APUSH
CHAPTER 11 NOTES
TECHNOLOGY, CULTURE, AND EVERYDAY LIFE 1840-1860
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Isaac Singer perfected the sewing machine and it was revolutionary. Clothes could be
sewn in a fraction of the original time.
New inventions brought about changes in social life.
A company formed by Singer in 1856 initiated installment buying
($5 down w/ small monthly payments)
TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
 The technology that transformed life in antebellum America included the steam
engine, the cotton gin, the reaper, the sewing machine, and the telegraph.
 Technology didn’t help everyone, the perfection of the cotton gin helped to ingrain
slavery.
 It also hurt artisans by making some skills obsolete.
 However, it contributed to improvements in transportation and increases in
productivity, which in turn lowered commodity prices and raised the living standards
of a sizable body of free Americans between 1840-1860.
Agricultural Advancement
 Settlement not in Great Plains yet by 1830s
 Settlement in Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois spread rapidly because John Deere, in
1837, invented a steel-tipped plow that halved the labor to clear acres of land.
 Wheat became a popular and important crop to those people in the prairies (IN, MI,
OH)
 1834 – Cyrus McCormick patented a mechanical reaper that drew on and improved
previous designs.
 He introduced deferred payments and money-back guarantees. His reaper harvested
grain seven times more rapidly than traditional methods and with half the labor force
and it guaranteed the importance of the reaper on the plains.
 Cyrus McCormick, a proslavery southern democrat, would help the North win the
Civil War. The North provided the main market for McCormick’s reaper and for the
models of his many competitors. The South relied on slave labor and they had far
less incentive to mechanize labor. The reaper would keep northern agricultural
production high at a time when labor shortages caused by troop mobilization might
otherwise have slashed production.
 Farmers often abused the soil, but in the 1860s some farmers tried to use the soil
more efficiently, mainly in the East (where less land available)
 Some farmers fed their livestock better and stressed cleanliness in the processing of
dairy products; others began to fertilize the soil (guano from sea birds used)
 IRONY: Northerner Eli Whitney entrenched slavery in south with cotton gin, while
Southerner Cyrus McCormick helped northern farmers with reaper
Technology and Industrial Progress
 By the 1840s precise machine tools had greatly reduced the need to hand-file parts to
make them fit, and they were applied to the manufacture of firearms, clocks, and
sewing machines.
 By 1851 Europeans had started to refer to manufacture by interchangeable parts as
the “American System”
 Eli Whitney (gun manufacturer) introduced process of interchangeable parts to the
President (cheated by filing down parts before the presentation)
 By standardizing the parts, they were more able to mass-produce products (before
that time if one part damaged, whole machine useless)
 After 1844 when Samuel Morse transmitted the first telegraph signal, lines sprung up
all over
 By 1850s Smith and Wesson were mass-producing the revolving pistol (which was
invented by Samuel Colt)
The Railroad Boom
 By 1850 Americans were traveling by railroad and most of it was one class (pretty
comfortable) unless you were African American.
 Early train travel was inefficient, it got better with time and the introduction of
standard time zones in 1883
 Between 1840 and 1860 railroads went through a transformation. There was more
track laid, flat-roofed coaches replaced open cars, kerosene lamps made night travel
possible, and increasingly powerful engines let trains climb steep hills. Telegraphs
helped reduce delays.
 Different gauges of track meant many train changes on long trips
 By 1860 goods transported by railroad surpassed those carried by canal.
 Railroads connected the east to the Midwest.
 Chicago supplanted New Orleans as the interior’s main commercial hub
(Chicago pop. = a few hundred in 1849, 100,000 with 11 railroads in 1860)
 Railroads helped increase population in the Midwest, which helped cities to grow
because they need industrial made products.
- shipped goods east without having to go south down Miss. River)
- By 1860 Midwest not part of the frontier anymore, and Illinois, Wisc. and
Indiana replaced NY, Ohio, and Penn. in wheat production)
 Railroads depended on financial aid from state governments. With the onset of
depression in the late 1830s, state governments scrapped overly ambitious railroad
projects. Eventually, city or municipal governments gave railroads rights-of-way,
grants of land for stations, and public funds.
 The dramatic expansion of the railroad network in the 1850s, however, strained the
financing capacity of local governments and required a turn toward private
investment, which had never been absent from the picture.
 Gradually, the center of railroad financing shifted to New York City. It was the RR
boom of the 1850s that helped make Wall St. the nation’s greatest capital market.
The securities of all of the leading RRs were traded on the floor of the New York
Stock Exchange.
 It also helped to turn NYC into the center of modern investment firms.
Rising Prosperity
 Technological advances also improved the lives of consumers by bringing down the
prices of many commodities. (eg. clock that was $50 in 1800 was $.50 in 1850)
 The growth of towns and cities also led to an increase in average annual wages.
 Year-round work available in cities, not in water-powered mills or on farms (steam
engine replaced water power which had to shut down when rivers froze)
 Densely populated towns and cities offered more opportunities for year-round work.
 They also provided women and children with new opportunities for paid work.
