of American wealth without jeopardizing
the wealth of others
– They helped fuel economic expansion
– Immigrants and the American economy needed
each other
– Together they help bring the Industrial
Revolution
44. Theme 2:
In the early nineteenth century,
the American economy developed
the beginnings of industrialization.
The greatest advances occurred in
transportation, as canals and
railroads bound the Union together
into a continental economy with
strong regional specialization.
45. VII. Creeping Mechanization
• Gifted British inventors in 1750s perfected a
series of machines for mass production of
textiles:
• They harnessed steam to usher in the modern factory
system—the Industrial Revolution
• Resulting in a spectacular transformation in
agriculture
• As well as in methods of transportation and
communication
46. VII. Creeping Mechanization
(cont.)
• The factory system spread from Britain—
“the world’s workshop”.
– Why was America to become an industrial
giant?
• Land was cheap in America
• Labor was scarce
• Money for capital investment was not plentiful
– The future of industrialization had to wait until
the middle of the nineteenth century in America
47. VIII. Whitney Ends the Fiber Famine
• Samuel Slater— “Father of the Factory
System”
– After memorizing the plans for the machinery,
he escaped to America
– He won the backing of Moses Brown, a Quaker
capitalist in Rhode Island:
• Laboriously reconstructing the essential apparatus in
1791 he put together the first efficient American
machinery for spinning cotton thread
49. VIII. Whitney Ends the Fiber
Famine (cont.)
• Where was the cotton fiber:
– Insatiable demand for cotton riveted the chains
of the downtrodden southern blacks
– Slave-driving planters cleared more land for
cotton
– Cotton Kingdom pushed westward
– Yankee machines put out avalanches of cotton
– The American phase of the Industrial Revolution,
first blossomed in cotton textiles, was well on its
way.
50. VIII. Whitney Ends the Fiber
Famine (cont.)
• Factories first flourished in New England:
– Then branched out to New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania
– The South:
•
•
•
•
Increasingly was wedded to the production of cotton
Had little manufacturing
Its capital was bound up in slaves
Its local consumers for the most part were
desperately poor
51. VIII. Whitney Ends the Fiber
Famine (cont.)
• New England was singularly favored as an
industrial center because:
– Its narrow belt of stony soil made farming
difficult and manufacturing attractive
• a relatively dense population provided labor and
accessible markets
• shipping brought in capital
• seaports made easy the import of raw materials and
the export of the finish product
52. VIII. Whitney Ends the Fiber
Famine (cont.)
– The rivers, notably the Merrimack in Mass.,
provided abundant water power.
– By 1860 more than 400 million pounds of
southern cotton poured into the mills, mostly in
New England.
57. IX. Marvels in Manufacturing
• As the factory system flourished it embraced
numerous other industries:
– The manufacturing of firearms and the
contribution of Eli Whitney:
• Interchangeable parts adopted in 1850
• Became the basis of modern mass-production,
assembly-line methods
• It gave the North the vast industrial plant that
ensured military preponderance over the South
58. IX. Marvels in Manufacturing
(cont.)
– Ironically Whitney, by perfecting the cotton gin,
gave slavery a renewed lease on life
– By popularizing the principle of interchangeable
parts, Whitney helped factories to flourish in the
North, giving the Union a decided advantage.
– The sewing machine:
•
•
•
•
Invented by Elias Howe in 1846
Perfected by Isaac Singer
Gave strong boost to northern industrialization
Became the foundation of the ready-made clothing
59. b.Interchangeable parts
(widely adopted in 1850’s)
i. Basis of modern mass-production
assembly line methods
ii. Mass-produced muskets for the U.S. Army
Whitney’s Gun
Factory near New
Haven, Connecticut
60. 3. Sewing machine
a. Elias Howe, 1846
b. Isaac Singer, 1851
c. Significance:
Isaac Singer
61. 4. Telegraph -- Samuel F.B. Morse
-- Significance:
“What Hath God
Wrought?”
62. IX. Marvels in Manufacturing
(cont.)
