Social Transformations and Growing Regionalism in United States History

1. Social Transformations and Growing Regionalism in United States History Changes in the United States, 1828 - 1848

2. One of the most exciting and difficult aspects of writing history is identifying individuals who are relatively “unknown” and giving them a voice. During the 19th Century, men and women who could not read or write played an important role in events – yet they are seldom remembered. Almost two hundred years later, we must attempt to empathize with the voiceless in order to understand history. The enslaved, Native Americans, immigrants, the poor, and women all helped to define American character and values. We must find their voice. The People We Don’t See Are Our History

3. Complicating this is the fact that men and women of the 19th Century did not share our values or our cultural norms. A twenty-first century woman, having been influenced by the change in gender roles that the feminist movement achieved and familiar with equal political participation and public activism, might find it very difficult to empathize with a woman of the 19th Century – who’s most ambitious goals may have been to have economic independence from her parents or to remain active in a vocation after marrying. Empathy

4. The New Cotton Empire of the South Economic Opportunity for the South Results in the Rigid Social Hierarchy of the Antebellum Cotton Kingdom

5. The Rise of Cotton as Staple Crop Starting in 1820, cotton became the dominant crop in a single-crop export system, moving quickly west, and demanding more an more labor for the plantation system. Simultaneously, the demand for enslaved labor rose sharply. Inventions like the cotton gin led to a second life for plantations which had been in decline.

6. Who owned slaves in the South? Less than 1/3 of Southerners actually owned slaves. Of those, 4 out of 5 owned ten slaves or fewer. About twelve percent – or one in eight slave owners – owned over twenty slaves and controlled 800 acres or more – a moderately sized plantation of the time which would rely on slave labor.

7. After the international slave trade was outlawed in 1808, the domestic slave trade became a hugely profitable market. Slave traders – and plantation owners who sought to make fast profits – would sell slaves to plantation owners in Western regions of the Cotton Belt. Breaking up families and selling children away from their parents were objectionable practices, but many owners allowed it to take place; slave traders viewed enslaved people as a commodity. There were also smuggling operations. The Slave Trade

8. Southern plantation owners and southern society in general justified the “peculiar institution” of slavery in paternalist terms. In other words, they claimed to know best what was good for the enslaved. By crediting themselves with bringing African people to Christianity and taking credit for the productivity of enslaved people, they justified the system. Moreover, plantation owners prided themselves on providing for the basic needs of their slaves – claiming that they were much better off on a Southern planation than in “uncivilized” Africa. Paternalism

9. The Southern Planting Class Although claiming to represent a sort of “natural aristocracy,” most plantation owners were of middling background. Land was easy to purchase, and cheap. The most successful plantation owners successfully researched where to buy the best land, but they also had to have good fortune – the capital required to purchase enslaved workers could only be repaid if the cotton crop came in. A healthy, strong African American enslaved person might cost over $1800. This meant that most of the wealth of the plantation was tied up in its laborers for many years. The affluence was, at times, a pretense, at least as much as the “paternalism”

10. White men of property ruled over - • Elite white women, and poor whites, and poor white women, who rule over or outrank – • Enslaved African-Americans – both men and women. Free blacks, Native Americans, and others existed in the margins of society, but were extremely limited in their autonomy and social mobility. A Rigid Hierarchy

11. Sexual relations between masters and enslaved women could almost always be characterized as rape by our own standards. The fact that many plantations owners chose to enslave their own children – the offspring of these acts of sexual exploitation – demonstrates the social disconnect at work. Some, like Thomas Jefferson, would eventually emancipate their own children. Others lived with the hypocrisy. Exploitation, Rape, and Plantation Identities

12. Who was the poor white farmer? He was the majority of the South, to begin with. Two thirds of farmers were subsistence farmers, non-slaveholders, tenant farmers, or sharecroppers. Often, these men and women had a contentious relationship with the aristocratic plantation owners they paid deference to. But beneath that resentment was a desire to join their ranks. Many aspired to hold slaves and use slave labor in order to acquire greater homesteads or plantations of their own. They also believed that enslaved labor saved poor whites from the most demeaning work in farming.

13. Free Blacks in the South Free communities of blacks in the South were less and less common as the 19th Century progressed. Although many enslaved people had purchased their own freedom or the freedom of loved ones by accumulating money earned on side work, only a handful of apprenticeships were available to these men and women. Economic opportunity was extremely limited.

