2. Main Ideas
In the early 1800s, America could be divided into
two distinct regions, or sections.
Northern Section: New technologies helped
agriculture prosper, while a variety of new industries
brought growth – with its benefits and problems – to
the North. An increase in people worked in urban
areas, or cities.
Southern Section: In the early 1800s, cotton farming
became the South’s main economic activity. As a
result, the South became dependent on slave labor.
3. The Northern Section
An increasing number of people in the Northeast –
the New England states, NY, NJ, and Pennsylvania –
worked in factories in urban areas, or cities.
Industrialization, or the development of industries
to manufacture finished goods in factories, increased
rapidly in the Northeast.
Farming opportunities in the region were limited b/c
the population had outgrown the land and
thousands of young workers moved to the cities.
A growing number of urban poor people lived in
areas with cheap, run-down housing called
tenements, or crowded apartments with poor
standards of sanitation, safety, and comfort.
4. The Northern Section – Labor
Disputes in Factories
Industries aimed to make a profit at the expense of
their workers.
Most factory owners paid their employees very little
and did not provide a healthy work environment.
Before long, laborers began to demand more from
their bosses and complained mainly about the long
hours and low wages.
As workers saw factory owners grow rich, they began
to want a slice of wealth that their hard labor
produced.
5. The Northern Section – Labor
Disputes in Factories
The American government set no minimum wage
and workers could not go to their legislatures or
courts for help.
Workers had only one real weapon – the could call
for a strike, or a work stoppage to demand shorter
hours and higher pay.
In 1834, workers organized the first national labor
union – an organization of workers formed to
protect the interests of its members, usually by
negotiating to resolve issues concerning wages.
First national labor union – NTU: National Trades
Union.
6. The Northern Section – Labor
Disputes in Factories
Nearly 300,000 people joined the NTU or other labor unions
in the 1830s.
These early unions died out and factory owners obtained
court rulings that outlawed labor organizations.
Despite its failures, the early labor movements showed that
some workers were willing to take action against their
employers.
By the 1840s, the North had a booming and complex
economy with a mixture of industry and agriculture.
It was a region of cities and towns, banks and factories, with
huge benefits and problems caused by a growing population.
7. The Southern Section
One famous phrase sums up the economy of the
South in the first half of the 1800s: “King Cotton”…
the phrase came from the book Cotton Is King by
David Christy.
He claimed southern slavery would’ve ended except
for the ever-rising demand for cotton products.
Christy said, even Northern critics of slavery
continued to use more and more cotton and other
products of slave labor – and the American economy
had come to depend on the revenue from the sale of
raw cotton.
8. The Southern Section
In 1860, King Cotton made up two thirds of
the total value of American exports and it
created enormous wealth for the South.
Cotton Belt States: North Carolina, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas,
and Texas – the economy of these states relied
almost completely on the production of
cotton.
9. The Southern Section – Geography
of Southern Farming
Why did the physical geography of the Southern states make
farming highly profitable?
The South remained mostly rural, made up of farms and
countryside instead of cities.
Farmers could count on 200-290 frost-free days a year to grow
crops
Southern land was fertile and had plentiful rains.
15,000 Southern families owned plantations which used a
great number of slaves to produce a cash crop.
Hundreds of thousands of families owned just a few slaves
and raised their own cash crops, own food, and livestock.
10. The Southern Section – Geography
of Southern Farming
Only one fourth of all slaves lived on plantations
with more than 50 slaves.
During the early 1800s, farms with six slaves or fewer
produced HALF of the Southern cotton crop.
With the invention of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin in
1793, Southerners scrambled to put more land into
cotton production which increased the number of
slaves.
By 1850, of the 3.7 million African Americans
nationwide, only 12% (444,000) were free – some
lived in the North but most lived in Southern urban
areas or rural areas away from large plantations.
11. The Southern Section – The Slavery
System
In 1808, Congress banned all further importation of
slaves to the United States.
In the South, however, the population growth among
people already enslaved contributed to a sharp
increase in the internal slave trade for the next 50
years.
Any child born into slavery became a slave.
Slave population:
1820 = 1.5 million
1850 = over 3 million
1860 = slaves made up half the population of SC and MS;
two fifths of the population of FL, GA, AL, LA
12. The Southern Section – The Slavery
System
On small farms, slaves often worked side by side with
their owners in the fields.
Most slaves did not live on small farms but on large
cotton plantations.
By 1850, cotton farming employed nearly 60% of the
enslaved African Americans in the US.
On the plantations, life was generally harsher than
on small farms where workers often toiled in large
crews under the supervision of foremen.
Most owners saw slaves as “property” that performed
labor for their businesses.
13. The Southern Section – Slave
Revolts
Slave rebellions, especially on a large scale, stood little chance of
success.
Most were small, spontaneous responses to harsh and cruel
punishment and they ended in failure.
Turner’s Rebellion
Nat Turner, a 31-yr-old African American preacher, planned and carried
out a violent uprising in 1831
Acting because of “divine inspiration”, he led 70 slaves in raids on white
families in southeastern Virginia.
The slaves killed more than 50 people before the local militia captured
them.
20 were hanged, including Turner.
In many Southern communities African Americans outnumbered the
white population and for this reason, Southern states tightened restrictions
on slaves – meeting, learning to read and write…