• Drove many seamstresses from the shelter of the
private home to the factory—human robot—tended
the clattering mechanisms
– Each new invention stimulated still more
imaginative inventions:
• Decade ending in 1800: only 306 patents were
registered in Washington
• Decade ending in 1860: there were 28,000
• In 1838 the clerk of the Patent Office resigned in
despair, complaining that all worthwhile inventions
had been discovered
63. IX. Marvels in Manufacturing
(cont.)
• Technical advances:
– Changes in the form and legal status of business
organizations:
• The principle of limited liability aided the
concentration of capital
• The Boston Associates was created by 15 Boston
families
• Laws of “free incorporation” meant that businessmen
could create corporation without applying for
individual charters from the legislature
64. IX. Marvels in Manufacturing
(cont.)
• Samuel F. B. Morse:
– Inventor of the telegraph
– Secured from Congress an appropriation of
$30,000 to support his experiment with “talking
wires”
– In 1844 he strung a wire 40 miles from
Washington to Baltimore and tapped out the
historic message, “What hath God wrought?”
65. IX. Marvels in Manufacturing
(cont.)
• By the time of the London World’s Fair in
1851, known as the Great Exhibition:
– American products were prominent among the
world’s commercial wonders
– Fairgoers crowded into the Crystal Palace to see:
• McCormick’s reaper, Morse’s telegraph, Colt’s
firearms, and Charles Goodyear’s vulcanized rubber
goods.
67. X. Workers and “Wage Slaves”
• The factory system created an increasingly
acute labor problem:
– Manufacturing had been done in the home:
• Master craftsman and his apprentice worked
together
• The Industrial Revolution submerged this personal
association into impersonal ownership of stuffy
factories in “spindle cities”
• Around these the slumlike hovels of the “wage
slaves” tended to cluster
68. X. Workers and “Wage Slaves”
(cont.)
• Workers’ conditions:
– Working people wasted away at their benches
– Hours were long, wages were low, meals skimpy
and hastily gulped
– Workers forced to toil in unsanitary buildings,
poorly ventilated, lighted, and heated
– They were forbidden to form unions to raise
wages
Thus there were only 24 recorded strikes before 1835
69. X. Workers and “Wage Slaves”
(cont.)
• Exploitation of child labor:
– In 1820 a significant number of the nation’s
industrial toilers were children under ten
– Victims of factory labor, many children were
mentally blighted, emotionally starved,
physically stunted, and brutally whipped in
special “whipping rooms”
– Samuel Slater’s mill of 1791: the first machine
tenders were 7 boys and 2 girls, all under 12.
70. X. Workers and “Wage Slaves”
(cont.)
• Lot of adult wage workers in 1820s-1830s:
– Many states granted the laboring man the vote
– He first strove to lightened his burden through
workingmen’s parties
– Many workers gave their loyalty to the
Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson:
– In addition to goals of ten-hour day, higher wages, and
tolerable working conditions, they demanded public
education for their children and an end to inhuman practice
of imprisonment for debt
71. X. Workers and “Wage Slaves”
(cont.)
• Employers:
– Fought the ten-hour day
• Argued reduced hours would lessen production
• Increase costs, and demoralize the workers
• Laborers would have so much leisure time that the
Devil would lead them to mischief
– In 1840 President Van Buren established the tenhour day for federal employees on public works.
• In ensuing years many states began reducing the
hours of working people.
72. X. Workers and “Wage Slaves”
(cont.)
• Day laborers tried to improve their lot:
– Their strongest weapon was to lay down their
tools
– Dozens of strikes erupted in the 1830s and
1840s:
• For higher wages, ten-hour days and goals such as
the right to smoke on the job
• Workers usually lost most strikes than they won
• Employers imported strike-breakers
• Labor raised its voice against these immigrants
73. X. Workers and “Wage Slaves”
(cont.)
• Labor’s effort to organize:
– Netted some 300,000 trade unionists by 1830
– Suffered as a result of the severe depression,
1837
– Toilers won a promising legal victory in 1842
• Commonwealth v. Hunt—Mass. Supreme Court—
labor unions were not illegal conspiracies, provided
that their methods were “honorable and peaceful.”
