Economic Revolution and Sectional Strife: 1820s-1860s
ECONOMY
SOCIETY
GOVERNMENT
CULTURE
SECTIONALISM
The economic
revolution occurs
A new class
structure emerges
Creating a
democratic polity
Reforming people
and institutions
From compromise
to Civil War
1820s
Waltham textile factory
opens (1814)
1820s
Business class emerges
1820s
Spread of universal white
male suffrage
1820s
American Colonization
Society (1817)
1820s
Missouri crisis and
compromise (1819-1821)
David Walker’s
Appeal…to the Colored
Citizens of the World
(1829)
Erie Canal completed
(1825)
Rural women and girls
recruited as factory
workers
Rise of Andrew Jackson
and Democratic Party
Benevolent reform
movements
Market economy expands
nationwide
Mechanics form craft
unions
Anti-Masonic Party rises
and declines
Revivalist Charles Finney
Cotton belt emerges in
South
1830s
Protective tariffs (1828,
1833) trigger nullification
crisis
Waged work increases
Panic of 1837
1830s
Depression (1837-1843)
shatters labor movement
New Urban popular
culture appears
Emerson and
Transcendentalism
1830s
Whig Party forms (1834)
Second Party System
emerges
Jackson expands
presidential power
U.S. textiles compete
with British
1840s
Irish immigrants join
labor force
1840s
Working-class districts
emerge in cities
1840s
Log cabin campaign
(1840) mobilizes voters
Commonwealth v. Hunt
(1842) assists unions
Irish and German inflow
sparks nativist movement
Antislavery parties:
Liberty (1840) and FreeSoil (1848)
1850s
Surge of cotton output in
South and of railroads in
North and Midwest
1850s
Expansion of farm society
into Midwest and Far
West
1850s
Whig Party disintegrates
Manufacturing expands
1860s
Republicans enact Whigs’
policy agenda:
Homestead Act (1862),
railroad aid, high tariffs,
and national banking
Free-labor ideology
justifies inequality
Republican Party founded
(1854)
Rise of Southern
secessionists
1860s
Emancipation
Proclamation (1863)
1860s
Thirteenth Amendment
(1865) ends slavery
Free blacks in the South
struggle for control of
land
Fourteenth Amendment
(1868) extends legal and
political rights
1830s
Joseph Smith founds
Mormonism
Temperance crusade
expands
Female Moral Reform
Society (1834)
1840s
Fourierist and other
communal settlements
founded
Seneca Falls women’s
convention (1848)
1850s
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
Anti-immigrant
movement grows; KnowNothing Party
1860s
Freedman’s Bureau
assists ex-slaves
Domestic slave trade
moves African Americans
west
1830s
Ordinance of Nullification
(1832) and Force Bill
(1833)
William Lloyd Garrison
forms American AntiSlavery Society (1833)
1840s
Texas annexation (1845),
Mexican War (18461848), and Wilmot
Proviso (1846) increase
sectional conflict
1850s
Compromise of 1850
Kansas-Nebraska Act
(1854) and “Bleeding
Kansas”
Dred Scott decision
(1857)
1860s
South Carolina leads
secession movement
Confederate States of
America (1861-1865)