1
UNIT 4B
1848 TO 1877
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CHALLENGES OF GROWTH ECONOMIC REVOLUTION
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The Transportation Revolution
 Improvements in steam technology will change transportation in the US
• Steam Boats (Moves goods faster)
• Robert Fulton (developed first commercial steamboat)
• Locomotive (railroads)
 The Erie Canal is a canal in New York that originally ran about 363 miles from Albany, New
York to Buffalo, New York (Opened in 1825)
4
The Market Revolution
 With access to new areas this increased trade between these places causing new markets.
 Areas specialized in goods then transported them to other parts of the country cheaply
5
Early Industrialization
 With the Market Revolution demands for goods increase.
 This cause a need for more factories to produce more goods starting to drive the Industrial
Revolution
• Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin (1793) Patent verified (1807).
• perfected a system of producing muskets with interchangeable parts (1825)
6
Urban Growth and Cotton
 Industrialization and New Markets lead to urban growth
• Between 1790 and 1860 urban population grew from 3.3% to 16.1%
• New York City between 1820-1860 grew from 123,000 to 1,080,320
 With the cotton gin it changed agriculture in the US and cotton became ―white gold‖.
• South farmed cotton and the Northern factories produced finished goods.
• Slavery was revitalized with the cotton gin.
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SLAVERY IN AMERICA
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“Cotton Is King!”
 Cotton Kingdom:
• Cotton accounted for half the value of American export
• Cotton export earnings provided the capital for the Republic’s economic growth
• The South produced more than half of the entire world’s supply of cotton
• Southern leaders knew that Britain was tied to them by cotton threads
• Thus this dependence gave them power
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The Planter “Aristocracy”
 The South was a planter aristocracy:
• In 1850 only 1,733 families owned more than 100 slaves:
• This select group provided the political and social leadership
• They enjoyed a lion’s share of southern wealth
• They could educate their children in the finest schools
–Notable: John C. Calhoun (Yale), Jefferson Davis (West Point)
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Slaves of the Slave System
• The financial instability of the plantation system
• There was overspeculation in land and slaves
• The slaves represented a heavy investment of capital
• An entire slave quarter might be wiped out by disease
• Dominance by King Cotton led to a dangerous dependence on a one-crop economy
1
• They enjoyed a lion’s share of southern wealth
• They could educate their children in the finest schools
–Notable: John C. Calhoun (Yale), Jefferson Davis (West Point)
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Slaves of the Slave System
• The financial instability of the plantation system
• There was overspeculation in land and slaves
• The slaves represented a heavy investment of capital
• An entire slave quarter might be wiped out by disease
• Dominance by King Cotton led to a dangerous dependence on a one-crop economy
• Prices were at the mercy of world conditions
• Southern planters resented the North growing fat at their expense.
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Slaves of the Slave System(cont.)
• The Cotton King repelled large-scale European immigration:
• Immigrants added richly to the manpower and wealth of the North
• 1860 only 4.4 % of the southern population was foreign-born as compared to 18.7%
for the North
• German and Irish immigration to the South was discouraged by the competition of
slave labor, by the high cost of fertile land and by European ignorance of cotton
growing
•
•
•
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The White Majority
 Southern life:
• Only a handful of southern whites lived in Grecian-pillared mansions
• Only 1,733 families owned a hundred or more slaves Most owned less than ten slaves
• ¼ of white southerners owned slaves or belonged to a slave owning family.
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The Burdens of Bondage
 Slavery was intolerably degrading to the victims:
• They were deprived of the dignity and sense of responsibility that come from
independence and the right to make choices
• They were denied an education
• Victims of the ―peculiar institution‖ devised ways to show protest:
–They slowed the pace of their labor to the barest minimum
–They sabotaged expensive equipment
–They even poisoned their masters’ food
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The Burdens of Bondage (cont.)
• The slaves universally pined for freedom:
–Many tried to runaway
–Others rebelled, though never successfully
–1800 armed insurrection led by a slave named Gabriel Prosser in Richmond, Virginiafoiled by informers and leaders hanged
–1822 Denmark Vesey, a free black, led an ill-fated rebellion in Charleston, South
Carolina foiled by informers; Vesey and 30 followers were publicly strung from the
gallows
–1813 the semiliterate Nat Turner , a visionary black preacher, led an uprising that
slaughtered 60 Virginians—Nat Turner’s rebellion was soon extinguished.
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The Burdens of Bondage (cont.)
• Enslaved Africans rebelled aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad in 1839
• The dark taint of slavery left its mark on whites:
• It fostered the brutality of the whip, the bloodhound, and the branding iron
• White southerners increasingly lived in a state of imagined siege, surrounded by
potentially rebellious blacks inflamed by abolitionist propaganda from the North
• Their fears bolstered a theory of biological racial superiority
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1800 TO 1848 MOVEMENT AND IMMIGRATION TO AMERICA
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–1813 the semiliterate Nat Turner , a visionary black preacher, led an uprising that
slaughtered 60 Virginians—Nat Turner’s rebellion was soon extinguished.
