MR. LIPMAN’S AP US POWER
POINT FOR CHAPTERS 14 & 15
THE MODERNIZATION OF AMERICAN
CULTURE
1790-1860
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
• Modernization of the economy on a national
basis
• The move Westward
• Immigration grows
• Development of Modern Technology for mass
production
• Development of Mass Transportation
• Development of the Telegraph
The Move Westward
• Tough life for pioneers
• Overuse of land would drive move westward
• Fur Trade leads to the “Rendezvous System” in
which traders leave St. Louis to go West for
pelts and bring manufactured goods with
them
• Painter George Catlin would call for
conservation and a national park system
• Massive Immigration leads to doubling of population
every 25 years
Urban growth
– 1860 – 43 cities over 20,000 people ( only 2 in
1790)
• N. Y., Chicago, and New Orleans major cities
– Problems with quick urbanization
• Slums; lack of street lighting, police, clean
water, garbage disposal; sewage; rates; loose
animals (hogs) in streets
• 1823 – Boston first to use sewer system
• 1842 – New York used piped-in water
• 1845 – 1849 – Irish Potato Famine
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A fungus attacked potatoes
1/4 of Irish (2 million people) died of starvation
Huge numbers leaving for US in 1840s and 1850s
Crowded into Eastern cities
Native whites did not like Irish (NINA)
• Blamed for slums and alcoholism
– Irish hated blacks
– THEY COME TO DOMINATE CITY POLITICAL MACHINES
ESPECIALLY IN NEW YORK
• Nativists feared Irish and Germans would
overwhelm native whites (similar to today)
– Taking jobs
– Having more babies
– Outvoting
– Irish Roman Catholicism feared
1849 – Order of the Start-Spangled Banner
established
• Evolved into powerful American (KnowNothing) party
– members were supposed to claim they
knew nothing when questioned
• Samuel Slater
– “Father of the Factory System” in America
– Skilled British mechanic attracted to US by
bonuses paid to British workers familiar
with textile machinery
– Memorized plans for British textile
machinery and emigrated to US to develop
plans (industrial spy)
– 1791 – with financial backing of Moses
Brown built first American machine for
spinning thread
• Eli Whitney
– Born in Massachusetts; traveled to Georgia
– 1793 – invented cotton gin (engine)
• Separated seed from short-staple cotton
• 50 times more fast than doing it by hand
– Cotton became highly profitable, tying South to
cotton
– Slavery had been dying out; now cotton revived
need for slaves to raise cotton and run cotton gin
• North and South benefit from cotton gin
– South expanded cotton-growing areas
– North (and Britain) bought South’s cotton for use
in factories
• South relied on cotton and slaves; very little
manufacturing there
• Few US factories until 1807
– Embargo, non-intercourse, War of 1812 led to
citizens looking for substitutes for British goods
• Hurt New England shipping; capital usually invested in
shipping and sailors normally working on ships diverted
to factories
• Tariff of 1816 passed
– Mildly protective tariff to help US manufacturers
Eli Whitney develops idea for Interchangeable
parts for guns and other items and government
buys the weapons
Marvels in Manufacturing
• 1846 – sewing machine invented by Elias
Howe
– Perfected by Isaac Singer
– Boosted ready-made clothing industry
– Moved seamstresses (women sewers) from homeproduction to factories
– 1800 – 306 new patents issued
– 1860 – 28,000 new patents issued
• Changes in form and legal status of business
organizations
– Limited liability – shareholder liable only for his share of
stock in case company went bankrupt
– Laws of “free incorporation”
• First passed in New York in 1848
• Allow corporations to be formed without applying for individual
charters from legislature
• The telegraph
– 1844 – invented by Samuel F. B. Morse
– Wires strung from Washington, DC to Baltimore
(about 40 miles)
– Morse tapped out “What hath God wrought?”