– This case did not legalize the strike overnight
– Trade unions had a long road to go
78. XI. Women and the Economy
• Women became part of the clanging
mechanism of factory production:
– New factories undermined the work of women
in their homes
– Some factories offered work to those displayed
– Factory jobs promised greater economic
independence for women
– And the means to buy the manufactured
products of the new market economy
79. XI. Women and the Economy
(cont.)
• “Factory girls”
– Toiled six days a week, twelve to thirteen hours
“from dark to dark”
– Textile mill at Lowell, Mass. as a showplace:
– Workers were virtually all New England farm girls
– Carefully supervised on and off the job by watchful matrons
– Escorted regularly to church from their company
boardinghouses
– Forbidden to form unions
– Few opportunities to share their grueling working condition
81. 6. Irish and German immigrants later
replaced the Lowell Girls
82. XI. Women and the Economy
(cont.)
• Factory jobs wee unusual for women:
– Opportunities to be economically self-supporting
were scarce
– Consisted mainly of nursing, domestic services,
and teaching
– Catherine Beecher urged women to enter the
teaching profession—became “feminized”
– Other “opportunities” beckoned in household
services
83. XI. Women and the Economy
(cont.)
• Statistics:
– One white family in ten employed poor white,
immigrant, or black women
– 10 % white women worked outside their homes
– 20% of all women had been employed at some
time before marriage
– The vast majority of working women were single
– Upon marriage they left their job to become
wives and mothers, without wages.
84. XI. Women and the Economy
(cont.)
• Cult of domesticity:
– A widespread cultural creed that glorified the
customary functions of the homemaker
– From their pedestal:
• Married women commanded immense moral power
– They increasingly made decisions that altered the character
of the family itself
– Women’s changing roles:
• The Industrial Revolution changed life in the home of
nineteenth-century: traditional “women’s sphere.”
85. XI. Women and the Economy
(cont.)
• Love, not parental “arrangement” determined the
choice of a spouse—yet parents retained the power
of veto
• Families became more closely knit and affectionate,
providing the emotional refuge against the
threatening impersonality of big-city industrialism
• Families grew smaller
• The “fertility rate” dropped for women between 14
and 45
• Birth control was still a taboo topic
86. IX. Women and the Economy
(cont.)
• Women played a large part in having fewer children
• This newly assertive role has been called “domestic
feminism”
• Smaller families meant child-centered families
• What Europeans saw in the American families as
permissiveness was in reality the consequence of an
emerging new idea of child-rearing:
– The child’s will was not simply broken, but rather shaped
• Good citizens were raised not to be meekly obedient
to authority, but to be independent individuals,
making their own decisions on internalized morals
87. IX. Women and the Economy
(cont.)
• The outlines of the “modern” family:
– It was small, affectionate and child-centered
– It provided a special area for the talents of
women
– It was a big step upward from the conditions of
grinding toil—often alongside men in the fields.
88. Why was New England the center of
American industrialism?
1. Poor land for cash crop farming
2. Large pool of available labor
3. Strong shipping industry
4. Rapid rivers provided water power
for textile factories.
89. D. Why did the South not industrialize?
1. Capital tied up in slaves
2. Smaller consumer market: Large
poor white population could
not afford finished products
E. By 1850, industrial output eclipsed
agricultural output
91. XII. Western Farmers Reap a
Revolution in the Fields
• Flourishing farms were changing the face of
the West:
– The trans-Allegheny region—especially the OhioIndiana-Illinois tier—was fast becoming the
nation’s breadbasket
• Before long it would become a granary to the world.
– Pioneer families hacked a clearing out of the
forest and then planted corn fields:
• The yellow grain was amazingly versatile.
92. XII. Western Farmers Reap a
Revolution in the Fields (cont.)
– Most western products were first floated down
the Ohio-Mississippi River system
– Inventions came to the aid of the farmers:
• John Deere of Illinois in 1837 produced a steel plow
that broke the stubborn soil:
– Sharp and effective, it was light enough to be pulled by
horses, rather than oxen.
• 1830 Cyrus McCormick invented the mechanical
mower-reaper
– It was to the western farmers what the cotton gin was to
the South.