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The Burdens of Bondage (cont.)
• Enslaved Africans rebelled aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad in 1839
• The dark taint of slavery left its mark on whites:
• It fostered the brutality of the whip, the bloodhound, and the branding iron
• White southerners increasingly lived in a state of imagined siege, surrounded by
potentially rebellious blacks inflamed by abolitionist propaganda from the North
• Their fears bolstered a theory of biological racial superiority
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1800 TO 1848 MOVEMENT AND IMMIGRATION TO AMERICA
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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
• 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.
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The March of the Millions (cont.)
 Over-rapid urbanization brought undesirable by-products:
• It intensified the following problems:
• smelly slums
• feeble street lighting,
• inadequate policing
• impure water
• foul sewage
• ravenous rats
• 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
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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
• 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)
•
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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
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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.
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The Emerald Isle Moves West (cont.)
 Irish conditions in America:
3
• The United States beckoned them from dozens of different nations
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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.
22
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
• Politics attracted these Gaelic newcomers
• They gained control of powerful city machines, notably New York’s Tammany Hall, and
reaped the patronage rewards
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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
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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
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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
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WORKING FOR SOCIAL REFORM
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Reviving Religion
 Religion in the 1790-1860:
• Church attendance was still a regular ritual with ¾ of the 23 million Americans in 1850
• Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason (1794) declared that all churches were
–―set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.‖
• Many Founding Fathers, including Jefferson and Franklin, embraced the liberal
doctrines of Deism that was promoted by Paine
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Reviving Religion (cont.)
 Deism:
• Relied on reason rather than revelation
• On science rather than the Bible
• Rejected the concept of original sin
• Denied Christ’s divinity
• Yet Deists believed:
–in a Supreme Being who had created knowable universe
4
doctrines of Deism that was promoted by Paine
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Reviving Religion (cont.)
 Deism:
• Relied on reason rather than revelation
• On science rather than the Bible
• Rejected the concept of original sin
• Denied Christ’s divinity
• Yet Deists believed:
–in a Supreme Being who had created knowable universe
–who endowed human beings with a capacity for moral behavior
•
•
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Reviving Religion (cont.)
• Deism helped to inspire spinoffs from the severe Puritanism of the past:
• The Unitarian faith in New England, end of the eighteenth century:
–Held that God existed in only one person, not in the orthodox Trinity They
proclaimed their belief in free will and the possibility of salvation through good
works
–They pictured God not as stern Creator but a loving Father.
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Second Great Awakening
 A growing reaction against the growing liberalism in religion set in about 1800:
• The Second Great Awakening:
• Fresh wave of revivals starting on the southern frontier, than to the cities of the
Northeast
• Was one of the most momentous episodes in the history of American religion:
–Left countless converted souls
–Many shattered and reorganized churches
–And numerous new sects
–It encouraged evangelicalism in many areas of American life:
»Prison reform, the temperance cause, the women’s movement, and the crusade
to abolish slavery.
•
•

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Second Great Awakening
• The Second Great Awakening was spread to the masses on the frontier by huge ―camp
meetings‖:
• 25,000 people would gather for encampment of several days
• Served by itinerant preacher
• Thousands of spiritually starved souls ―got religion‖
• Many of the ―saved‖ soon backslid into their former sinful ways
• But the revivals boosted church attendance
• Methodist and Baptists reaped the most abundant harvest of souls
–Both sects stressed personal conversion (contrary to predestination), a relatively
democratic control of church affairs, and a rousing emotionalism.
•
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Second Great Awakening
• Charles Grandison Finney was the greatest of the revival preachers:
• Had a deeply moving conversion experience
• Led massive revivals in Rochester and New York City in 1830 and 1831
• He denounced both alcohol and slavery
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Denominational Diversity
• Like the First Great Awakening, the Second tended to widen the lines between classes
and regions
–Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians tended to come
5
•
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Second Great Awakening
• Charles Grandison Finney was the greatest of the revival preachers:
• Had a deeply moving conversion experience
• Led massive revivals in Rochester and New York City in 1830 and 1831
• He denounced both alcohol and slavery
33
Denominational Diversity
• Like the First Great Awakening, the Second tended to widen the lines between classes
and regions
–Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians tended to come
from the wealthier, better-educated
–Methodists, Baptist, and other sects tended to come from less prosperous, less
―learned‖ communities in the rural South and West.
34
Denominational Diversity (cont.)
