Chapter 9
The Market Revolution
1815-1860
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Drive Toward a Modern
Economy after 1815
 Henry Clay, “American System”
 Protective tariffs
 National bank
 Internal Improvements
 Second Bank of the United States chartered
1816

National currency and centralized monetary and
credit systems
 Tariff of 1816
 Nation’s first overtly protective tariff
 Favored by Northeast and west
Drive Toward a Modern
Economy after 1815 (cont.)
 Internal improvements
 National Road to link the Chesapeake and the
trans-Appalachian West
 Republican opposition to further federal action
 States took up clause of canal construction and
road building
 Supreme Court decisions after 21816
affirmed power of federal government
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Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1816)
McCulloch V. Maryland (1816)
Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)
The Transportation Revolution
after 1815
 National Road completed in 1818
 Linked Potomac River with Ohio River at
Wheeling, Virginia
 Steamboat made commercial agriculture
possible in the West

By 1820, 69 steamboats operating on western
rivers
 Erie Canal, 1825
 Stretched 364 miles from Buffalo to Albany
 Funde3d by New York State
 Encouraged other states to follow suit
The Transportation Revolution
after 1815 (cont.)
 Railroads in use by 1820s
 National system in use by the 1840s
 Time and cost of long-distance transport
considerably diminished
 Foreign trade increased dramatically after
1840
 Unified national market uniting the industrial
Northeast and mid Atlantic and the Commercial farms of the Old
Northwest

South largely excluded
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Rivers, Roads
and Canals,
1825-1860
Development of the North and
West
 Northeast became increasingly industrial and
commercial
 Old Northwest became agricultural center of
nation
 Beginnings of national commercial networks
in place by 1840s
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Even farmers had access to factory-made
products
Material standards of living rose
More people, though, dependent on outside forces
for their survival
Development of the North and
West (cont.)
 Until 1830s, most settlers in Old Northwest
were from Kentucky and Tennessee


Retained southern customs of farming and
livestock raising
Preferred barter and informal contacts to pure
monetary exchange
 After 1830, large numbers of settlers began
coming from the Northeast


Duplicated market-intensive farming methods of
New England
Sought, often unsuccessfully, to impose order on
nature
Transformation of the
American Household
 Declining size of families, especially in the

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

North
Sharper distinction between “male work” and
“female work”
Increasing attention of women to childbearing
Growing attention to appearance of houses
and yards
Search for privacy and comfort in the houses
themselves
Declining reliance on neighborliness
The Industrial Revolution
Transforms Urban America
 Rapid growth of cities between 1820
and 1870
 Nation’s first factories were textile mills
in the northeast
 Waltham
system
Heavily capitalized factories with modern
machinery
 Young, female labor force

The Industrial Revolution
Transforms Urban America
(cont.)
 Development of a separate managerial
structure separate from manufacturing itself
 Factories not widespread except in textiles
and a few other goods until the 1850s
 Much production undertaken on
subcontracted, or “sweated” basis

Women performed unskilled jobs
 Skilled men did finishing work
 Emerging social self-conceptions based on
difference between manual and nonmanual
work
The Market Revolution in the
South
 Dramatic increase in cotton production after
1815


Large plantations were extremely commercial
operations
Utilized complex labor systems
 More humane treatment of slaves after 1820
 Great gulf between wealthy planters and
small farmers

Most small farmers lived in up-country
The Market Revolution in the
South (cont.)
 Developed fiercely independent
neighborhoods

Some practiced mixed farming for subsistence
and neighborhood exchange
– Yeoman farmers routinely traded labor and goods with one
another
 Great Planters among richest men in Western
Hemisphere
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Only ones in South to purchase commercial goods
Industrialized only as needed to support the
plantation economy