Explain why American cities grew in the 1800s.

Objectives • Explain why American cities grew in the 1800s. • List the new inventions and advances in agriculture and manufacturing. • Describe the improvements in transportation during the early 1800s. • Discuss the wave of immigration to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s. • Describe the problems African Americans faced in the North.

Terms and People • urbanization – the growth of cities due to the movement of people from rural areas to cities • telegraph – a device that used electrical signals to send messages • Samuel F. B. Morse – the inventor of the telegraph

Terms and People (continued) • famine – widespread starvation • nativists – people who wanted to preserve the country for white, American-born Protestants • discrimination – the denial of equal rights or equal treatment to certain groups of people

How did urbanization, technology, and social change affect the North? During the Industrial Revolution, the differences between the North and South widened. Northern cities, industries, and transportation technologies grew rapidly, with both benefits and drawbacks for citizens.

Early American cities were small by today’s standards, but in the 1800s, U.S. cities grew larger. The Industrial Revolution spurredurbanization, as agricultural workers moved to the cities for jobs. Farm laborers who had been replaced by machines went to work in city factories and shops.

As cities grew, a variety of problems emerged. filthy streets structures made mostly of wood disease fires a lack of clean drinking water poorly trained fire fighters the absence of good sewage systems rival fire companies fought each other instead of fires

The Industrial Revolution also provided many benefits. New inventions and technological advances affected many industries and caused many changes in people’s ways of life, in the following areas. • Agriculture • Clothing and manufactured goods • Communication • Transportation

The telegraph worked by sending electrical signals over a wire. Messages could be sent quickly over long distances.

In 1807, Robert Fulton invented the steamboat.

Side-paddle steamboats traveled well on rivers, but not on oceans. In 1850, American-built clipper ships—the fastest ships in the world at the time—were introduced. But by the 1850s, Britain was producing ocean-going steamships that were faster than and could carry more cargo than clipper ships.

Railroads tied together raw materials, manufacturers, and markets better than any other form of transportation. Railroads could be built almost anywhere. Steamboats had to follow the paths of rivers, which sometimes froze in winter.

Cars were drawn along the track by horses on America’s first railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio, which was begun in 1828. In 1830, Peter Cooper built the first American-made steam locomotive. By 1840, about 3,000 miles of railway track had been built in the United States.

Not only was America’s way of life changing, immigrants were changing who Americans were. UnitedStates Population The American population grew rapidly in the 1840sbecause millions of immigrants, mostly from Western Europe, entered the United States.

Some immigrants came for land, others for opportunity, and still others because they could not survive in their home countries. As cities along the eastern coast became crowded, newly arrived immigrants headed west.

In 1845, a fungus destroyed the potato crop in Ireland, which led to a famine. During the Great Hunger, more than a million people starved to death, and a million more left Ireland.

Most of the Irish immigrants who came to the United States during this period found work: • laying railroad track in the East and Midwest. • as household workers. • in construction.

Germans also came to America during this period, many to escape political persecution. Unlike the Irish, German immigrants came from many different levels of society. Many Germans settled in the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes region.

Some Americans, callednativists,worried about the growing foreign population. Nativists especially opposed Irish immigration because most Irish were Roman Catholic. One New York nativist group became the powerful Know-Nothing political party, but the party eventually dissolved over the issue of slavery.

Even more so than immigrants, African Americans in the North faced discrimination. Slavery had largely ended in the North by the early 1800s, but free African Americans did not receive the same treatment as whites.

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Explain why American cities grew in the 1800s.