• Religious diversity reflected social cleavages facing the slavery issue:
• By 1844-45 the southern Baptists and southern Methodists split with their northern
brethren
• In 1857 the Presbyterians, North and South parted company
• The secession of the southern churches foreshadowed the secession of southern states
• First the churches split, then the political parties split, and then the Union split.
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Utopian Communities
 Communities founded to create a better society
 Over 90 appeared between 1800 and 1850
 Experiments with family organizations
• Ranging from:
• Banning of sex and marriage (Shakers) to ―free love‖ communities (Oneida)
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Utopian Societies: The Shakers
 Mother Ann Lee
 Believed in shared responsibility for men and women
 Tried to created a society free of sin
 Banned sex and having children
• Felt Christ was coming at the end of the millennium and it was at hand.
 Decline around 1860, found it difficult to recruit new members
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Utopian Societies: The Mormons
 Most enduring utopian society
 Joseph Smith was the founder
 Read golden plates he had found and transcribed them into the Book of Mormon
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Utopian Societies: The Mormons
 Teachings attracted a lot but also turned off a lot
 Smith would be killed because of his teachings in 1844
 Brigham Young will move the community to present day Utah where it still flourishes today
• By 1848 the Mormons numbered 50,000
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Utopian Societies: The Mormons
 Religious Teachings
• Group ownership of property
• Multiple wives
• Heaven has 3 levels
• Highest level is for members married in the temple and children under the age of 8
• Lowest level must first go through hell and suffer before arriving in Heaven
• Only about 10% of the members may enter the temple
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Transcendentalist ideas
 People could attain perfection through knowledge about God, the self, and the universe.
 Importance of the individual
 Natural simplicity
6
• Multiple wives
• Heaven has 3 levels
• Highest level is for members married in the temple and children under the age of 8
• Lowest level must first go through hell and suffer before arriving in Heaven
• Only about 10% of the members may enter the temple
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Transcendentalist ideas
 People could attain perfection through knowledge about God, the self, and the universe.
 Importance of the individual
 Natural simplicity
 Spiritual renewal
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Utopian Societies: Brook Farms
 Founded by George Ripley
 Inspired by the transcendentalists
• Small group of New England intellectuals
 Famous members
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau
 Retreated from industrial times back to nature
 Compassion of cooperative living faded
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AGE OF REFORM
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Women and reform
• Many women believed that they had a duty to become involved in reform since they were
expected to instill values of good citizenship in their children and serve as the moral voice
in their household.
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Temperance reformers
 Wanted to reduce criminal behavior, family violence, and poverty
 Desired a more disciplined workforce
 Wanted to preserve the family
 Organized a group to eliminate the sale and consumption of alcohol.
• The American Temperance Society (1826)
• Formed in Boston
• They implored drinkers to sign the temperance pledge
• Organized children’s clubs—―Cold Water Army‖
• Temperance crusaders used pictures, pamphlets, and lurid lectures to convey their
messages.

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Free Schools for a Free People
 Horace Mann (1796-1859):
• As secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, he championed:
–For more and better schoolhouses
–Longer school terms
–Higher pay for teaches
–And an expanded curriculum.
• His influence radiated out to other states and impressive improvement were made.
• Yet education remained an expensive luxury for many communities.
• Opening of first public high school (Massachusetts)
• School was suppose to teach and promote moral character in students.
46
Free Schools for a Free People (cont.)
 Educational advances:
• Aided by improved textbooks
• Noah Webster (1758-1843)
• His reading books were partly designed to promote patriotism
• Webster devoted twenty years to his famous dictionary
–Published in 1828
7
• Opening of first public high school (Massachusetts)
• School was suppose to teach and promote moral character in students.
46
Free Schools for a Free People (cont.)
 Educational advances:
• Aided by improved textbooks
• Noah Webster (1758-1843)
• His reading books were partly designed to promote patriotism
• Webster devoted twenty years to his famous dictionary
–Published in 1828
–Helped to standardize the American language.
• William H. McGuffey:
• His grade-school readers, first published in the 1830s, sold 122 million
• McGuffey’s Readers hammered home lasting lessons in morality, patriotism, and
idealism.
–
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Education in the early 1800s
 Opponents to Public Education did not like the fact that students had to attend school until
a certain age.
 Segregation was found in some school systems
 Women were denied the right to education in some states.
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Higher Goals for Higher Learning
 The Second Great Awakening planted many small, denominational, liberal arts colleges:
• Chiefly in the South and West.
 The first state-supported universities were in North Carolina in 1795.
 University of Virginia (1819):
• Brain child of Thomas Jefferson, who designed its beautiful architecture
• He dedicated the university to freedom from religion or political shackles
• Modern languages and the sciences received emphasis.
49
Higher Goals for Higher Learning (cont.)