94. "The People's Favorite! The World-Renowned McCormick
Twine Binder! Victorious in over 100 Field Trials! New and
Valuable Improvements for 1884!“
-- The Abilene reflector, Kansas, May 29, 1884
95. XII. Western Farmers Reap a
Revolution in the Fields (cont.)
– It could do the work of five men with sickles and scythes.
• The McCormick reaper:
– It made ambitious capitalists out of humble plowmen, who
now scramble for more acres
– Subsistence farming gave way to food production on a
large-scale (“extensive”); specialized, cash-crop agriculture
came to dominate the trans-Allegheny West
– With it followed mounting indebtedness
– Wanted more land and more machinery to work it
– They dreamed of market elsewhere—in the mushrooming
factory towns of the East or across the faraway Atlantic
– However, they were still landlocked—a need for a
transportation revolution
98. XIII. Highways and Steamboats
– In 1789, when the Constitution was launched,
primitive methods of travel were still in use:
• Waterborne commerce was slow, uncertain, and
often dangerous
• Stagecoaches and wagons lurched over bone-shaking
roads
• Cheap and efficient carriers were imperative
• In 1790s a private company completed the Lancaster
Turnpike in Pennsylvania, running 60 miles from
Philadelphia to Lancaster
101. XIII. Highways and Steamboats
(cont.)
• As driver approached the tollgate, they were
confronted with a barrier of sharp pikes, which were
turned aside when they paid their toll—turnpike.
• Western road building, always expensive,
encountered many obstacles:
– Noisy states’ righters, who opposed federal aid to local
projects
– Eastern states protested against being bled of their
populations by the westward-reaching arteries
– Westerners scored a notable triumph in 1811 when the
federal government started the construction of the
National Road—known as the Cumberland Road.
102. Building the first macadam road in the U.S., Maryland.
It later grew to become the Cumberland Road
105. XIII. Highways and Steamboats
(cont.)
• Robert Fulton started the steamboat craze:
– Installed a powerful steam engine, the Clermont:
• It ran in 1807 from New York City up the Hudson
River toward Albany—150 miles in 32 hours
• The success of the steamboat was sensational
• Fulton had changed all of America’s navigable
streams into two-way arteries, doubling carrying
capacity
• By 1820 there were 60 steamboats on the Mississippi
and its tributaries
• By 1860 there were one thousand.
107. The Champions of the Mississippi by Mrs. Frances
Flora Bond Palmer, 1865
108. XIII. Highways and Steamboats
(cont.)
– In April 1865 the steamer Sultana blew up,
killing seventeen hundred passengers, including
many Union prisoners of war.
– The chugging steamboats played a vital role in
the opening of the West and South.
110. XIV. “Clinton’s Big Ditch” in New York
• A canal-cutting craze paralleled the boom in
turnpikes and steamboats (see Map 14.2):
– New Yorkers, cut off from federal aid by states’
righters, themselves dug the Erie Canal, linking
the Great Lakes with the Hudson River
• Blessed by the driving leadership of Governor DeWitt
Clinton, the project was called “Clinton’s Big Ditch” or
“the Governor’s Gutter.”
111. XIV. “Clinton’s Big Ditch” in New
York (cont.)
• Begun in 1817, the canal was 363 mi long
• Went from Buffalo, on Lake Erie, to the Hudson River,
on to New York harbor
• The water from Clinton’s keg baptized the Empire
State
• Shipping was sped up as the cost/time dropped
– Other economic ripples
• The value of land along the route skyrocketed and
new cities, Rochester and Syracuse, blossomed
• The new profitability of farming in the Old
Northwest- Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois—
attracted European immigrants.
112.
113. Original northern five
step lock structure
crossing the Niagara
Escarpment at
Lockport, now without
gates and used as a
cascade for excess
water.
114. XIV. “Clinton’s Big Ditch” in New
York (cont.)
