ECONOMIC REVOLUTION - PowerPoint Presentation

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ECONOMIC REVOLUTIONSlide2

Economic Revolution

Population

1820 - 1840 – cities increased, immigration highest in NE, river cities boom

Nation’s mortality rates drop

Immigration

Between 1840 - 1860, Southern Irish and Germans are highest in numbers

Irish potato famine

Often stay in ethnic divided neighborhoods-ghettos

Nativism

Immigration causes resentment and stereotyping/prejudices

‘Low paying’ jobs, drinking, religion, even body cleanliness….

Native American party, become Know Nothing party…Know Nothings become American party (popular in big cities) hated Irish most of all (Irish need not apply)Slide3
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Transportation & Communication

B

y 1820s – rivers and steamboats become crucial to trade

C

anals become popular, Erie – West and East markets opened

B

y 1840s – railroads primary shipping methods *** majority in North

Telegraph – Morse, 1844

City newspapers – 1846, most from North, cause rift between South

Pony Express

provided mail service from Missouri to California Slide5

Commerce

Expansion of business in cities for consumer goods

Corporations and shareholders gained popularity

Insufficient credit – state banks issue bank notes = bank failures

Factories – by 1820s, mostly NE

Insufficient labor force

Technology – interchangeable parts, division of labor, machinery

Coal replaced water energy

Goodyear perfected vulcanized rubber

Mass production of iron from Ohio and Pennsylvania

Most factories owned by stockholders, not one individualSlide6

Commerce

Farming – ample land, workers, shipping

Lowell mill girls – ‘proper’ environment for young ladies, behaviors emphasized

Most women had little options for work

Working and pay conditions good, then turned very poor

Eventually replaced by immigrants

Immigrants

Irish – unskilled labor, hard labor, low pay

Factories – deskilling, lower prices, high artisan competition

Trade unions – workers join forces to support

Long hours, child labor laws non-existent

Commonwealth vs. Hunt – unions are lawful organizations

So many immigrants, “natives’” are often replaced

Incomes steadily increase

Wealth stays in cities, but so do most of poor - lots of social mobility – ‘rags to riches’

Many leave cities to go looking for landSlide7

Cult of Domesticity

Social roles and rules of women set ‘in stone’

Republican motherhood

Arranged marriages going away –more based upon love and companionship

Mostly consumers – concentrate on home

‘Working class’ women usually go to factories on domestic servant positions

Female Education still very limited in opportunities

Home is seen as haven for families – maintained by womenSlide8

Cult of Domesticity

Middle Classes – growing

Most women stay at home

Diets improve, iceboxes, food transportation

Indoor plumbing by 1850

Family- women centered / women provide morality to men

Falling birth rates – birth control and abortions on the rise

Northern agriculture

Starts to move west

Dairy, northern farming – mostly food production

Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati – meat packing, transportation, river determines population

J. Deere – steel plows

McCormick – automatic reaperSlide9

ANTEBELLUM SOUTHSlide10

Antebellum South

Upper South and Piedmont – tobacco

Florida and Texas – sugar cane

South Carolina, Georgia, Florida – rice

Short staple cotton – by 1850s, cotton becomes main part of economy

Lower South, cotton is King

½ of all exports leaving US is cotton, but most valuable to US was corn from South

L

imited transportation – relied on rivers

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otton depleted the land of nutrients, many farmers had only one crop

S

laveless

families and ‘

po

white trash’ even outranked the slave population

C

limate, South’s land price led to limited development of land

Cavalier image of Southerners/ chivalrySlide11
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Antebellum South

One slave sold at auction was roughly the cost back then as to a moderate car today

Most families owned no slaves, most of slave owners were in South Carolina and Georgia – ¼ owned slaves

B

y 1850s, the South owed the North 300 million, and northern factories depended on the southern cotton to make goods

P

lanter classes become ‘royalty’ of South – ‘honor’ and defending that honor

Southern ladies – love, honor, and obey husband

Plain folk

Most Southerners were yeoman farmers – sustenance

Education inferior to North

Farmers relied on plantation population for supplies, credit, farming equipment

Poor whites – clay eaters and crackers (1/2 a million total)Slide13
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Slavery