• Benefits and costs of industrialism
– Owners grew rich off factory system
– Workers : long hours, low wages, child labor rises
• Unsanitary work conditions
– Forbidden by law to form unions
But in 1842 Sup.Ct. rules unions not conspiracies
– 1820s-1830s Workers granted the vote
• Joined with Democratic party of Andrew Jackson
• Worked for 10-hour day, higher wages, better
working conditions, public schools, and end to
imprisonment for debt
Women and the Economy
• Before industrialism, women worked at home
making clothing and food products needed for home
• Factories displaced homemade products, but also
offered employment to women
• Factory jobs gave women greater economic
independence and means to buy manufactured
goods
• “cult of domesticity”
– Working women were single; upon marriage they
left their jobs to become wives and mothers
– “cult” was widespread cultural belief system that
glorified the customary functions of the
homemaker
– Women’s influence led to changes in the family
– Marriage for love instead of arrangement
A Revolution in the Fields
• Trans-Allegheny region (between
Appalachians and Mississippi River) became
US’s breadbasket
– Especially Ohio-Indiana-Illinois area
– Grew corn to be fed to hogs or distilled into liquor
(both easier to transport east than corn itself)
– Most produce floated down Ohio-Mississippi
Rivers to South
• Farmers worked to expand acreage
– 1837 – John Deere invented steel plow
– 1830s – Cyrus McCormick invented the
mechanical mower-reaper
• 1 man could do work of 5
• Subsistence farming replaced by production for
market
Farmers went into debt buying more land and
new equipment
• Obstacles to road building
– States’ rights proponents who opposed
federal aid to local road projects
• Eastern states opposed emigration from their
states to West
• Cumberland (National) Road
– Began in 1811 and finally finished in 1852
– Stretched from western Maryland to Illinois
(591 miles)
Cumberland (National) Road and Main
Connections
Steam Boats and Erie Canal Change
Everything
1. Robert Fulton 1807
“Claremont” makes up river travel
possible
2 .Erie Canal opens 1825 and
begins era of canal building as
travel time and prices drop rapidly
3. New York becomes the key port
The Iron Horse
• Early obstacles railroads had to overcome
- Canal operators fought against them
– Weak brakes ; too much noise; started fires
– Inaccurate schedules
– Differences in gauge (distance between rails)
made railroad lines incompatible (so passengers
had to change trains)
• 1828 – first railroad in US
• 1860 – 30,000 miles of track
The Communication Revolution
• Transatlantic communication
– 1858 – Cyrus Field laid cable across Atlantic
(Newfoundland to Ireland)
– 1866 – 2nd cable laid after 1st one went dead
– Clipper ships improved on speed of Atlantic
crossing
– Pony Express and Stage coach improved speed to
the West
Main Routes West Before the Civil War
• National division of labor
– Sections specialized in certain economic activity
– South grew cotton for New England and Britain
– West raised grain and livestock for export to East
– East made machines and textiles for West and
South
The Market Revolution
• Changes in households because of the market economy
– Store-bought goods replaced homemade
– Women’s work (homemade things) became
unnecessary
– Home transformed from place of work to
refuge from world and a special area for
women as its guardians
– Increased gap between rich and poor
• As American society changed, REFORMERS
worked to erase negative effects of this
change:
– Many different causes of reform were taken up
Religion
• Deism (reason and science over the bible)
• Unitarianism (god exists in only one)
• Second Great Awakening
– Began around 1800 as reaction against growing liberalism
of religion
• Methodists and Baptists gained most converts
from camp revivals
• Charles Grandison Finney (2nd great awakening)
– Trained as lawyer; became preacher after conversion
– Massive revivals in 1830 – 1831 in New York
– Promised perfect Christian kingdom on earth
– Opposed slavery and alcohol
– Served as president of Oberlin College (Ohio)
• Became center of abolitionist movement
• “Burned-Over District”
– Western New York, where some New England
Puritans moved
– Center of revivalist preaching
• Great Awakening widened differences:
– Eastern areas not affected by revivalism
• Upper classes stayed with conservative, traditional
churches (Episcopalians, Presbyterians,
Congregationalists, Unitarians)
– Southern and Western areas most strongly impacted:
• Methodists and Baptists grew among poorer, less
educated people
• 1830 – Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints (Mormon) organized by Joseph Smith
– Angel delivered plates to Smith, from which he
translated the Book of Mormon
• Hostility between Mormons and others
– Moved from N.Y. to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois
– Cooperation in economics and voting angered
individualistic Americans
• Mormons were accused of polygamy