– Many dispirited New England farmers abandoned their
rocky holdings and went elsewhere:
– Finding it easier to go west over the Erie Canal, some took
new farmland south of the Great Lakes
– The transformation in the Northeast—canal consequences
—showed how long-established local market structures:
» Could be swamped by the emerging behemoth of a
continental economy
– American goods on the international market; far-off
Europeans began to feel the effects of America’s economic
vitality
115. The 5 double locks at Lockport, originally constructed 18241825, enlarged in 1842 (north tier) and 1849 (south tier)
117. XV. The Iron Horse
– The development of the railroad
• It was fast, reliable, cheaper than canals to construct,
and not frozen over in winter
• Able to go anywhere—it defied terrain and weather
• First railroad appeared in 1828 and new lines spread
with amazing swiftness
– Faced strong opposition from canal builders
– They were prohibited, at first, to carry freight
– Considered a dangerous public menace
• Other obstacles:
– Brakes were so feeble that engineers might miss the station
– Arrivals and departures were conjectural
119. XV. The Iron Horse
(cont.)
– Numerous differences in gauge—required passengers to
make frequent changes of trains
• Improvements came:
– Gauges gradually became standard
– Safety devices wee adopted
– The Pullman “sleeping palace” was introduced in 1859.
• America at long last was being bound together with
braces of iron, later to be made of steel.
120. August 28, 1830, Peter Cooper’s “Tom Thumb” and a horse race along
two railroad tracks.
122. XVI. Cables, Clippers, and Pony Riders
– Other forms of transportation and communication were binding the United States and the
world:
• Cyrus Field in 1858:
– What he called “the greatest wire-puller in history”
– The stretching of a cable from Newfoundland to Ireland
– Later a heavier cable (1866) permanently linked the
American and European continents
• Donald McKay:
– The development of the new craft called clipper ships
– They sacrificed cargo space for speed
– Their hour of glory was relatively brief.
123. XVI. Cables, Clippers, and Pony
Riders (cont.)
• Eve of the Civil War the British won the world race for
maritime ascendancy with their iron tramp steamers
– They were steadier, roomier, more reliable and more
profitable.
• Stagecoaches:
– Immortalized by Mark Twain’s Roughing It
– Their dusty tracks stretched from the banks of the muddy
Missouri River clear to California (see Map 14.4).
• Pony Express (1860):
– to carry mail speedily the 2,000 lonely miles from St.
Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California; ten day trip
– Lasted only 18 months
124. XVI. Cables, Clippers, and Pony
Riders (cont.)
• The express riders were unhorsed by Samuel Morse’s
clacking keys
– Which began to tap messages to California in 1861
• The swift ships and the fleet ponies ushered out a
dying technology of wind and muscle
• In the future, machines would be in the saddle
128. XVII. The Transport Web Binds the
Union
– The transportation revolution:
• Was stimulated by the desire of the East to tap the
West
– Western region drained southward to the cotton belt
– Steamboats reversed the flow of finished goods to the
western arteries and helped bind the West and South
together
– Three decades after the Civil War, canals and railroads out
from the East, over the Alleghenies and into the blossoming
heartland
– An impressive grid of “internal improvements” was laid
• By the eve of the Civil War, a truly continental
economy had emerged.
129. XVII. The Transportation Web
Binds the Union (cont.)
– The principle of division of labor was applied on a national
level
– Each region specialized in a particular type of economic
activity
» The South raised cotton
» The West grew grain and livestock
» The East made machines
• The economic pattern had fateful political and
military implications:
– Many southerners regarded the Mississippi as a chain
linking the upper valley states to the southern Cotton
Kingdom
– They believed that some or all of these states would secede
with them or be strangled
130. XVII. The Transportation Web
Binds the Union (cont.)
– They overlooked the man-made links that bound the upper
Mississippi Valley to the East; intimate commercial union
– Southern rebels would not only have
» to fight Northern armies,
» but the tight bonds of an interdependent continental
economy
– Economically, the two northerly sections were conjoined
twins
131. VII. Regional Specialization
A. East: Industrial
B. South: Cotton/slavery
C. West: Grain & Livestock to feed
East & Europe
D. Political implications:
sectionalism!
132. VIII. Social results of industrialization
A. Division of labor
-- Reduction of craft workers
B. Growth of cities
C. Increased social stratification
1. Major gap in wealth
2. U.S. relatively well off to Europe
D. Immigration due to the high demand
for labor
133. XVIII. The Market Revolution
– The Market Revolution:
• Transformed a subsistence economy of scattered
farms and tiny workshops:
– Into a national network of industry and commerce (see
Map 14.5)
• Greater mechanization and robust market-oriented
economy raised new legal questions:
– How tightly should patents protect inventions?
