Objectives:
Summarize the Western Movement.
Understand Mechanization and women’s role
in Western society.
The Westward
Movement

 Americans continued to move westward in large
numbers. Trip difficulties, hardships, and diseases.
 Emerging literature reflected these unique types of
people such as James Fenimore Cooper's woodsy
hero "Natty Bumpo" or Herman Melville's whalehunting "Captain Ahab."
Shaping the Western
Landscape

 The land was shaped by those who moved onto it.
 Tobacco farmers were accustomed to "land butchery.“
 "Kentucky bluegrass" began to thrive after settlers
burnt off the tall cane grass.
 Trapping was big business.
 Beaver trappers got rich but decimated beavers
 Buffalo hides also were big business

The March of the
Millions

 mid 1800's population doubled every 25 years.
 33 states, America was the 4th largest nation
 Cities fast growth
 poor sanitation was a problem
 increase came from high birthrate & immigration.
 immigrants: Irish & Germans.
Late 1800s

The Emerald Isle Moves
West

 1840s the potato famine resulted in 2 million Irish
dead.
 "Black Forties" Irish emigrated to America searching
for better life.
 The Irish had the worst and lowest-paying of jobs.
 Politicians quickly learned that there was power in
the Irish vote and got their votes by "twisting the
lion's tail." (antagonizing England, who the Irish
hated)
The German FortyEighters

 At the same time, 1 million Germans came to America.
 crop failure
 to flee the chaos of war in 1848.
 The Irish stayed in the cities on the east coast, the
Germans went to the frontier, notably Wisconsin.
 The Germans gave America the Conestoga wagon, the
Kentucky rifle, the Christmas tree, and kindergarten.
 Germans were unique
 They were Lutheran and kept their native language.
 outspokenly against slavery.
 They drank large quantities of beer (this later helped fuel
the "temperance movement" against alcohol).
SUP: German war

 The First Schleswig War or Three Years' War was
the first round of military conflict in
southern Denmark and northern Germany rooted in
the Schleswig-Holstein Question, contesting the
issue of who should control the Duchies
of Schleswig and Holstein. The war, which lasted
from 1848 to 1851, also involved troops
from Prussia and Sweden. Ultimately, the war
resulted in a Danish victory. A second conflict,
the Second Schleswig War, erupted in 1864.

Antiforeignism

 immigrants caused "nativists“
 Nativists said newcomers were uneducated, poor, from
non-democratic backgrounds, and willing to work for
almost nothing.
 The "Order of the Star Spangled Banner" AKA the
"Know-Nothings" emerged because of nativism.
 The Know-Nothings fed off of fear and sensational
stories, usually untrue, such as Maria Monk's
book Awful Disclosures.
 Violence directed at the Irish Catholics.
SUP

 Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures was first published in
January, 1836. In it, Monk exposed various scandalous
events that, according to her, had occurred at the Hotel
Dieu convent in Montreal. She claimed convent nuns
were having sexual relations with priests from the
neighboring seminary who supposedly entered the
convent through a secret tunnel. All babies born of these
illicit encounters, Monk claimed, were baptized before
being strangled and dumped in a lime pit in the basement
of the convent. Maria Monk said she had lived in the
convent for a total of seven years before becoming
pregnant by a priest. Unable to bear the thought of having
her child killed and dumped in the basement, she finally
fled.
Mechanization

 The Industrial Revolution began in England
when machines and factories began to replace
handmade products. It first spread to Europe and
America.
 America struggled to compete with the British in
manufacturing.
Whitney Ends the Fiber
Famine

 Samuel Slater was a textile worker in England
(1791). He's known as the "Father of the Factory
System."
 The thread-spinning system created a shortage of
cotton fiber. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin
(1793).
 50 times more efficient
 The cotton gin expanded cotton farming and increase
desire for slaves.
 The cotton gin caused the North to expand its factories

Marvels in
Manufacturing

 War of 1812 helped the economy. The Embargo
Act forced manufacturing to grow.
 The British flooded America's markets with inexpensive
products.
 Congress passed the Tariff of 1816 as a "protective tariff"
 Eli Whitney created "interchangeable parts”
 Elias Howe and Isaac Singer invented the sewing machine.
 Limited liability corporation
 Ensured that if the company went bad, investors
lost only what he'd invested.
 Samuel Morse invented the telegraph.
Workers and “Wage
Slaves”