 The wages of children between the ages of ten and eighteen came to play an integral
role in the nineteenth-century family economy. Women also played a more important
role in wage earning.
 Farming was still desirable (farm family didn’t have to pay rent and had enough to
eat), but it was hard to start a farm (cost a lot). Also, cities provided new comforts
and conveniences
 Average budget of a working class family in New York City or Philadelphia in early
1850s was $500-600 (40% on food, 25-30% on rent, rest on clothing and fuel), and
male head of family couldn’t make this much, so women and children needed to
work, too
The Quality of Life
 Machine made furniture began to transform the interior of houses.
 Stoves revolutionized heating and cooking. RRs brought fresh veggies to city
dwellers
 Despite the progress, Americans experienced little improvements in the quality of
their lives.
 The middle class began to afford more luxuries, however, the gap between the middle
class and the poor increased.
 Many poor people still lived in tenements.
 People saw improvements in many aspects of their lives besides health care (advances
in health care lagged behind other areas); so many people began to cling to popular
health movements outside of the medical profession (usually ineffective).
Dwellings
 19th c. homes were more likely to be brick row houses. Typically narrow and long,
row houses were practical responses to rising urban land values
 Wealthy row houses were 3-31/2 stories, where middle class houses were 2-21/2.
Sometimes these would be divided for the poor and Irish immigrants and free blacks
would live there (divided row houses called tenements).
 In rural areas the quality of housing depended as much on the date of settlement as on
social class. Recently settled areas often had rude one-room log cabin with planked
floors, crude clay chimneys, and windows covered by oiled paper or cloth.
 As these communities matured, they gave way to frame houses of two or more rooms
and better insulation.
 As rural communities matured they began to build balloon-frame houses – built with
2x4s not foot thick beams, simpler, easy to build, and had better insulation
Conveniences and Inconveniences
 Stoves (usually coal-burning) made it possible to cook more than one thing at a time.
And RRs gave them more variety of things to eat.
 Systems of pipes and aqueducts brought fresh water from rivers or reservoirs to street
hydrants.
 Coal burned longer and hotter than wood, but it left a dirty residue that polluted the
air and blackened the snow, a faulty stove could fill the air with carbon monoxide.
 They did not have a good way to preserve food. They had to rely on salt, which
severely altered the taste of food.
 Houses rarely had running water because most of the water went to street hydrants.
 People did not bathe often (had to heat water, pot by pot, on a stove), streets were
filthy (no municipal street-cleaning – often done by private companies), they didn’t
have many flush toilets. (New England physician claimed not 1 in 5 of his patients
took 1 bath/year)
 Conveniences also sharpened gender differences. It made women continually clean
the new homes.
Disease and Health
 Disease spread easily, things like yellow fever and cholera
(eg. 1/5 of New Orleans died between 1832-1833)
 Transportation helped to spread the disease
(one cholera epidemic followed the Erie Canal west)
 By the 1850s most cities established public health boards, however most cities gave
them so few powers that people distrusted them.
 “Contagion” theory – transmitted by touch; “Miasma” theory – poisonous gases were
emitted by rotting vegetation or dead animals carried disease through the air. This led
to swamps being drained and streets being cleaned.
 Neither theory was consistent with the evidence
(thus public health funding low as expert advice mistrusted)
 Sulfuric ether (an anesthetic) came into wide use in surgery in the 1840s. It came
about because of the popularity of Laughing gas (nitrous oxide), which it is similar to
 Anesthesia helped improve the view of physicians and they could perform longer
surgeries and take their time, but they failed to properly clean their hands, which
offset the gains (infections remained a problem – 40% death rate in amputations)
Popular Health Movements
 People began to turn to alternative therapies. One was hydrotherapy or the “water
cure” – this became popular among middle class women because they were able to
congregate with each other (form of relaxation)
 Sylvester Graham advocated to people that they should substitute vegetables, fruits,
and whole-grain bread for meat, and advocated that people not drink or have sex
 He thought that eating meat stimulated lust and other aggressive impulses.
 He taught healthy living with a nearly religious zeal
Phrenology
 This rested on the idea that the human mind comprised 37 distinct faculties, or
“organs”, each located in a different part of the brain. They thought that the degree of
an organ’s development determined skull shape, so that they could analyze a person’s
character by examining the bumps and depressions of the skull.
 Phrenology promised a quick assessment of others in a mobile, individualistic
society.
 Just as Americans invented machines to better their lives, they invented “sciences” to
better human society
DEMOCRATIC PASTIMES
 Entertainment became popular. Things like cheap novels, newspapers, and tickets to
plays, museums, and lectures.
 Recreation could be manufactured and sold (just like factory goods)
 Entertainment now democratic as it was available to everyone
Newspapers
 In 1830, newspapers were filled with ads, editorials, and notices of political events.
Most did not have wide circulation, and most did not make a big profit. They usually
were dependent on political ads and that is what paid the bills.