– Should the government regulate monopolies?
– Who should own the technologies and networks?
• Chief Justice John Marshall:
– The U.S. Supreme Court protected contract rights by
requiring state governments to grant irrevocable charters.
134. XVIII. The Market Revolution
(cont.)
• Monopolies easily developed, as new companies found
it difficult to break into markets
• Chief justice Roger B. Taney argued that “the rights of
the community” outweighed any exclusive corporate
rights (Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837))
– His decision opened new entrepreneurial channels
– And encouraged greater competition
– So did the passage of more liberal state incorporation laws.
• The self-sufficient households of colonial days were
transformed:
– Now families scattered to work for wages in the mills
– Or they planted just a few crops for sale at market
– Used the money to buy goods made by strangers in far-off
factories.
135. XVIII. The Market Revolution
(cont.)
– Store-bought products replaced homemade products
– Caused a division of labor and status in the households
– Traditional women’s work was rendered superfluous and
devalued
– The home grew into a place of refuge from the world of
work that increasingly became the special and separate
sphere of woman.
• Revolutionary advance in manufacturing and transportation brought increased prosperity:
– They widened the gulf between the rich and the poor
– Several specimens of colossal financial success were
strutting across the national stage.
– John Jacob Astor left an estate of $30 million in 1848.
136. XVIII. The Market Revolution
(cont.)
• Cities bred the greatest extremes of economic
inequality:
– Unskilled workers fared worst
– Became floating mass of “drifters.”
– These wandering workers accounted for up to ½ the
population of the brawling industrial centers
– They are the forgotten men and women of American
history
• Many myths about “social mobility:”
–
–
–
–
Mobility did exist in industrializing America
Rags-to riches success stories were relatively few
American did provide more “opportunity” then elsewhere
Millions of immigrants packed their bags and headed for
New World shores.
137. In Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge,
the Court ruled that the charter of the
Charles River Bridge Company did not
exclude the state of Massachusetts from
chartering another bridge nearby. To the
Left is a rendition of the Charles River
Bridge from the early 19th century.
Reproduction courtesy of the Library of
Congress
Map 14.1 Westward Movement of Center of Population, 1790–2010 The triangles
indicate the points at which a map of the United States weighted for the population of
the country in a given year would balance. Note the remarkable equilibrium of the northsouth
pull from 1790 to about 1940, and the strong spurt west and south thereafter. The
1980 census revealed that the nation’s center of population had at last moved west of the
Mississippi River. The map also shows the slowing of the westward movement between
1890 and 1940—the period of heaviest immigration from Europe, which ended up mainly
in East Coast cities.
Major Dougherty’s Indian Agency on the Missouri River, by Karl Bodmer, 1833 The
Swiss-born and Paris-trained artist Karl Bodmer painted this scene while accompanying
German Prince Maximilian on his expedition across the American West. From St. Louis,
the party traveled up the Missouri River by steamboat under the protection of John
Jacob Astor’s Fur Company. Bodmer painted scenes along the way, especially of Indians
and their surroundings. Trading posts like this one both promoted commerce with the
Indians and served settlers heading west.
Figure 14.1 Population Increase, Including Slaves and Indians, 1790–1860 Increasing
European immigration and the closing of the slave trade gradually “whitened” the
population beginning in 1820. This trend continued into the early twentieth century.
Mouth of the Platte River, 900 Miles Above St. Louis, by George Catlin, 1832
Catlin’s West unfolded as a vast panorama of flat, open space peopled only by the
Indians shown in the foreground. Catlin believed that capturing the unending prairie
on canvas required a new aesthetic, the sublime horizontal, and an acceptance of a
landscape bereft of man-built features, without “anything rising above the horizon,
which was a perfect straight line around us, like that of the blue and boundless ocean.”
Outward Bound, the Quay at Dublin, 1854 Thousands
fled famine in Ireland by coming to America in the 1840s and
1850s.