 A side-effect of the factory system "wage slaves."
 Conditions in a typical factory




unsafe
unhealthy
Hours long and wages low
Child labor

 Conditions improved during the 1820's and 30's as white
suffrage gave them power.
 Goals:





10-hour workday
higher wages
better conditions
public education
humane imprisonment for debt.
 Strikers were fired for immigrants
 1840, President Van Buren sets a 10-hour work day for
federal employees.
 Commonwealth v. Hunt legalized labor unions in 1842.
Women and the
Economy

 With the factories came female labor.
 Lowell, Mass. was well-known as employing young
women to work in its textile factories. The women
worked, bunked in dorms, were able to take classes, and
were carefully guarded over.
 Other opportunities nursing, domestic service, and
teaching.
 Catharine Beecher pushed for women to enter teaching.
 Working women were young and single.
 Once married, stay at home and raise their family.

 Home families changed with the Industrial
Revolution.
 Families shrank in size. Cities grew and factory jobs
increased. On a farm, another child was simply
another worker—not so in the city.
 SUP: The home changed from a place of work (like on
the farm) to a place of rest (away from the factory).
This is when the phrase "Home Sweet Home"
emerged.
Western Farmers Reap a
Revolution in the Fields

 Allegheny mountain area grew rapidly.
 Corn was the main crop. Hogs (corn on the hoof) and
whiskey (corn in a bottle) were also large products.
 Cincinnati, on the Ohio River, was booming and called the
"Porkopolis" of the West.
 western states grow.
 John Deere invented the steel plow.
 Cyrus McCormick invented the mechanical mower-reaper
 Changed from growing-to-eat to growing-to-sell-and-makemoney.
 Crops flowed from North-to-South down the Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers.


Highways and
Steamboats

 transportation boom first half of the 1800's.
 Roads
 The Lancaster Turnpike (a hard-surfaced highway) went
from Philadelphia to Lancaster, PA.
 The Cumberland Road (better known as the National
Road) went from Maryland all the way to Illinois. It was the
main East-West thoroughfare.
 Steamboats
 Robert Fulton built the first steamboat, the Clermont(1807).
 The South and especially the West benefited from the
steamboat.

“Clinton’s Big Ditch” in
New York

 Erie Canal: It was headed up by NY governor
Dewitt Clinton and built using only state money.
 The "Big Ditch" started in 1817 completed in 1825
 It linked the western rivers with the Atlantic Ocean.
 The effects of the Erie Canal were drastic…
 Shipping costs from the West to the East dropped 20
times ($100 became only $5).
 The canal stole most of the trade from the Mississippi
River.
The Iron Horse

 The only thing that trumped the Erie Canal was the "iron
horse" (railroads).
 The first tracks were laid in 1828. However, tracks didn't
really make a large impact until the 1850's and 60's. By the
1860's there were 30,000 miles of track.
 By far (3/4), most of the tracks were in the North.
 Railroads were dangerous however…
 Their embers started fires, collisions weren't uncommon,
their boilers sometimes blew up, brakes were poor, tracks
wore out and rusted out quickly, and the gauge (width) of
track wasn't standardized.
Cables, Clippers, and
Pony Riders

 Cyrus Fields laid a telegraph wire across the Atlantic
Ocean floor to Ireland in 1858. It lasted only 3 weeks, but
was a start to instant communication with Europe.
 Americans began to build "clipper ships" to haul cargo to
foreign nations, notably China.
 Their speed gave them much of the tea trade between the
Far East and Britain.
 British "teakettles" (steamships) replaced the clippers. Slow,
but they carried a lot of cargo and weren't susceptible to the
wind.
 The Pony Express carried mail from Missouri to
California, 2,000 miles in 10 days. It was replaced by the
trans-continental telegraph.

The Transport Web Binds
the Union

 The "transportation revolution" linked the West with the
rest of the nation. The South was largely left to use its
rivers.
 “Division of labor" emerged—each section of the U.S.
specialized in its own thing. The North: manufacturing,
the South: cotton for export, and the West: grain and
livestock.
 A split was forming between the South and the
North/West. The transportation and economic network
now linked the West to the North. The South was
growing isolated.
The Market Revolution

 The fabric of society was changing from "life on the
farm" to "life working at a job."
 The rich-poor gap was widening. The factory owner
was growing richer while the worker was struggling
along.
 "Drifter" workers wandered from town to town
looking for work.
 The overall standard of living did rise.