Chapter 9

1. Chapter 9 The Transformation of American Society, 1815-1840

2. Introduction/Questions • Economic and social changes that took place in the United States between 1815 and 1840 • 1.) What caused the upsurge of westward migration after the War of 1812? • 2.) How did the rise of the market economy affect where Americans lived and how they made their living? • 3.) What caused the rise of industrialization? • 4.) What caused urban poverty in this period?

3. Western Expansion • The Sweep West • By 1821 the following states were added • VT, KY, TN, OH, LA, IN, MS, IL, AL, ME, MO • Between 1790 and 1820 • Pioneer families clustered near the navigable rivers • 1820’s and 1830’s • With the development of canals and railroads, families could afford to fan out • Tended to settle near others who had come from the same region back east • Settled mostly between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River

4. Western Society and Customs • Before 1830, life was crude and difficult • Easterners often looked down on westerners’ lack of refinement • Westerners in turn resented eastern pretensions to gentility

5. The Far West • Adventurous pioneers traveled across the continent • John Jacob Astor (NY) set up a fur-trading post in Oregon • “mountain men” like Jedidiah Smith trapped animals

6. The Federal Government and the West • Midwestern settlement was encourage by: • Ordinance of 1785 • Northwest Ordinance • Louisiana Purchase • Transcontinental Treaty of 1819 • Land warrants given to War of 1812 veterans • Extension of the National Road into IL by 1838 • Removal and declining strength of the Native Americans (by 1820 were no longer receiving Spanish and British aid)

7. The Removal of the Indians • By the 1820’s, the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Seminoles of the South were under heavy pressure to cede their lands to whites • The Indian Removal Act • 1830 • Andrew Jackson • Granted the president the power to move all Native American west of the Mississippi River • Could use force if necessary • http://studyworld.com/indian_removal_act_of_1830.htm

8. The Removal of the Indians (cont.) • The Creeks in GA and AL had already started to migrate by that point • In 1836, the remainder were forced out • The Choctaws and Chickasaws suffered a similar fate • After losing a war of resistance that lasted from 1835 to 1842, most Seminoles also were expelled from FL

9. The Removal of the Indians (cont.) • The Cherokees (the most assimilated of the Indians) appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for protection • Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in their favor • President Jackson ignored the court • “Chief Justice has made his decision, now let him enforce it” • Compelled the tribe to cede its land • Travel the “Trail of Tears” westward • 4,000 Cherokees died on the trip • 1838-1839

10. The Removal of the Indians (cont.) • Black Hawk War • 1832 • The Sac and Fox attempted to keep their lands • Native Americans lost • Sac, Fox and other Midwest and Northeast Indians also had to move west of the Mississippi

12. The Agricultural Boom • Growth of the population in the old Northwest • The removal of the Indians • the high prices and escalating demand for wheat and corn • Growth of the population in the old Southwest • 1793=Eli Whitney’s cotton gin • Boundless need of the British textile industry for raw cotton • After the War of 1812 • Southeasterners poured into AL and MS • Drove up land prices • Tripled the nation’s cotton production • By 1836, cotton accounted for 2/3’s of America’s foreign exports

13. The Growth of the Market Economy • High crop prices after the War of 1812 tempted more farmers than ever before to switch from subsistence to commercial agriculture. • Commercial agriculture opened new opportunities for western farmers • It also exposed them to greater risks • Many had to borrow $$$$ to buy land and to survive until they could sell their first crops • Once in debt, the commercial farmers were particularly vulnerable because they had no control over fluctuations in price, supply, and demand in world markets

14. Federal Land Policy • Jeffersonian Republicans introduced land policies aimed at a speedy transfer of the public domain to small farmers • Between 1800 and 1820 • The govt. cut the minimum price per acre and the minimum # of acres that could be purchased • Most govt. land was sold at auction • Speculators often bid the price up far above the minimum • Speculators believed that the price of land would soon shoot up in value • The easy availability of credit encouraged this speculation

