Unit 4 Princeton Review Pt. 3 Flashcards
(32 cards)
Transportation advances general
Prior to the 1820s, travel and shipping along east-west routes was difficult, and most trade centered on the north- south routes along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
The construction of the National Road from Maryland to West Virginia (and ultimately to central Ohio) made east-west travel easier, but the big change came with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825.
Erie Canal
Completed in 1825
Funded entirely by the state of New York, the Erie Canal linked the Great Lakes region to New York and thus to European shipping routes.
Suddenly, it became lucrative for a midwestern merchant or farmer to sell his products to eastern buyers, and as a result, the Northeast soon established itself as the United States’ center of commerce.
The Erie Canal was so successful that, by 1835, its width and depth had to be nearly doubled to handle the traffic.
Other regions tried to duplicate the Erie Canal’s success, and during the 1830s, thousands of miles of canals were constructed throughout the Northeast and Midwest.
None performed as well as the Erie Canal, and a number of those canals failed.
Meanwhile, the railroads developed into a convenient means of transporting goods; by 1850, the Canal Era had ended.
The changes caused by the development of better transportation and manufacturing had permanent altering effects on American society.
Increasing numbers of Americans no longer relied solely on agriculture for their livelihoods; instead, they supported themselves by working in factories. Coal mining, too, became an important industry during this era.
The end of this era, however, did not mark the end of shipping as an important industry.
The invention of the steam engine allowed for steamships, which traveled faster than sailing vessels.
Similarly, railroads redefined land travel.
The invention of the steam engine allowed for steamships, which traveled faster than sailing vessels.
Steamships became important freight carriers and replaced sailing ships for long sea voyages
By 1850, passengers could travel by steamship from New York to England in 10 days; by sail, the same trip had taken more than a month.
Steamships were not without their problems though; exploding boilers, burning ships, and other disasters accompanied the technological advances.
Similarly, railroads redefined land travel.
America’s first railroads were built during the 1830s, the first typically connecting only two cities
As the nation’s rail network grew, a major problem arose.
Different railroad lines could not be connected to one another because the width, or gauge, of their tracks was different.
As a result, rail development proceeded slowly.
When different railways converted to compatible systems, the government often paid the bill even though the railroads were privately owned.
This hastened progress, and by 1853, New York and Chicago were linked by rail, as were Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
(Southern rail development was much slower, and superior rails gave the North a huge advantage during the Civil War.)
The Transportation Revolution
The increase in travel and shipping was helped considerably by the invention of the telegraph, which allowed immediate long-distance communication for the first time.
The telegraph was like a primitive telephone, except that people communicated in Morse code rather than by speaking to one another.
Americans quickly understood the benefits of telegraphic communications, and widespread use followed its invention almost immediately.
Transatlantic telegraph cables, however, would not be successfully laid until 1866, after the Civil War.
Developments in transportation and communication during the first half of the 19th century revolutionized American commerce and culture but favored the Northeast and the West (today known as the Midwest).
Products, people, and ideas traveled much faster in 1850 than they had in 1800.
Farming
Although American manufacturing grew at a rapid pace, agriculture remained by far the most common source of livelihood throughout the first half of the 19th century.
Mechanization revolutionized farming during the period, as many machines came into common use during this time, including the mechanical plow, sower, reaper, thresher, baler, and cotton gin.
The growth of the market economy also changed farming.
In 1820, about one-third of all the food grown in the United States went to market. (The rest was kept for personal consumption.) By 1860, that fraction had doubled.
Northeast Farming
Farming continued in the Northeast, but not without difficulties.
The region’s rocky, hilly terrain was unsuitable to many of the machines that were making farming on the plains easier and cheaper.
Furthermore, much of the farmland in the region had been over-farmed, and as a result, the quality of the soil had grown poor.
Unable to compete with Midwestern grain farmers, some New England farmers quit cultivating grain and started raising livestock and growing fruits and vegetables.
Others quit farming entirely and headed to the cities to take manufacturing jobs.