Wikipedia: Public Domain From The Statistics of the Population of the United States, Compiled from the Original Returns of the Ninth Census, 1872. Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
“Little Germany” Cincinnati’s “Over-the-Rhine” district in
1887.
St. Patrick’s Day Parade in America, Union Square, ca. 1870 This painting shows a St.
Patrick’s Day parade in New York City. The religious festival was celebrated with greater
fanfare in America than in Ireland itself, as Irish immigrants used it to boost their ethnic
solidarity and assert their distinctive identity in their adopted country.
Wikipedia Commons Joseph Keppler, 1882 Puck Magazine
Public Domain http://www.wig-wags.com/2009/01/05/on-know-nothings-and-secret-societies-6/
Crooked Voting A bitter “nativist” cartoon charging Irish
and German immigrants with “stealing” elections.
The Growth in Cotton Production and Consumption Whitney’s gin made possible
the mass cultivation of upland, or short-stable, cotton, which was unprofitable to raise
when its seeds had to be laboriously removed by hand. As cotton production pushed
farther south and west, taking slavery with it, it provisioned a growing northern textile
industry. The young girl in this daguerreotype is dressed in inexpensive American-made
calico, or printed cotton cloth, as shown here. The availability of plentiful, cheap cloth
vastly expanded women’s wardrobes.
Marriage Plate, Bucks County, Pennsylvania,
ca. 1806 The Germans who settled the
“Pennsylvania Dutch” communities in the
eighteenth century preserved ancient
traditions of handicraft and art, as
exemplified by this whimsical
“marriage plate” made by a sixteen year-
old potter named John Leidy.
The inscription reads, “Rather would
I single live than the wife the
breeches [trousers] give.”
Amish Country, Near Lancaster, Pennsylvania For more than two centuries, the Amish
people have preserved their traditional way of life.
Francis Cabot Lowell’s Mill, Waltham, Massachusetts, 1826 and Cotton Industry
Carding, Drawing, and Roving Engraving, 1835 Built in 1814, Lowell’s mill (left) was
a marvel of manufacturing efficiency. It combined all phases of production, including
spinning and weaving, under one roof. The mill’s labor force (right) was composed
primarily of young women from the local farming communities.
Francis Cabot Lowell’s Mill, Waltham, Massachusetts, 1826 and Cotton Industry
Carding, Drawing, and Roving Engraving, 1835 Built in 1814, Lowell’s mill (left) was
a marvel of manufacturing efficiency. It combined all phases of production, including
spinning and weaving, under one roof. The mill’s labor force (right) was composed
primarily of young women from the local farming communities.
http://www.eliwhitney.org/new/museum/our-historic-site/armory Painting by William Giles Munson Public Domain
1) Portrait is in the public domain biography.com 2) Howe machine: Wikipedia Commons 3) Singer machine: http://www.1902encyclopedia.com/S/SEW/sewing-machines.html
Portrait is in the public domain Photo: http://www.ourstory.com/thread.html?t=534270 public domain
The Growth in Cotton Production and Consumption Whitney’s gin made possible
the mass cultivation of upland, or short-stable, cotton, which was unprofitable to raise
when its seeds had to be laboriously removed by hand. As cotton production pushed
farther south and west, taking slavery with it, it provisioned a growing northern textile
industry. The young girl in this daguerreotype is dressed in inexpensive American-made
calico, or printed cotton cloth, as shown here. The availability of plentiful, cheap cloth
vastly expanded women’s wardrobes.
Coexistence of the Craftsman’s Shop and the Factory, 1860 These two images
recorded workers laboring in very different kinds of work places in the same year. The
painting, “The Wheelwright’s Shop,” by Edwin Tryon Billings (right), captures the
survival of a small-scale, intimate shop producing hand-made wheels for carts and
carriages. The daguerreotype (left) shows an operator working the Lock Frame Jigging
Machine in Samuel Colt’s state-of-the-art Hartford, Connecticut, gun factory. As
different as they were, both jobs required skill and focus.
