Chapter 9-- The Market Revolution

A New Economy 

• Series of innovations in transportation & communication 

• Represented an acceleration of developments already under way in the colonial era 

• Lincoln grew up self-sufficient until he became an adult

  • 1830s Illinois legislature: lincoln eagerly promoted the improvement of rivers to facilitate access to markets 

  • As a lawyer, he represented the Illinois Central Railroad 

    • Opened large areas of Illinois to commercial farming 

Roads & Steamboats 

• First half of 19th century, the steamboat, canal, railroad, and telegraph opened new land to settlement, lowered transportation costs, and made it easier for economic enterprise to sell their products 

  • steamboats were boats that could travel both up and down river in deep or shallow waters

• Inventions linked farmers to national & world markets and made them major consumers of manufactured goods 

• First advance in overland transportation came through the construction of toll roads (turnpikes) by localities, states, and private companies

• 1806: Congress authorized the construction of the paved National Road from Cumberland, MD to the Old Northwest

• Maintenance cost were higher than expected and many towns built “shunpikers” → most private toll rolls never turned into profit

  • shunpikers were short detours that enabled residents to avoid tolls

• Improved water transportation lowered the expense of commerce

• Robert Fulton: experimented w/ steamboat designs

  • 1807: Fulton’s ship Clermont navigated the Hudson River from NYC to Albany

    • Demonstration of steamboat made possible upstream commerce

The Erie Canal

• Allowed goods to flow between the Great Lakes & NYC

• Most important and profitable of the canals of the 1820s & 1830s 

• Attracted an influx of farmers migrating from New England → birth of new cities like Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse 

• Gave NYC a dominant advantage over other ports in access to trading with the Old Northwest 

• States had to pay for the construction costs between 1783-1860

• Other states wanted to build canal constructions to match NYC success of the Erie Canal → over 3,000 canals created a network linking the Atlantic states with the Ohio & Mississippi Valleys

Railroads and the Telegraph

• The railroad made it easier to settle new areas and boosted the mining of coal and iron production for trains and tracks

• The nation’s first commercial railroad began in 1828 (Baltimore & Ohio)

• The telegraph made it possible to communicate throughout the nation

  • Made by Samuel F. B. Morse during the 1830s 

  • Was initial a service for businesses, as the faster exchange of information helped standardize prices across the nation

The Rise of the West

• People from the Eastern states migrated after War of 1812 to the West

• Six new states entered the Union (Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, & Maine)

• Most people moved in groups 

• Once people arrived in the west, they cooperated with each other to clear land, build houses and barns, and establish communities 

  • EX: Cotton Kingdom of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas

• Some western migrants became squatters— Western migrants who set up farms on unoccupied land without a clear legal title

• Those who purchased land got it from either the federal govt at $1.25/acre in cash or from land speculators/long-term credit  

• 1840, se

• ttlement had reached the MS river & two large new regions: Old Northwest & Old Southwest

• The West became the home of regional cultures

  • Upper NW resembled New England 

  • Lower South replicated southern Atlantic states 

• As population moved west, nation’s borders expanded

  • National boundaries made 0 difference to territorial expansion

    • EX: Florida 

      • In 1810, the U.S. annexed West Florida after a rebellion

      • In 1818, Andrew Jackson led troops into East Florida, leading to an international crisis → Spain selling Florida to the U.S. in the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty

• Western growth was significantly huge 

An Internal Borderland

• Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibition on slavery in Northwest → Ohio River marked boundary between free & slave societies 

  • Easy for people & goods to travel between Kentucky and southern counties of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois than to those states northern part

• Region stretching northward from Ohio River retained upper south culture & more in common w/ Kentucky & Tennessee than with northern counties 

The Cotton Kingdom

• Cotton-producing region, relying predominantly on slave labor, that spanned from North Carolina west to Louisiana and reached as far north as southern Illinois

• 1793: Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin → revolutionized American slavery

  • machine that separated cotton seed from cotton fiber

• Cotton plantations spread into SC upcountry 

  • Major reason reason why slave trade reopened between 1803 and 1808

• After War of 1812, the federal govt moved to consolidate American control over Deep South