Midwest Farming
As mentioned above, the Midwest became America’s chief source of grains, such as wheat and corn. Midwestern farms—much larger than New England farms—were also much more adaptable to the new technology that allowed farmers to nearly double production. Banks sprang up to lend farmers the capital necessary to buy modern equipment, and the trade routes created by rail and ship provided access to the markets these farmers needed to sell their crops in order to pay off their loans. The system worked well, except during the various financial crises of the first half of the century. The panics of 1819 and 1837 resulted in bank foreclosures on mortgages and other business loans, not just in the Midwest but all across the country. Not surprisingly, many people were thrown into poverty.
Southern Farming
In the South, plantations focused primarily on cotton, especially in the Deep South; tobacco continued to be a major cash crop in the Upper South. The majority of Southerners owned small farms and did not own enslaved people. (In 1860, approximately one-quarter of white southern families owned enslaved people.)
Westwar Expansion
The Louisiana Purchase removed one major obstacle to U.S. western settlement, and the resolution of the War of 1812 removed another by depriving Native Americans of a powerful ally in Great Britain.
By 1820, the United States had settled the region east of the Mississippi River and was quickly expanding west.
Manifest Destiny
Americans began to believe that they had a God-given right to the western territories, an idea that came to be known as America’s Manifest Destiny.
Some took the idea of Manifest Destiny to its logical conclusion and argued that Canada, Mexico, and even all of the land in the Americas eventually would be annexed by the United States.
Western settlement was dangerous.
The terrain and climate could be cold and unforgiving, and these settlers from the East were moving into areas that rightfully belonged to Native Americans and Mexicans, none of whom were about to cede their homes without a fight.
Texas
When Mexico declared its independence from Spain in 1821, the new country included what is now Texas and much of the Southwest, including California.
The Mexican government established liberal land policies to entice settlers, and tens of thousands of Americans (many of them cattle ranchers) flooded the region.
In return for land, the settlers were supposed to become Mexican citizens, but they rarely did. Instead, they ignored Mexican law, including—and especially—the one prohibiting slavery.
When Mexico attempted to regain control of the area, the settlers rebelled and declared independence from Mexico.
It was during this period that the famous battle at the Alamo was fought (1836).
For a while, Texas was an independent country, called the Republic of Texas.
The existence of slavery in the area guaranteed a Congressional battle over statehood, and Texas was not admitted to the Union until 1845.
Oregon Territory
Farther west and north, settlers were also pouring into the Oregon Territory.
During the early 1840s, thousands of settlers traveled to the Willamette Valley, braving a six- month journey on the Oregon Trail. Again, the Americans were not the first ones in; not only was there a large Native American population, but the British were also there, claiming the territory for Canada.
The Russians also staked a claim, and both the British and the Americans saw them as a threat.
The Polk administration eventually settled the territorial dispute by signing a treaty with England.
By the late 1840s, though, those heading along the Oregon Trail had a new destination—California.
California
By the late 1840s, though, those heading along the Oregon Trail had a new destination—California.
In 1848, the discovery of gold in the California mountains set off the Gold Rush, attracting more than 100,000 people to the Golden State in just two years.
Most of these people did not strike it rich, but they settled the area after discovering that it was very hospitable to agriculture.
Its access to the Pacific Ocean allowed major cities such as San Francisco to develop as important trade centers.
The North sectional perspective
as mentioned earlier, was becoming industrialized
Technological advances in communications, transportation, industry, and banking were helping it become the nation’s commercial center
Farming played less of a role in the northeastern economy than it did elsewhere in the country, and legal slavery became increasingly uncommon in this region’s states throughout the early 1800s.
The South Sectional Perspective
meanwhile, remained almost entirely agrarian.
Its chief crops—tobacco and cotton—required vast acreage, and so Southerners were constantly looking west for more land.
Anxious to protect slavery, which the large landholders depended on, Southerners also looked for new slave territories to include in the Union in order to strengthen their position in Congress and protect slavery from northern legislators, who in ever-increasing numbers sought to make slavery illegal.
Western Sectional Perspective
economic interests were varied but were largely rooted in commercial farming, fur trapping, and real-estate speculation.
Westerners generally distrusted the North, which they regarded as the home of powerful banks that could take their land away.
They had little more use for the South, whose rigidly hierarchical society was at odds with the egalitarianism of the West.