15. The Speculator and the Squatter • Many poor settlers who did not have the money to buy at auction simply squatted on govt. land • They exerted mounting pressure on Congress to grant them preemption rights over speculators • They won their demand in 1841 • Squatters quickly turned to commercial agriculture • They wanted to accumulate the cash to buy their farms • Many western farmers, after exhausting the soil’s fertility growing cash crops, simply moved on to new land

16. The Panic of 1819 • The land boom soon collapsed and crop and western land prices plummeted • Many speculators were ruined in the panic and depression of 1819 • National Bank tightened credit and called in the notes of the overextended western banks (many of which failed)

17. The Panic of 1819 (cont.) • The hard times experienced by agriculture and industry had long-term effects • Many westerners hated the National Bank • Blamed it for the crisis • Western farmers intensified their search for internal improvements that would cut transportation expenses for shipping their product to market

19. The Transportation Revolution: Steamboats, Canals, and Railroads • Before 1820, available transportation facilities were unsatisfactory • Existing roads were adequate for transporting people, but moving bulky loads over them by horse-drawn wagons was slow and costly • Robert Fulton’s steamboat • Allowed the great rivers west of the Appalachian Mountains that flowed north to south became two-way streets for commerce • By 1855, 727 steamboats were providing regular ferry service on all the western rivers

20. Steamboats, Canals, and Railroads (cont.) • Rivers did NOT always exist where they were most needed for trade • Americans began to build canals in 1820’s • Erie Canal • Built between 1817 to 1825 and stretched 363 miles • State of New York constructed it • Connected Albany on the Hudson River with Buffalo on Lake Erie • Lowered freight rates to a fraction of what they had been • Made NYC a leading outlet for Midwestern production

21. Erie Canal

22. Steamboats, Canals, and Railroads (cont.) • The Erie Canal’s success encouraged dozens of other state-supported projects • The canal-building boom deflated with the depression of the late 1830’s • Railroads • By 1840 some 3,000 miles of railroad track had been laid • trains were beginning to supplement and compete with canal shipping

23. The Growth of Cities • This transportation revolution stimulated the development of towns and cities • River port cities (steamboat) • Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, New Orleans • Lake port cities (canals) • Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee • The period from 1820 to 1860 saw the most rapid urbanization in American history

24. Industrial Beginnings • Introduction • Early industrialization stimulated urbanization • The first cotton mill in the U.S.A. opened in Pawtucket, RI • Skilled mechanic Samuel Slater managed to sneak out of Britain and arrived in America with his ability to reproduce Richard Arkwright’s spinning frame • Slater’s 1st mill opened in 1790 • Soon joined by many other manufacturing textiles and shoes

25. Introduction (cont.) • The rapidity of industrialization varied from region to region • New England leading the way • The South lagged far behind • Planters preferred to put their capital in land and slaves • Industrialization began to change people’s lives • Forced workers to regulate their labor by the clock and pace of the machine • Downgraded the position of skilled artisans • Cheaper machine-made products were available in greater profusion to working-class Americans

26. Causes of Industrialization • Embargo Act of 1807 • Induced merchants barred from foreign trade to divert their capital to founding factories • Transformed from foreign trade to domestic trade • After the War of 1812= fledgling industries received protection from high tariffs • Especially in the 1820’s • Transportation improvements opened distant markets to manufactures • Relatively high wages paid to American workers • Made employers eager to adopt laborsaving techniques • Eli Whitney’s interchangeable parts

27. Textile Towns in New England • New England was the 1st region to industrialize • Its merchants were particularly hard hit by foreign trade disruptions • It had swift-flowing rivers for waterpower • It had excess female farm population for labor • Textile manufacturing became its leading industry • The Waltham and Lowell mills in MA were the first to concentrate on total cloth production within the factory

28. Textile Towns in New England (cont.) • Originally 80% of the mill operatives were unmarried young women • Lived in company housing under the strict supervision of management • During the 1830’s, these Lowell women staged 2 of the largest strikes in American history to that date. (1834 and 1836)