• 1844 – Joseph killed by a mob
• Leadership falls to Brigham Young
– 1846-47 moves them to Utah
– 1857 Federal Army moves against them
– 1860s Anti-Polygamy laws passed
Public Education Movement
– Wealthy afraid of poor, uneducated voters in
society in large numbers
– Workers demanded education for their children
– Public education in South lagged
• Upper classes sent children to private schools
• Poor whites remained uneducated (in general)
• Slaves and free blacks blocked from education
• Prior to 1840s one room school houses were
quite common and all grades taught at once
A One-Room Schoolhouse
• Horace Mann
– Secretary of Education (Massachusetts)
– Wants more and better schools, longer school terms,
higher teacher pay, expanded curriculum
– His reforms led to changes in other states
– Even with reforms, school was still an expensive luxury
• Illiteracy and lack of education continued for many
• Free blacks kept out of public schools in North and South
• Noah Webster’s textbooks
– Designed to promote patriotism as well as educate
– 1828 – published dictionary that helped standardize
American English
• Higher education for women discouraged
– Should be in home and married, not learning
– Too much hurt women’s brains and made them
unfit for marriage
• State-supported universities
– Established first in South (North Carolina first in
1795)
– Given federal land on which to build
– 1837 – Oberlin (Ohio) College admitted women
with men
• Insane asylums: Reform led by Dorothea Dix
– Insane treated cruelly
– Most believed they were willingly depraved
– Chained up in prisons with sane
• Improved conditions & recognition of mental
illness
• Heavy drinking
– Caused by hard, monotonous life
• 1826 – American Temperance Society founded
Women in Revolt
– Gained strength in 1840s and 1850s
• Awakened by Great Awakening
– Most were from upper classes
– Most worked for other reforms (temperance,
abolition) in addition to women’s rights
– Important leaders like Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony
• Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell
– First woman graduate of medical college
• Margaret Fuller
– Edited transcendentalist magazine
• Grimké sisters (Sarah, Angelina)
– Worked against slavery
• Lucy Stone
– Kept her maiden name after marriage
• Amelia Bloomer
– Wore shorter skirt with Turkish pants (“bloomers”) instead of
long dresses
• 1848: Seneca Falls, New York
– Stanton read “Declaration of Sentiments”
• “all men and women are created equal”
– Demanded the vote
– Launched the women’s rights movement
• Women’s movement eclipsed by antislavery until after
Civil War
– Sojourner Truth (former slave) spoke out
Attempts at Utopian Societies
• Robert Owen – Indiana
• Brook Farm- Transcendentalists
• Onieda Community- sex without
marriage
• Shakers- prohibit sex
Other Developments
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Practical Science
John Audubon – study & painting of birds
Architecture – copied from Europe
Painting – Nationalistic and also the
Hudson River school of romantic local
scenery
Transcendentalism
• Roots of transcendentalism
– Relaxing of strict Puritanism
• Transcendentalist beliefs
• Individualism and self-reliance
• Hostility to authority and formal institutions
Trumpeters of Transcendentalism
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
– Trained as a Unitarian minister & became lecturer
– “The American Scholar” address at Harvard (1837)
• Called for American intellectuals to dump
European traditions in favor of their own
– Essays on self-reliance, improvement, freedom
– Strong critic of slavery
• Henry David Thoreau
– Poet and essay writer; nonconformist transcendentalist
– Refused to pay Massachusetts poll tax
• Against slavery
• Record of 2 years living in hut on Walden Pond
• Reduce wants to have time for meditation and study
– On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
• Influenced Gandhi’s and MLK resistance to
oppression through nonviolent confrontation
• Walt Whitman
– Leaves of Grass (collection of poetry)
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Romantic, emotional, unconventional
No titles, stanzas, rhymes
Frank talk about sex
Not appreciated fully until after his death
Celebrated America and pioneering spirit
– “Poet Laureate of Democracy”
KEY WRITERS OF ERA
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
John Greenleaf Whittier
James Russell Lowell
Oliver Wendell Holmes
• Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women and other
books to help support family
• Emily Dickinson wrote poetry as a recluse
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
KEY CULTURAL CHANGES 1820-1860
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Modern Economy
Movement Westward
Immigration
Transportation
Communication
Reform Movements (due to changes taking place)
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Religion
Abolitionist
Women
Literature
Insane Asylums and Prisons
Alcohol