Most Westerners wanted to avoid involvement in the slavery issue, which they regarded as irrelevant to their lives.
Ironically, western expansion was the core of the most important conflicts leading up to the Civil War.
SOCIAL HISTORY, 1800–1860
The growth of the American economy in the early 19th century brought about numerous social changes.
The invention of the cotton gin, coupled with the advent of the Industrial Revolution in England, altered southern agriculture, resulting in the region’s increased reliance on slave labor.
The development of commerce led to a larger middle class, especially in the North but also in southern and midwestern cities.
Industrialization resulted in bigger cities with large (and often impoverished) migrant and immigrant neighborhoods.
Westward migration created a new frontier culture as pioneers dealt with the uniqueness of the West’s landscape and climate.
Each of these sets of circumstances influenced people’s attitudes and ambitions and set the scene for the social and political events of the era.
Northern American Cities Problems general
As we discussed previously, the North became the nation’s industrial and commercial center during the first half of the 19th century
Accordingly, it became home to many of the nation’s major cities. In their early years, American cities faced numerous problems, chiefly the lack of powerful urban governments to oversee their rapid expansion
Modern waste disposal, plumbing, sewers, and incineration were still a long way off, and as a result, cities could be extremely toxic environments.
The proximity in which people lived and worked, coupled with sanitation problems, made epidemics not only likely but inevitable.
Benefits of city life
City life was not, however, without its benefits.
cities meant jobs.
Many northern farmers, unable to compete with cheaper produce carted in from the West and South by steamship and rail, moved to cities to work in the new factories.
Craftsmen, such as tailors, cobblers, and blacksmiths, also found it easier to make a living in cities.
Second, cities offered more opportunities for social advancement. In the 1830s and 1840s, as municipal governments grew, cities began to provide important services, such as public schooling.
Labor unions began to form; although it would be many decades until they would come close to matching the power of business management, these unions still fought to bring about improvements in the lives of working people, even though they had quite limited success.
Middle- and upper-class Americans in cities formed clubs and associations through which they could exert more influence on government and in society.
Finally, cities provided a wide variety of leisure- time options, such as theater and sports.
Elite in Cities/Formation of Middle Class
Still, as in the South, there was a great disparity in the distribution of wealth in northern cities.
An elite few controlled most of the personal wealth and led lives of power and comfort.
Beneath them was the middle class, made up of tradesmen, brokers, and other professionals.
They worked to reach the plateau at which the women in their families could devote themselves to homemaking instead of wage earning. (Many middle-class women in their teens and early twenties worked—as salesclerks, teachers, and such—before settling down to marriage.)
Cult of Domesticity
The middle classes also constituted much of the market for luxury goods such as housewares and fine furniture.
Members of the middle class often rose from the working class.
Working Class to Poor In Cities
Members of the middle class often rose from the working class.
In working-class families, men often worked in factories or at low-paying crafts; women often worked at home, taking in sewing.
Others worked as domestic servants, and most worked throughout their lives. Such families lived just above the poverty level, and any calamity—loss of a job, injury, sickness, or a death in the family—could plunge them irretrievably into debt.
Those in poverty were most often recent immigrants.
Their numbers swelled in the 1840s and 1850s when the greatimmigration waves from Ireland (to the cities in the North) and then Germany (to the West) reached the United States.
These immigration waves were met with hostility, especially from the working classes, who feared competition for low-paying jobs.
]Cult of domesticity
As wage-earning labor was more often performed away from the home, in factories and offices, the notion developed that men should work while women kept house and raised children.
supported by popular magazines and novels that glorified home life.
Lydia Maria Child was an author dedicated to the cult of domesticity. Her most famous book, The American Frugal Housewife, championed the achievement of well-planned housekeeping for even her poorest readers. Child was also an outspoken abolitionist and promoter of women’s rights.
Riots/ Violence In Cities
Occasionally tensions would boil over, and American cities were frequently the sites of riots.
Particularly in the 1830s and 1840s, religious, ethnic, and/or class strife could escalate to violence and even result in fatalities.
Such disturbances were largely responsible for the formation of municipal police departments, which replaced privately run security companies in enforcing the peace.