14. The need for enslaved labor to secure profits led to a stricter and more severe set of codes. • Severe beatings and abuse had a negative consequence in term of productivity; nevertheless, they still happened. • Slave quarter were usually 6 or less per cabin, due to spread of pandemic disease. Fires were common due to the need for a cooking stove or heat year round and the absence of permanent chimneys. • Food was plentiful but poor in quality. Even at that, slaves ate more meat than Northern industrial workers because they could hunt, Living Conditions for the Enslaved in the South

15. Cholera, contagious disease, pneumonia, and lockjaw were all frequent public health concerns. • Hernias and other injuries due to heavy labor and repetitive motion were common afflictions, too. • Heart and circulatory diseases were prevalent as well. Disease, Poor Health

16. By the 1820s, a major shift towards less occupational diversity – most of the enslaved are field hands and picking cotton. • Less than 2% of the enslaved population served as “house slaves.” • Some slaves worked for wages in major urban centers of the South – Charleston, Richmond, Norfolk, or Savannah. • In the Upper South – Virginia in particular – slavery would diversify quickly. Railroads and the Tredegar Iron Works were the two leading owners of slaves in Virginia in the years before the Civil War. Slave Occupations

17. In addition to the ever present threat of arbitrary beatings, violence, or demeaning, humiliating punishments, other fears characterized enslaved African Americans lives. • The fear of separation from one’s family was increasingly a concern as the market for slaves became more valuable. • Powerlessness to protect one’s family and the fear of separation from one’s loved ones and children caused heavy angst. Anxiety and Arbitrary Legal Codes

18. A handful of violent uprisings coordinated and executed by enslaved men and women resulted in a backlash against all slaves. Freedom of movement and access to weapons was strictly limited, and Southerners began to arm themselves into militias that drilled regularly. Slave Rebellions and Backlash in the South

19. The Manufacturing Empire of the North How Industrialization, Innovation, Immigration, and Internal Improvements Transformed Northern Identity

20. Manufacturing, 1820s At the start of the 1820s, the vast majority of industrial production was carried out domestically. That is, goods were manufactured by people in their own homes. Men and women who worked to produce goods – a blacksmith or a cartwright, for example – were a part of a household, and considered a part of an extended family of sorts.

21. Garment Manufacturers The first major industry to leave the household was the garment industry. Lowell Mills opened in the early1810s, and dozens of other manufacturing operations were built in its image. As more and more factories opened along the river routes, employees moved to the planned communities and cities began to grow. As the “American System of Manufacturing” emerged, social structure changed dramatically. Employers were no longer accountable for the well-being of their employees; indeed, they may not know them at all. The expanded domestic system was soon replaced as classes began to emerge.

22. The theory of interchangeable parts was a key component of the American method of manufacturing. The upside to the system was in its ease and high productivity. The down side was that it de-skilled the American laborer. Unskilled workers might just as successfully contribute products to the economy as skilled artisan had in the past. The American Method of Manufacturing

23. Employers who sought to maintain some vestiges of the old system of employment created company towns. Not only did this allow the company owners to maintain some level of supervision over their employees, but also, it provided them with other economic opportunities. By collecting rent and running company stores in the town, the employers might win back almost all the money they had paid out in wages. By the end of the19th Century, company towns and company stores were the flashpoints for labor movement incidents like the Pullman Strike of 1894. Pullman was built in present day Chicago in the 1880s. Company Towns

24. Lowell Mills was planned out as a factory for middle class women of New England. At the time, many young men were heading west to find their fortunes. For women seeking an education and economic independence from their parents, Lowell Mills was an excellent option. The social experiment being conducted there brought enormous attention to the plight of working women. From the beginning of Lowell Mills, there was a desire to improve the worker – socially, intellectually, and morally. Factories which followed Lowell Mills were more driven by money, though, than morality. Lowell Mills – Middle Class Women at Work

25. Irish Immigration: Black ‘47 With the development of factories came an enormous demand for unskilled, cheap labor. When famine – caused by the infamous potato blight of the 1840s – drove hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants to the shores of the United States, many were employed by the factories. German immigrants – many of whom were skilled tradesmen – had to settle for unskilled, low-paying jobs, too, in the American System of Manufacturing.

26. Catholicism was still feared and “Papists” were considered both anti-democratic and factional. • Language (Gaelic), dress, and eating habits inevitably discrimination. • Settlement patterns into ethnic neighborhoods caused some Americans to fear that a lack of assimilation would change American identity. • The oversupply of labor drove down wages and caused a decline in status for all workers. Immigration in the 1840s

27. Safety Conditions Safety conditions, depending on the type of work, were poor. But no matter what the conditions, employers in the new factory system rarely took responsibility for the well-being and good health of their employees. When workers were injured, they were dismissed. No health care, no workman’ compensation, and no compassion.

28. Low Wages and Tenement Life As employers became further and further disconnected from their employees and the free market served to drop the cost of wages, American workers became poorer. Housing conditions deteriorated rapidly, and tenement buildings in worn out slums became the norm for the urban poor.

29. Northern Wage Slavery? The notion that somehow Northern wage employees were worse off enslaved African Americans has economic merit. Slave quarters may have compared favorably to some of the tenement buildings. However, to eliminate the more important aspect of slavery – the violence and lack of social mobility or free agency – is to oversimplify the problem completely. No ambition, work ethic, skill set, or good fortune could reverse the violent course of race-based hereditary enslavement.