 In the 1830s better technology allowed newspapers to mass-produce. With this, came
the advent of the penny press which helped to increase circulation
(steam driven cylindrical presses replaced flatbed hand presses)
 New York Sun then the New York Herald (1st penny press papers) doubled
newspaper sales in NY in 2 years
 The penny papers revolutionized the marketing and format of papers. Young boys
also sold them on street corners. Penny papers helped to invent news and news
reporting. They employed their own correspondents and were the first papers to use
the telegraph to speed news into print.
 They began to become good at modern political and financial reporting.
The Theater
 Theatres began to gain mass audiences as well. Prices ranged from 50 cents to 12
cents – which made it affordable for many people (all classes could attend now).
 Prostitutes were allowed in and this made them disreputable. However, people also
were vocal and would throw food on the stage if it was a villain or they didn’t like the
acting.
 Individual actors developed huge followings. In 1849 a long-running feud between
the leading American actor, Edwin Forrest (working class appeal) and British actor
William Macready (upper class appeal) ended with a riot at NYCs Astor Place that
left 22 people dead.
 Shakespeare became popular – even though they would make minor changes. They
also had short performances or demonstrations between acts.
Minstrel Shows
 1840s and 1850s minstrel shows forged enduring stereotypes that buttressed white
Americans’ sense of superiority by diminishing black people.
 Minstrel shows (w/ songs, dancing and comedy sketches) arose in northern cities, and
portrayed black dance somewhat close, but didn’t get their music close at all
 The images of blacks projected by minstrelsy both catered to and reinforced the
prejudices of the working-class whites that dominated the audience of minstrel shows.
 Blacks were usually portrayed as stupid, clumsy, and obsessively musical and
emphasized the African-ness of blacks by giving characters names like the Ethiopian
Serenaders and their acts titles like Nubian Jungle Dance and the African Fling.
 They had stock characters: Uncle Ned, the tattered, humble, and docile slave; Zip
Coon, the arrogant urban free black who paraded around in a high hat, long-tailed
coat, and green vest who lived off his girlfriends’ money
 By the 1850s major cities had minstrel theatres
 To show acceptance and popularity of minstrel shows, they were done for 4
Presidents
P.T. Barnum
 P.T. Barnum was a hustler in the land of the Puritans, a cynic, and an idealist
 His first venture exhibited a black woman, Joice Heth, whom Barnum billed as the
169-year-old former slave nurse of George Washington. He cheated the public
 With new discoveries and technological advances all the time people accepted the
new and different; Barnum played off this and profited
 In 1841, he opened the American Museum – you could see ventriloquists, magicians,
albinos, and a 5 yr. Old person of short-stature whom Barnum named General Tom
Thumb and later took on a tour of Europe. It became the most popular museum in the
nation.
 He would publicize his exhibits by writing anonymous letters to newspapers.
THE QUEST FOR NATIONALITY IN LITERATURE AND ART
 After 1820, the US experienced a flowering of literature that is sometimes called the
“American Renaissance”. Leading figures were: James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe.
 Americans were writing more books and they began to depict the features of their
nation in literature and art.
 Europeans criticized American authors, such as the popular Washington Irving
(author of “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”
Roots of the American Renaissance
 Two broad developments, one economic and the other philosophical, contributed to
this development.
 First, the transportation revolution created a national market for books, especially
fiction
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Second, the American Renaissance reflected the rise of a philosophical movement
known as romanticism. Romantics expected a literary work to be emotionally
charged, a unique reflection of its creator’s inner feelings.
The emergence of a national market for books and the influence of romanticism
combined to democratize literature.
Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and Whitman
 Cooper introduced a distinctively American fictional character, the frontiersmen
Natty Bumppo, he was aware of nature (used similar theme in popular novels, Last of
the Mohicans and The Deerslayer)
 Emerson didn’t write novels but he concluded that learned people enjoy no special
advantage in pursuing truth. All persons can glimpse the truth if only they trust the
promptings of their ears.
 Thoreau said that the problems with Americans was that they turned themselves into
“mere machines” to acquire wealth without asking why. He bore the uncomfortable
truth that material and moral progress were not as intimately related as Americans
like to think. (Civil Disobedience and Walden)
 Fuller was educated by her father as if she was a boy and was a great intellectual.
 Whitman was a poet
Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe
 These three used different settings in their writings.
 Psychology rather than society fascinated these three
 Their work demonstrates the analysis of moral dilemmas and psychological states.
Literature in the Marketplace
 Poe would sell short stories to popular magazines.
 Emerson almost invented the “lyceum” lecture. He would get paid to lecture about
his writings.
 Writing fiction, for both men and women, could earn them cash.
 Books could be produced cheaper than they had in the past.
 The most popular form of fiction in the 1840s and 1850s was the sentimental novel, a
kind of women’s fiction written by women about women and mainly for women.
 These writers discovered, sometimes the hard way, was that to make a living as
authors they had to meet certain popular expectations.
American Landscape Painting
 1820-1860 American painters also sought to develop nationality in art
 The landscape was fresh, relatively untouched by the human imprint.
 The Hudson River school flourished from the 1820s to the 187-s, they had more than
50 painters
 Their special contribution to American art was to emphasize emotional effect over
accuracy.
 Frederick Law Olmstead – early icon in landscape architecture (NYC’s Central Park)