  • Nat. Am. ceded land

  • Encouraging white settlement

  • Expansion of slavery

• after congress prohibited the Atlantic slave trade in 1808, a massive trade in slave developed within the US, supplying the labor force required by the new Cotton Kingdom

The Unfree Westward Movement

• 1 million slaves from older slave states shifted to Deep South between 1800 & 1860

• Majority of slaves were transported by slave traders to be sold at auctions for work in the cotton fields 

• Slave trade became a business 

• Slave coffles became a common sight

  • groups chained to one another on forced marches to the Deep South

• While the westward movement meant greater freedom for many whites, African-Americans suffered the destruction of family ties, the breakup of long-standing communities, and receding opportunities for liberty

Market Society

• Economic expansion with little economic change in the South

  • Continued to reproduce the agrarian, slave-based social order

Commercial Farmers

• Integrated economy of commercial farms & manufacturing cities 

• Farmers concentrated on growing crops & raising livestock for sale, while purchasing at stores goods previously produced at home 

• For western farmers, growing cities = market for produce and source of credit

• Loans originating with eastern banks and insurance companies financed the acquisition of land and supplies

• Purchase of fertilizer and new agricultural machinery expanded production 

The Growth of Cities

• Cities formed part of the western frontier 

  • Cincinnati: known as Porkopolis, after its slaughterhouse of pigs → shipped to eastern consumers 

  • St. Louis 

  • Chicago: nation’s fourth-largest city

    • Farm products from throughout the Northwest were gathered to be sent east

• Urban centers expanded → markets expanded → economy opportunity → entrepreneurs gathered artisans into large workshops in order to oversee their work and subdivide their tasks

  • More output; lower wages

The Factory System

• Gathered large groups of workers under central supervision w/ power-driven machinery 

• Samuel Slater: established America’s first factory in 1790 at Pawtucket, Rhode Island from memory

• Machines were taking over people’s jobs

• Cutoff of British imports because of the Embargo of 1807 & the war of 1812 → establishment of the first large-scale American factory utilizing power looms for weaving cotton cloth 

  • 1814, MA by Boston Associates 

  • MA soon became 2nd most industrialized region of the world

• Earliest factories were located along waterfalls and river rapids, so power would be available for spinning and weaving machinery 

  • 1840s: steam power made it possible for factory owners to locate in towns nearer to the cost & local markets 

• American system of manufactures

  • Relied on the mass production of interchangeable parts that could be rapidly assembled into standardized finished products

  • First perfected in CT by Eli Terry & Eli Whitney in 1840s & 50s 

• South lacked factory production 

• Most northern manufacturing was done in small-scale establishments

The Industrial Worker

• Market revolution helped to change Americans’ conception of time

  • Valued leisure time more

  • More conscious of their time

  • Closely being supervised for a period of time violated independence 

• Artisan’s pay was known as his “price,” since it was linked to the goods he produced

The “Mill Girls”

• Early New England textile mills relied largely on female and child labor 

• Young unmarried women from Yankee farm families dominated the workforce that tended the spinning machines

• To convince parents to let their daughters leave home to work, Lowl owner set up boarding houses with strict rules regulating personal behavior & established lecture halls and churches to occupy women’s free time 

• Women enjoyed the new freedoms and independence from working

  • Most women were not permanent residents

The Growth of Immigration

• Economic expansion fueled a demand for labor -> immigrants came flooding to America between 1840s-1860s

  • 90% headed for North

• The industrial revolution and modernization in Europe pushed peasants off land and displaced craft workers, driving emigration.

• Advancements in transportation, like ocean going steamships and railroads, made long-distance travel easier and cheaper

• Emigration from Europe, especially to the U.S., Canada, and Australia, increased after 1840, often with one male family member emigrating first to send money back for others to follow

Irish & German Newcomers

• Largest number of immigrants were from Irish men and women 

  • Great Famine 1845-1851

  • Took the bad, low-wage jobs that nobody wanted because they were unskilled

    • Irish men built American railroads, canals, etc.

