APUSH Chp 8 Vocab

neomercantilism

neomercantilism

A system of government-assisted economic development embraced by state legislatures in the first half of the nineteenth century, especially in the Northeast. This system of activist government encouraged entrepreneurs to enhance the public welfare through private economic initiatives.

Panic of 1819

First major economic crisis of the United States. Farmers and planters faced an abrupt 30 percent drop in world agricultural prices, and as farmers' income declined, they could not pay debts owed to stores and banks, many of which went bankrupt.

Commonwealth System

The republican system of political economy implemented by state governments in the early nineteenth century that funneled aid to private businesses whose projects would improve the general welfare.

Erie Canal

A 364-mile waterway connecting the Hudson River and Lake Erie. The Erie Canal brought prosperity to the entire Great Lakes region, and its benefits prompted civic and business leaders in Philadelphia and Baltimore to propose canals to link their cities to the Midwest.

Market Revolution

The dramatic increase between 1820 and 1850 in the exchange of goods and services in market transactions. The Market Revolution reflected the increased output of farms and factories, the entrepreneurial activities of traders and merchants, and the creation of a transportation network of roads, canals, and railroads.

Industrial Revolution

A burst of major inventions and economic expansion based on water and steam power, reorganized work routines, and the use of machine technology that transformed certain industries, such as cotton textiles and iron, between 1790 and 1860.

cotton complex

The economic system that developed in the first half of the nineteenth century binding together southern cotton production with northern clothmaking, shipping, and capital.

mechanics

A term used in the nineteenth century to refer to skilled craftsmen and inventors who built and improved machinery and machine tools for industry.

Waltham-Lowell System

A labor system employing young farm women in New England factories that originated in 1822 and declined after 1860, when immigrant labor became predominant. The women lived in company boardinghouses with strict rules and curfews and were often required to attend church.

gradual emancipation

The practice of ending slavery in the distant future while recognizing white property rights to the slaves they owned. Gradual emancipation statutes only applied to enslaved laborers born after the passage of the statute, and only after they had first labored for their owners for a term of years.

manumission

The legal act of relinquishing property rights in slaves. Worried that a large free black population would threaten the institution of slavery, the Virginia assembly repealed Virginia's 1782 manumission law in 1792.

coastal trade

The domestic slave trade with routes along the Atlantic coast that sent thousands of slaves to sugar plantations in Louisiana and cotton plantations in the Mississippi Valley.

inland system

The slave trade system in the interior of the country that fed slaves to the Cotton South.

"positive good"

In 1837, South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun argued on the floor of the Senate that slavery was not a necessary evil but a positive good "indispensable to the peace and happiness" of blacks and whites alike.

paternalism

The ideology held by slave owners who considered themselves committed to the welfare of their slaves.

machine tools

Machines that made standardized metal parts for other machines, like textile looms and sewing machines. The development of machine tools by American inventors in the early nineteenth century accelerated industrialization.

artisan republicanism

An ideology of production that celebrated small-scale producers and emphasized liberty and equality. It flourished after the American Revolution and gradually declined as a result of industrialization.

unions

Organizations of workers that began during the Industrial Revolution to bargain with employers over wages, hours, benefits, and control of the workplace.

labor theory of value

The belief that human labor produces economic value. Adherents argued that the price of a product should be determined not by the market but by the amount of work required to make it, and that most of the price should be paid to the person who produced it.

gang-labor system

A system of work discipline used on southern cotton plantations in the mid-nineteenth century in which white overseers or black drivers supervised gangs of enslaved laborers to achieve greater productivity.

middle class

An economic group of prosperous farmers, artisans, and traders that emerged in the early nineteenth century. Its rise reflected a dramatic increase in prosperity. This surge in income, along with an abundance of inexpensive mass-produced goods, fostered a distinct middle-class urban culture.

self-made man

A nineteenth-century ideal that celebrated men who rose to wealth or social prominence from humble origins through self-discipline, hard work, and temperate habits.