30. The Emerging Middle Class Skilled Professionals and Managers Carve Out a Niche of Their Own

31. To the extent that there was a “middle class” it was a small group. Skilled managerial positions and clerical workers were needed in order to maintain accounts, and professionalism among men of similar position allowed them to carve out a niche in the economy all their own. • Professionalism – devotion to one’s particular occupation – distinguished these workers from common laborers. • Within the middle class, women who pursued a vocation put off marriage and child-bearing, which was now considered an economic liability. • Anxiety over the ability to maintain one’s lifestyle and occupation also preoccupied the middle class. The Middle Class

32. Middle class workers were still unable to attain the social status of the “genteel class” – owners of companies and more established wealth who tended to socialize together, divorced from their workers. • Women in these circles removed themselves from the business world to engage in reading, needlework, or the appreciation of the arts. • Women also took on larger roles in the custodial duties of motherhood, centering their lives around the improvement of homes and the edification of their children. The Genteel

33. Temperance Education Reform movements intended to improve the increasingly questionable morals of society – and to reach out to poor communities where children had little access to education – began in the early 1800s. The Sunday School movement gave women the ability to have a public voice in the affairs of the community. Issues like temperance and outreach programs for the poor emerged. A Reforming Class

34. The American West Adventure, Exploration, Exploitation, and Settlement, 1828 – 1844

35. Business entrepreneurs, John Jacob Astor, for example, organized white trappers with regular rendezvous in the West to benefit from the fur trade. He established himself as a multi-millionaire in the early 1820s. • Land speculation was a tried and true method to invest in the areas of the West most likely to be developed. • Gold Rushes – none more dramatic than the California Gold Rush of the 1840s – also brought people West, but most of the money was in ordinary services for the miners. • Missionaries and organized religious processions were also enormously important. Why Go West?

36. Joseph Smith created his congregation by revealing the Book of Mormon as an addition to existing Christian traditions. He published the Book of Mormon, reported to have been revealed to and translated by Smith by an angel. Although attracting large numbers of converts to the faith, the group never established themselves for long in any given region, migrating steadily West from New York to Ohio, to Missouri and finally to Illinois, where the Nauvoo temple was established in the 1840s. Joseph Smith and the Mormon Church

37. It was in Nauvoo that the leader of the Church, Joseph Smith, and his brother Hiram were murdered by an angry mob and accused of practicing polygamy. The plural marriages of the Mormon had, heretofore, been a secret practice. When both Smith and his brother were murdered in prison, who would inherit the leadership of the Church was very much in doubt. It was Brigham Young who took the helm in the wake of Smith’s death, and his plan was to move west. Succession of Brigham Young

38. The establishment of Deseret near the Great Salt Lake region of Utah by Brigham Young in his 1600 or so followers took place in the early 1840s. At the time, the territory was claimed by Mexico, and the United States was preparing for war in order to seize the land. The Mormon settlement, originally, sought to escape the persecution of Americans. Over the course of the late 19th Century, as American claims to the region became more an more forceful, the community was forced to acquiesce, grudgingly, to American rule once again. In the mean time, however, Mormon industriousness made the desert land produce, and Mormon business acumen controlled trade in the Great Basin region of the West. Deseret

39. One of the most important character traits and values of the Mormon community was industriousness. The comparison between the Mormon settlements in the West and the activity of a beehive took on symbolic meaning. The community was highly structured and work ethic was expected to coincide with what land you had acquired. One should own no more than he could profitably use. The community was closed to non-Mormons, although generally related well to Native American communities. Hostility between the Mormon community and American emigrants was palpable at times, though –the Mountain Meadows Massacre was the tragic example of things gone wrong. The Mormon Community

40. Settlement of the Oregon Country required an arduous six month journey which was not for the weak. Generally the wagon trains would leave from Missouri and attempt to maintain good order along the route. The community was necessary to protect settlers from hostile Native Americans, but also to maintain supplies and care for the needy. Upon arrival in the Oregon Country, virtually everyone was a squatter – who could they purchase the disputed land from? But Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, English settlers, and American were able to co-exist for the most part without incident. The Oregon Trail

41. When Southern planters moved west, they often found that territory had been cleared and farmed by Native Americans in the Creek Confederation. Not so in the Oregon territory. Most of the tribes there relied upon hunting and gathering techniques in their region, and starting farms proved to be backbreaking work. Happily, the fertile soil along the Columbia and Willamette River Valleys was extraordinarily productive. Farming the Oregon Territory in the 1840s

42. California was disputed territory for some time, although highly coveted by Americans. Spanish missionaries had claimed the land dating back hundreds of years, but the region was so sparsely populated that even Russia made claims upon it. When Mexico gained its independence from Spain in the 1820s, they welcomed immigration to the Northern provinces – Texas and California in particular. The Santa Fe trail was established by William Becknell in order to facilitate trade in the region. However, as more American immigration took place and very little assimilation accompanied it, Mexico became guarded in their dealings with their new neighbors. California, Texas, and the Santa Fe Trail

43. Prior to the invention of the telegraph in the 1840s, transportation and communication were roughly linked. • The National Road extended only to St. Louis at the time; from there, the trails began. • The Erie Canal inspired a wave of canal building to facilitate trade during the 1830s. • Steamboats and the first trains – steam powered as well – began operating in the 1830s. • Improvements in paper making technology and the printing press allowed newspapers to gain greater circulation. • 1844: Samuel F.B. Morse: “What Hath God Wrought?” Tying the West to the Nation