    • Irish women typically worked as servants

• Second large number of immigrants were from Germany

  • More skilled than the Irish 

  • They settled in tightly-knitted neighborhoods like the Irish but most were able to move to the west and get better jobs because of their skill

    • Craftsmanship, artisans

  • Unlike the Irish, they Germans were able to have their own schools, newspaper associations, and churches

The Rise of Nativism

• Immigrants from Ireland faced hostility due to anti-catholicism beliefs within Protestant societies 

• During 1840s-1850s, Archbishop John Hughes of NYC made church a more assertive institution 

  • Hughes condemned the use of the Protestant King James Bible in NYC public schools, pressed Catholic parents to send their children to an expanding network of parochial schools, and sought government funding to pay for them

  • He aggressively sought to win converts from Protestantism

• 1834, Lyman Beecher: Presbyterian minister delivered a sermon regarding Catholics and their attempts to dominate the American west → mob burning a Catholic convent in Boston

• Opposition of immigration

  • Alien Act of 1798 reflected fear of immigrants with radical political views

• Nativist: those who feared the impact of immigration on American political and social life

  • Blamed immigrants for everything wrong

    • Starvation, crimes, political corruption, intoxicating liquor

  • Irish hostility– their Catholicism posed a threat to American democracy, social reforms, and education

• 1840s: violent anti-immigration riots

  • NYC elected a nativist mayor in 1844 due to fear of immigrants potentially taking native-worker jobs 

The Transformation of Laws

• Corporations gained special privileges → allowed them to raise more capital and grow without risking personal assets 

  • Limited liability for investors and directors 

• By the 1830s, states passed “general incorporation laws”

  • Allowed any company to incorporate by paying a fee, replacing the need for individual legislative acts

• Under John Marshall and later Roger Taney, the Supreme Court corporate charters as contracts and struck down efforts to limit competitions 

  • Dartmouth College v. Woodward: set the precedent of support of contracts against state interference

  • Gibbons v. Ogden: Chief Justice John Marshall ruled against the State of New York's granting of steamboat monopolies

• Local judges often sided with businessmen, ruling that they were not liable for damages caused by factory operations, like flooding or disrupting fishing 

• Commonwealth v. Hunt: The courts initially opposed worker strikes, but in 1842 they ruled that workers could legally organize unions and strike for better wages                 

The Free Individual

• Market revolution and westward expansion had produced an energetic society 

The West & Freedom

• Reinforced older ideas of freedom and helped to create new ones

  • EX: American freedom had long been linked w/ the availability of land in the West; “manifest destiny”

  • The belief and concept that constant opportunity to pick up and move when the pursuit of happiness seemed to demand it became more of a central component of American freedom 

• The settlement and economic exploitation of the West promised to prevent the US from following down the path of Europe & becoming a society with fixed social classes & a large group of wage-earning poor 

• Economic independence = social condition of freedom 

• The Transcendentalist 

  • The Market Revolution made people think freedom meant being able to succeed in business and life without government interference

    • It ignored the struggles of those who didn't have the same opportunities

  • To Emerson, freedom was an open-ended process of self-realization by which individuals could remake themselves and their own lives

  • Transcendentalists: philosophical group members who focused on the importance of individual judgment over existing social traditions and institutions 

Individualism

• Americans should depend on no one but themselves 

• Privacy: realm of self; one with which neither other individuals nor government had a right to interfere 

• Thoreau’s Walden (1854) talks about how the market revolution was degrading both Americans’ value and natural environment  

• Thoreau wanted people to simplify their life and not become obsessed with the accumulation of wealth

The Second Great Awakening 

• Great Awakening 2.0 

  • Added a religious underpinning to the celebration of personal self-improvement, self-reliance, and self-determination

• Charles Grandison Finey: evangelist, preacher

• Spread to all regions & democratized Christianity

• Growing Methodism denominations

• At large camp meetings, fiery revivalists preachers rejected the idea that man is a sinful creature with a preordained fate, promoting instead the doctrine of human free will 

  • Brought together people of all backgrounds to pledge to abandon worldly sins in favor of the godly life

The Awakening Impact 

• Stressed the right of private judgment in spiritual matters and possible salvation through faiths and good works

• Finey insisted every person was a moral free agent

  • A person free to choose between a life of Christianity or sin

• The revivals’ opening of religion to mass participation and their message that ordinary Americans could shape their own spiritual destinies resonated with the spread of market values

• Evangelical preachers, like Finney, criticized greed and selfishness, seeing them as sins, but their revivals thrived in market-driven areas, with many converts from commercial and professional classes.

