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Antebellum City Life

Explore the cultural, social, and economic shifts in pre-Civil War cities through immigration, crime, free Black communities, and leisure activities like parks and cemeteries.

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Antebellum City Life

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  1. Antebellum City Life

  2. Quick Facts • 1820 = Less than 10% of U.S. population lived in cities • 1860 = 20% lived in cities • Immigration from abroad & migration from rural America • Irish, Scottish, Welsh, English, Scandinavian, German

  3. New York City’s Five Points • Multicultural, multiethnic neighborhood • Notorious symbol of urban decay for New York’s middle class

  4. Transportation • “Walking Cities” • 1827 = Omnibus stagecoach covered 80 miles in NY • 1840s = Streetcar ran on tracks

  5. Urban Immigration • 1830 = 23,000 immigrants • 1854 = 428,000 immigrants • 1845 = Ireland’s potato famine killed over 1 million and inspired 1 million to immigrate to the U.S. • Irish in NY & Massachusetts = Low-skilled factory jobs & domestic servants • Germans = inland farmers, skilled artisans

  6. Free Black Communities • Segregated neighborhoods in Boston, NY, Chicago, Philadelphia • Excluded from most professions • Pro-slavery population in North

  7. Crime • Mob and gang violence • 1830s & 1840s = Anti-Catholicism • Masculine subculture & poor young women • 1845 = 1st modern professional police force in NY • “Young people are thrown upon the bosom of our city and corrupted by sensuality” --Reverend Lyman Beecher

  8. Murder of Helen Jewett, 1836 • 1830s = Rise of Penny Papers • NY prostitute murdered by drugstore clerk Richard Robinson • Antebellum America= Change in meaning of freedom of the press

  9. Sporting Men • Gamblers, confidence men, fight organizers • Resisted pressure to conform to middle class standards • “Frail ones” & “nymphs”

  10. Parks & Cemeteries • Central Park, Frederick Law Olmstead, 1858 • Rural Cemetery Movement = 1830s • Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge • 30,000 visitors annually in 1830s

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