Laws, slave codes and of course auctions

Sizeable numbers of city slaves in South – many purchased their freedom, but by mid 19th cent, they were seen as threat to institution, so it virtually disappeared

Slave cultures thrived on large plantations – overseers

Slaves divided into tasks – house slaves usually hated or taunted by other farm slaves

Black women often single mothers – 2 identities, sexual target and ‘mammy’

Free blacks influenced slaves in cities

Segregation

250,000 in South, but poor

By 1808, slave trade prohibited; On average – $500-1800Slide15

The Result of multiple whippingsSlide16

Slavery

‘Necessary evil’ idea

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lave revolts rare

1831 – Nat Turner – 60 whites killed, including children --- caused stricter codes and less ‘freeing’ of slaves in general

Underground Railroad – 75,000 freed

Tubman served in Union army during Civil war – was buried with full military honors

Run away slaves high

Pidgin language develops, art, music, religion (Christianity with voodoo)

Families often split up – leads to matriarchal culture, still resonates today

By 1836, Southern members of the House of Representatives had made talk of slavery forbidden – “gag rule” – not overturned until 1844Slide17

Antebellum Culture

American Democratic Spirit is HIGH!

Literature – celebrated democratic principles

W. Irving,

Fenimore

Cooper, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe

***Art – Hudson River school

***ReligionSlide18

Antebellum Culture

***

Religion

Transcendentalists – individuals had reason and understanding – Ralph Emerson and Henry David Thoreau civil disobedience called for when unjust laws present

Utopian Societies

Nashoba

– communal living for freed slaves

Oneida community – sexual freedom from men

Shakers – completely celibate

Unitarians – all were saved – good works =salvation

Mormons – Joseph Smith

Brigham Young – to Salt Lake

Belief in human perfectibility, polygamy, family most important Slide19

Revivalism

By 1830s – temperance, education, poverty, mentally ill are all just causes and crusades for middle Christian class

Every individual capable of salvation

Alcohol blamed for crime, poverty, rape, family drama – alcoholism very high

1826 – American Society for Promotion of Temperance

tried to make alcohol illegal

arrival of many immigrants contributed to fear of ‘the drink’

Strongly opposed by immigrant populationSlide20

Antebellum Culture

Medicine

Phrenology

E. Jenner – small pox vaccine

Education

By 1830s, public education was wanted by most states

Horace Mann – saw education as only way to protect democracy

Blacks exempted from education

By 1850s – taxes paid for schools in all states

Assimilation of Indians

Benevolent Empire – to help handicapped

Social values stressed, especially for girlsSlide21

Antebellum Culture

Rehabilitation – strict but compassionate theory

For criminals and mentally ill

Dorthea

Dix – fought for mentally ill and challenged rights

Penitentiaries were overcrowded and unhealthy

Indians

By 1850s, reservations proposed to protect whites and Indians

Stressed assimilation

Feminism

1830s – Grimke sisters (abolitionists too)

C. Beecher, L. Mott, E C Stanton

Seneca Falls – 1848

Declaration of Sentiments

– right to vote

Supported by Quakers

Lucretia Mott and Sojourner TruthSlide22

Abolition

1817 – American Colonization Society – wanted the gradual freeing of slaves

By 1850, 200,000 freed slaves living in North and West – still segregated

Colonization – wanted slaves returned to Africa – most popular in early abolition movements/ Liberia established

Sojourner Truth – “Ain’t I a Woman?”

Frederick Douglas –

Anti-slavery paper – North Star

Looked to politics to fix the slavery problemSlide23

Abolition

William Lloyd Garrison

The Liberator – “an abomination in the sight of God”

Think of the slaves, not the white landowners and the economy

IMMEDIATE emancipation is necessary

American anti-slavery society

Probably the most radical of his day

Anti-abolition – opposition from both North and South

Abolitionists never went to Congress – not until mid 1800s

Anti-slavery

Free soil party – keep slavery and blacks out of federal territories

Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe – response to fugitive slave laws***really heats us sectional disputes on slavery

“That little lady made this big war” Slide24