• Evangelical ministers promoted "controlled individualism," emphasizing industry, sobriety, and self-discipline, qualities that aligned with success in a market economy

The Emergence of Mormonism 

• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

  • Mormons 

  • Founded in 1820s by Joseph Smith

  • Product of the intense revivalism of the “burned-over district” of NY

  • Smith’s successor Birgham Young led 15k followers to Utah in 1847 to escape persecution  

• Emerged in the center of the Second Great Awakening

• Democratic church in upstate NY admitted anyone who accepted Smith’s message

• Smith began to see visions → controversial doctrines 

  • Allowing men to have more than 1 wife

The Limits of Prosperity

Liberty & Prosperity 

• Many enterprising Americans seized the opportunities offered by the market revolution to enrich themselves

  • John Jacob Astor: started off as the son of a poor German butcher → earned large profits in the early nineteenth century by shipping furs to China and importing teas and silk → invested wealth in Manhattan real estate → nation’s most famous hotel 

    • “Self-made man”

• Market revolution made a new middle class

  • Clerks, accountants, other office employees who staffed business in Boston, NY, and elsewhere

• New opportunities for people, such as farmers & skilled craftsmen 

Race & Opportunity

• Black excluded from the new economic opportunities 

  • Faced discrimination

• Free blacks constructed their own institutional life, centered on mutual aid and educational societies, as well as independent churches

  • African Methodist Episcopal Church 

• Downward mobility of free blacks

  • Ex: Most viewed freed slaves as low-wage competitors and sought to bar them from skilled employment

• Hostility from white craftsmen → rapid decline in economic status

• Federal law barred free blacks from access to public land

  • Indiana, illinois, iowa, and oregon prohibited them from entering their territory all together by 1860  

The Cult of Domesticity

• Women found many opportunities closed to them, as well

• Republican motherhood → cult of domesticity 

• Cult of domesticity: the 19th-century ideology of “virtue” and “modesty” as the qualities that were essential to proper womanhood

  • Minimized women’s even indirect participation in the outside world 

• Women exercised considerable power over personal affairs w/ families as men were leaving home for work more

• Freedom meant fulfilling both sexes respective “inborn” qualities 

Woman and Work

• Thousands of poor women found jobs as domestic servants, factory workers, and seamstresses

• Early industrialization enhanced the availability of paid work for northern women

  • Allowed women laboring at home to contribute to family income even as they retained responsibility for domestic chores

• Middle Class: responsibility for wives to stay at home

  • freedom of middle-class woman rested on the employment of other women within her household

• Family Wage: idea that male workers should earn a wage sufficient to enable them to support their entire family without their wives’ having to work outside the home

Early Labor Movement

• Growing inequality in the Northeast

• In the late 1820s, skilled craftsmen created the first Workingmen's Parties to protect against the loss of traditional skills and the rise of dependent wage labor

  • advocating for free public education, an end to debt imprisonment, and a ten-hour workday

• In the 1830s, with rising prices, unions grew, strikes became common, and the early labor movement demanded higher wages, shorter hours, free land for settlers, and the release of imprisoned union leaders

The Liberty of Living

• Workers’ protests drew on older ideas of freedom linked to economic autonomy and equality

  • The conviction of New York tailors in 1835 and the Lowell mill women’s protests in the 1830s highlighted a growing labor movement focused on freedom from oppression and exploitation

• Some labor leaders, like Langdon Byllesby, argued that wage labor itself was a form of slavery, as it created economic dependence, challenging the notion of freedom as independence

• Labor leaders like Orestes Brownson critiqued the market economy and individualism, arguing that social inequality was rooted in societal structures, requiring institutional change rather than personal self-reliance

• Immigrant Peter Rödel highlighted the need for economic security as part of freedom, foreshadowing the later idea that a standard of living below which no person should fall is essential to true American freedom

• The market revolution reshaped American society, promoting individualism for white men, but limiting freedom for women and African-Americans

  • It sparked debates over economic freedom, independence, and inequality, influencing American politics