United States
1850 – 1900
AP WORLD HISTORY
CHAPTER 24B
Reasons for US Civil War 1861-1865
 With Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin
in 1793, cotton became very profitable.

With Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1793,
cotton became very profitable.
 States versus federal rights.
 The fight between Slave and Non-Slave State
Proponents.
 Growth of the Abolition Movement.
 The election of Abraham Lincoln.
Oppressed Groups
 Two groups denied rights under the Constitution:
 Women
Leaders of the American Anti-Slavery
 Produced effective propaganda against slavery
 1848 Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, NY

 Free African Americans

Frederick Douglass – former slave
 13th Amendment – abolished slavery in 1865
 South then instituted “Jim Crow” laws

Segregated blacks in public transportation, schools, jobs
Immigration
 Slave trade ended in 1850s in Western Hemisphere
 By end of 19th c. nearly all fastest growing cities had
large immigrant populations
Buenos Aires, Chicago, New York, São Paulo
 Avoided regions that had depended on slavery with their
traditions of oppressive labor conditions and low wages

 China and India – arrived as indenture contracts to
the plantation zones in the Caribbean region
 Europeans to Western Hemisphere
1830s = 600,000
1840s = 1.5 million
 then 2.5 million per decade until 1880

Western Hemisphere
 Europeans to Latin America increased dramatically
 Argentina & Brazil rose from 130,000 in 1860s to
1.7 million in the 1890s
 By 1910, 30% people in Argentina were foreign born
Received twice as many people as Canada between 1870
– 1930
Chinese 1849-1875 to Peru 100,000 & 120,000 to Cuba
Canada 50,000 & 300,000 to United States
India more than .5 million to the Caribbean region with
238,000 alone to British Guiana

Obstacles - Discrimination
 Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 – stopped most
 Canada – 1886 “inferior races” government imposed a head
tax
 Also problems in Peru, Mexico, and Cuba
 Japanese went to Brazil and East Indians faced prejudice
 Europeans had problems
 Italians seen as criminals and anarchists
 Spain stereotyped in Argentina as miserly and dishonest
 Jews barred from educational institutions and
professional careers
Immigrants threatened the well-being of native born workers
by taking low wages and threatening national culture by not
assimilating
American Industrialization
 Began in textile industry in
New England in 1820s

Grew tremendously following the
Civil War
 Factors that led to the U.S.
becoming a leading industrial
power by 1914:
Country’s large size
 Ready availability of natural
resources
 Growing domestic market
 Political stability

Railroads
Many governments promoted them by granting tax
benefits, free land, and monopoly rights to both
domestic and foreign investors.
 By 1890 vast areas of the Great Plains in the United
States, the Canadian prairie, the Argentina pampas,
and parts of northern Mexico were producing grain
and livestock to foreign markets with railroads
Steamships also
lowered cost of
transportation
Telegraph – for
information
Steel Industry
 United States overtook Britain and Germany in the
1890s
 Andrew Carnegie dominated the steel industry
 Sold his business to
J.P. Morgan for $500 million
The Industrial United States in 1900
The Role of U.S. Government
 Supported
industrialization with:




Tax breaks for businesses
Little regulation of industry
Grants of public land to
railroad companies
Laws that allowed easy
formation of companies
Pioneering Mass Production
 The U.S. pioneered several
new techniques regarding
mass production:



Interchangeable parts
Assembly lines
“Scientific management”
 Henry Ford = famously
brought these techniques to
the automobile industry in
the early 1900s
Self-Made American Industrialists
Henry Ford
(Automobiles)
John D. Rockefeller
(Oil)
Andrew Carnegie
(Steel)
Culture of Consumption
 Growth of advertising
agencies  Ex: Sears
Roebuck and
Montgomery Ward

Used mail-order catalogs
regularly
 Growth of urban
department stores
Sears Roebuck Catalog from 1902
Social Divisions in the U.S.
 Similar to those in European
societies during
industrialization
 Widening gap between the
classes


Many in the middle class getting
richer and richer
The poor are getting poorer
 Opposing views on these
social divisions:


A betrayal of American ideals
Natural outcome of competition 
Social Darwinism = survival of the
fittest in society
Protest from the Working Class
 As in Europe, horrible working
conditions led to labor protests

Formation of unions; strikes; occasional
violence
 Unlike many European countries 
no political party emerged in the U.S.
to represent the working class



No major socialist movement in the U.S.
Ideas of Karl Marx and socialism did not
take hold
Socialism came to be identified as “unAmerican” in a country that valued
individualism and feared “big government”
No Socialism? Why Not?
 Labor unions more
conservative  not as radical,
didn’t align with political
parties, etc.
 Immense religious, ethnic, and
racial divisions in the U.S.
prevented solidarity of the
workers
 Economic growth of the U.S.
created an overall higher
standard of living nation-wide
than in most parts of Europe

Workers had more opportunities in
the U.S. than in Europe = drew
them away from socialist ideas
Some Political Opposition to Industrialization
 Populist Party = organized
by small farmers

Protested against banks,
industrialists, monopolies, the
existing money system, and
corrupt political parties
 Progressive Party = in the
early 1900s

Pushed for specific reforms 
wages & hours laws, better
sanitation standards, antitrust
laws, more government
intervention in the economy
Native People
 Most military resistance was overcome by 1890
caused by people moving westward after the
American Revolution
 War of 1812 – they fought alongside the British
 Tecumseh & Prophet were Shawnee brothers who
created a well organized alliance among Amerindian
people
 1830 – Indian Removal Act forced the resettlement
of Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw and others from the
south to Oklahoma Territory – Trail of Tears
The West
 Buffalo herds were near extinction
 Railroads, settlers, ranchers, farmers on their lands
 Helped by horses and firearms – hunt better
 Comanche forced to give land to Texas in 1865
 1874 Navajo leaders meet in Washington, D.C.
 1876 – Battle of Little Bighorn with Custer and Sioux
 By 1880s Apache also forced to give up
Environment
 After 1870 farmers in South Caroline abandoned crop
rotation

Led to soil exhaustion and erosion
 New steel plows cut open the prairies and eliminated
some native grasses and increased the threat of soil
erosion
 Rapid urbanization in large cities of New York, Chicago
(Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Mexico City)
 Poor sewers systems, clean water & garbage disposal
 Timber companies clear cut Michigan, Wisconsin and
Appalachian Mountain to provide for railroads & houses,
paper pulp, fuel for trains & mills
 California – 1849 Gold Rush
 Montana – 1852 Gold
 Colorado – 1859 Gold & 1873 Silver Pikes Peak area
 Nevada – 1859 Silver – Comstock Lode
All this led to erosion, pollution, deforestation
1872 – Yellowstone National Park created by President
Theodore Roosevelt and Naturalist John Muir –
preserving lands