29. Lowell “girls”

30. Artisans and Workers in Mid-Atlantic Cities • New York City and Philadelphia • Shoes, saddles, clothing- Done in small shops as well as factories • Much of the work was still done by hand rather than by machine • But increasingly production was subdivided into small specialized tasks • Done by low-paid, semiskilled or unskilled laborers (often women) • This resulted in a declining importance for skilled artisans • in protest in the late 1820’s, formed trade unions and “workingmen’s” political parties

31. Equality and Inequality • Urban Inequality: The Rich and the Poor • The gap between the rich and the poor grew during the 1st half of the 19th century • The extremes were especially obvious in the cities • Mansions of the wealthy line the fashionable avenues • The poor crowded into noxious slums like New York’s Five Points district • 1833 in Boston=the richest 4% of the population owned almost 60% of the land

32. Urban Inequality: The Rich and the Poor (cont.) • Contrary to the self-made man, rages-to-riches myth, 90% of the very wealthy had started out with considerable means • At the other end of the scale, cities were developing a pauperized class consisting of aged and infirm; widows; and destitute Irish immigrants, whose labor built the Erie and other canals in the North • Americans blamed the poor for being poor • treated most with contempt • particularly the Irish, for being poor and Catholic • Free blacks for being poor and black

33. New York’s Five Points District 1827 1872

34. Free Blacks in the North • Overwhelming discrimination kept most free blacks in poverty • They were generally denied the vote • Educated in inferior segregated schools (if at all) • Forced to use separate and unequal facilities • Kept out of all but the lowest-paying, least skilled occupations

35. Free Blacks in the North (cont.) • In response to this pervasive discrimination, northern blacks founded their own churches • Richard Allen started the first of these • African Methodist Episcopal Church • In Philadelphia • 1816 • By 1822, there were AME congregations all over the North • The black churches engaged in antislavery activities and ran schools and mutual-aid societies • http://search.eb.com/blackhistory/article-9003944

36. The “Middling Classes” • The majority of white Americans were neither rich nor poor • Belonged to what was then called the middling classes • For most people in that group the standard of living rose between 1800 and 1860 • Members of the middle class experienced a lot of insecurity • They also exhibited a high degree of transience, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city, and region to region

37. The Revolution in Social Relationships • The Attack on the Professions • One sign that economic changes were disrupting traditional relationships and forms of authority could be seen in the intense criticism of professionals (doctors, lawyers, ministers) between 1820 and 1850 • The denial that professionals had any special expertise was particularly prevalent on the frontier

38. The Challenge to Family Authority • Children became more inclined to question parental authority • Young men left home at an earlier age and struck out on their own • Young women increasingly made their own choice of whom to marry or even whether to marry

39. Wives and Husbands • Relations between spouses also were evolving • Wives continued to be legally subordinate to their husbands • But under the doctrine of separate spheres, middle-class women were demanding and winning greater voice in those areas where they were deemed to be particularly • Exerting moral influence on the family • Creating within the home a calm refuge from the harsh, competitive world outside

40. Wives and Husbands (cont.) • Middle-class women gained more control over the frequency of their pregnancies through advances in medicine (Birth control pills will be introduced in 1916) • The size of white middle-class families declined markedly • The birthrate remained high among black and immigrant women

41. Horizontal Allegiances & the Rise of Voluntary Associations • Authority of fathers, husbands, professionals, and other social “superiors” waned • New relationships among persons in similar positions were forged through the proliferation of voluntary associations • Temperance and moral-reform societies of white middle-class women, union, and workingmen’s parties and black fraternal, and other clubs encouraged sociability among members • Also these were attempts to enhance their influence on outside groups

42. Conclusion • After 1815, white Americans’ westward movement speeded up due to a heightened European demand for agricultural products • especially cotton • Federal govt. policies also hastened western settlement • Removal of eastern Indians to west of the Mississippi River • The sale of land on more generous terms

43. Conclusion (cont.) • Improved transportation facilitated the shipment of western farmers’ produce to eastern and European markets • Steamboat, canals, railroads • This transportation revolution encouraged the growth of cities, commerce, manufacturing, and industrialization • The economic transformations made some American wealthy and impoverished others • Affected social relations within the family and society