Coexistence of the Craftsman’s Shop and the Factory, 1860 These two images
recorded workers laboring in very different kinds of work places in the same year. The
painting, “The Wheelwright’s Shop,” by Edwin Tryon Billings (right), captures the
survival of a small-scale, intimate shop producing hand-made wheels for carts and
carriages. The daguerreotype (left) shows an operator working the Lock Frame Jigging
Machine in Samuel Colt’s state-of-the-art Hartford, Connecticut, gun factory. As
different as they were, both jobs required skill and focus.
The Sewing Floor of Thompson’s Skirt Factory, 1859 The burgeoning textile
industry provided employment for thousands of women in antebellum America—and
also produced the clothes that women wore. This view of a New York City shop in 1859
illustrates the transition from hand-sewing (on the right) to machine-stitching (on the
left). It also vividly illustrates the contrast between the kinds of “sewing circles” in which
women had traditionally sought companionship to the impersonal mass-production
line of the modern manufacturing plant. Note especially the stark exhortation on the
wall: “Strive to Excel.”
public domain
public domain
York, Pennsylvania, Family with Negro Servant, ca.
1828 This portrait of a Pennsylvania family presents a
somewhat idealized picture of the home as the woman’s
sphere. The wife and mother sits at the center of activity
while she reads to the children, the husband and father
stands by somewhat superfluously. A black servant cares
for an infant in the corner, suggesting the prosperous
status of this household.
Source: Smithsonian.com
Wikipedia Commons and Library of Congress
McCormick’s Miraculous Reaper This illustration shows an early test of Cyrus
McCormick’s mechanical reaper near his home in Virginia in 1831. The reaper was best
suited, however, to the horizonless fields of wheat on the rolling prairies of the Midwest.
By the 1850s McCormick’s Chicago factory was cranking out more than twenty
thousand reapers a year for midwestern farmers.
McCormick Reaper Works,
1850s Contrast this hectic
scene of “mass production” with
the simple workplace depicted in
“The Wheelwright’s Shop” on
page 291.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/rakeman/1823.htm U.S. Department of Transportation Painting by Jacob Rakeman, 1823
Wikipedia Commons
http://www.museum.state.il.us/RiverWeb/landings/Ambot/TECH/TECH5.htm Portrait: Wikipedia Commons
Public Domain http://www.ohio.edu/news/99-00/328.html
Mississippi in Time of Peace, by Mrs. Frances Flora Bond Palmer, 1865 By the
mid-nineteenth century, steamboats had made the Mississippi a bustling river
highway—as it remains today.
http://www.nygeo.org/Eriecanal.html
Wikipedia Commons
public domain
Map 14.2 Major Rivers, Roads, and Canals, 1825–1860
Courtesy of CSX Transportation Inc.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/rakeman/1825.htm U.S. Department of Transportation Painting by Jacob Rakeman, 1830
Map 14.3 The Railroad Revolution Note the explosion
of new railroad construction in the 1850s and its heavy concentration
in the North.
Poster-Timetable for Baltimore & Susquehanna
Railroad, 1840 Advertising the Baltimore &
Susquehanna’s train schedule alone was not
sufficient to get passengers to their destinations.
A typical trip often entailed coordinating legs on
other railroad lines, stagecoaches, and canal boats.
Chariot of Fame Clipper Ship, by Duncan McFarlane, 1854
Map 14.4 Main Routes West Before the Civil War Mark Twain described his stagecoach
trip to California in the 1860s in Roughing It: “We began to get into country, now, threaded here
and there with little streams. These had high, steep banks on each side, and every time we flew
down one bank and scrambled up the other, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we
would all be down in a pile at the forward end of the stage, . . . and in a second we would shoot
to the other end, and stand on our heads. And . . . as the dust rose from the tumult, we would all
sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us would grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like:
‘Take your elbow out of my ribs!—can’t you quit crowding?’”
Map 14.5 Industry and Agriculture, 1860 Still a nation of farmers on the eve of the
Civil War, Americans had nevertheless made an impressive start on their own Industrial
Revolution, especially in the Northeast.
Chicago, 1857 A modest village of a few hundred souls in the 1830s, Chicago was a
teeming metropolis just two decades later—one of the fastest-growing cities in the
world. A food and livestock processing center and transportation hub, it served the vast
farming area of the western plains, a remarkably productive agricultural region and
breadbasket to the world.