 Women’s higher education:
• Frowned upon in the early decade of the nineteenth century
• Women’s education was to be in the home
• Coeducation was regarded as frivolous
• Prejudices prevailed that too much learning injured the brain, undermined health, and
rendered a young lady unfit for marriage.
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Jails and prisons
 Reformers created the penitentiary system, built more prisons, and established reform
schools to deal with the imprisonment of juveniles with adult offenders.
 Early problems the young and old and mentally insane were all housed together.

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Poorhouses
Reformers established a network of poorhouses, where the able-bodied poor would be
required to work and where poor children could be educated.
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Mental hospitals
 Dorothea Dix (1802-1887):
• Possessed infinite compassion and will-power
• Travel 60,000 miles in 8 years to document firsthand observation of insanity and
asylums.
Rehabilitation hospitals were established to get mentally ill people out of jails and poorhouses.
53
The call for immediate abolition
Impatience with the abolition movements and lack of progress led some leaders to call for
immediate abolition.
David Walker
• Appeal to the Colored Citizens of World (1829):
8
• Possessed infinite compassion and will-power
• Travel 60,000 miles in 8 years to document firsthand observation of insanity and
asylums.
Rehabilitation hospitals were established to get mentally ill people out of jails and poorhouses.
53
The call for immediate abolition
Impatience with the abolition movements and lack of progress led some leaders to call for
immediate abolition.
David Walker
• Appeal to the Colored Citizens of World (1829):
• Advocated a bloody end to white supremacy
William Lloyd Garrison
• The Liberator—his militantly antislavery newspaper
54
Early opponents of slavery
 Most northern states had banned slavery by the early 1800’s
 Many Northerners wanted to ban it across the country
 Both groups shared a common view that African Americans were inferior and would never
fit into society.
 The American Colonization Society wanted to send them back to Africa.
55
Early opponents of slavery
 To counter the American Colonization Society free blacks started abolitionist societies
 In 1821 only 1,400 choose to go back to Africa, most wanted to remain even with the
discrimination they faced
 In 1826 more than 143 Antislavery societies had been formed.
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American Anti-Slavery Society
 American Anti-Slavery Society (1833)
• 1st national antislavery organization
• Started By William Lloyd Garrison
 Frederick Douglass
• Escaped slave that told his story and convinced people to join the movement (1838) 21
years old
• Wrote his life story for people to read
 Sojourner Truth
• An ex-slave that believed God had talked to her and told her to fight for the truth. Led
her to change her name and preach in the countryside of New England
57
Resistance to Abolition
 As the movement grew mob violence increased
 A Boston mob tried to kill Garrison
 Elijah Lovejoy an abolitionist editor in Alton, Illinois was killed
58
Resistance to Abolition
 Why did some Northerners oppose the abolitionist movement
• Feared free blacks would take their jobs
• Merchants felt it would hurt cotton production which would hurt their sales
59
The Movement Splinters
 Abolitionist faced problems within the movement
• William Lloyd Garrison leads attacks on churches and the government over condoning
slavery
• Garrison also called for equal rights for women which made some abolitionist angry who
thought that the woman’s place was in the house
60
Abolition and Women’s rights
 The slavery movement made women realize that they too need to fight for their rights
 Sarah and Angelina Grimke saw this as a chance to fight for both causes together
 Men continued to state that the women's place was in the house teaching Sunday school
61
Women Declare Their Rights
9
 Abolitionist faced problems within the movement
• William Lloyd Garrison leads attacks on churches and the government over condoning
slavery
• Garrison also called for equal rights for women which made some abolitionist angry who
thought that the woman’s place was in the house
60
Abolition and Women’s rights
 The slavery movement made women realize that they too need to fight for their rights
 Sarah and Angelina Grimke saw this as a chance to fight for both causes together
 Men continued to state that the women's place was in the house teaching Sunday school
61
Women Declare Their Rights
 Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott head this movement
 Troubled by woman's status
• Could not vote
• Far less access to education
• Social prejudges limited women to few professional jobs
• They received lower wages
• Could not own property
• Would not get custody of the children
62
Seneca Falls Convention
 More than 300 men and women attend
 1st convention about women’s rights
 Wrote a declaration to gain certain rights (Declaration of Sentiments)
• Married women right to control property
• To get custody in divorce
• The right to vote (suffrage)
• Most important issue
63
Women’s Right to Activism
 Sojourner Truth spoke about the equality of men and women
 Susan B Anthony dedicated her life to this fight after being denied the right to speak
because she was a women
 Gained some states rights but not the right to vote
• Right to own property
64
Achievements
 New York’s Married Women’s Property Act
 Some states revised laws to permit married women to own property, file lawsuits, and
retain earnings.
65
Unresolved issues
 Right to vote
10