Chapter 14 Notes:
German Forty-Eighter:
- Influx of Germans between 1830 and 1860 numbered
around 1.5 million.
- Many Germanic newcomers possessed a modest
amount of material goods.
- Most settled in Wisconsin on model farms.
- Formed influential Political groups, not as effective as
the Irish, because the Germans were more spread out.
- Contributions of the German Immigrants:
1. Conestoga Wagon
2. Kentucky Rifle
3. Christmas Tree
4. Kindergarten School
- Accustomed to “Continental Sunday” and uncurbed by
Puritan traditions, they made merry on the Sabbath
and drank huge quantities of an am amber beverage
called bier (beer).
- Old World drinking habits of both the Irish and the
Germans led to a push for Reform for the Old Natives.
Flare-ups of Antiforeignism:
- 1840-1850’s a movement of anti-foreigners arose.
- Nativists feared that these foreign hordes would
outbreed, outvote, and overwhelm the old “native”
stock. Newcomers were taking away jobs from Native
Americans, and they were ROMAN CATHOLIC.
- Catholicism by 1850 became the #1 religious group in
America.
- Know-Nothing-Party: a name derived from its
secretiveness. “Nativists” agitated for rigid restrictions
on immigration and naturalization and for laws
authorizing the deportation of alien paupers. They
also promoted a lurid literature of exposure, much of it
pure fiction.
- One of these sensational books –Maria Monk’s Awful
Disclosures, sold over 300,000 copies.
- Violence between Orthodox and Catholics; burned
churches in both Boston and Philadelphia.
- Why, in fact, were such episodes not even more
frequent and more violent? (Homework).
Whitney Ends the Fiber Famine:
- Samuel Slater has been acclaimed the “Father of the
Factory System” in America, and seldom can the
paternity of a movement more properly be ascribed to
one person. In 1791 he put into operation the first
efficient American machinery for spinning cotton.
- Eli Whitney, another mechanical genius, made his
mark. After graduating from Yale, he journeyed to
Georgia to serve as a private tutor while preparing for
law school. Worried about poverty he invented the
Cotton Gin (short for engine) that was fifty times more
effective than the handpicking process.
- Almost overnight the raising of cotton became highly
profitable, and the South was tied hand and foot to the
throne of King Cotton.
- Whitney’s perfection of the cotton gin, gave slavery a
renewed lease on life, and perhaps made the Civil
War more likely. At the same time, by popularizing
the principle of interchangeable parts, Whitney
helped factories flourish in the North, giving the
Union a decided advantage when that showdown
came.
- The sewing machine, invented by Elias Howe in 1846
and perfected by Isaac Singer, gave another strong
boost to northern industrialization. The sewing
machine became the foundation of the ready-made
clothing industry which took root about the time of the
Civil War.
- In 1800 only 306 patents were registered. By 1860
there were 28,000. In 1838 the clerk of the Patent
Office resigned in despair, complaining that all
worthwhile inventions had been discovered.
Workers and Wage Slaves:
- Factories were stuffy and dangerous environments.
- Hours were long, pay was small, and meals were
scarce.
- Workers were forced to toil in unsanitary buildings
that were poorly ventilated, lighted, and heated.
- Workers were forbidden by law to form labor unions
to raise wages, for such cooperative activity was
regarded as a criminal conspiracy.
- In 1820 a significant portion of the nation’s industrial
toilers were children under ten years of age.
- Victims of factory labor, many children were mentally
blighted, emotionally starved, physically stunted, and
even brutally whipped in special “whipping rooms.”
- Laboring man could vote, though and many became
loyal to the “Champion of the Common Man,” Andrew
Jackson.
Women and the Economy:
- Jobs in factories; although there were few
opportunities for women.
- Teaching profession is where many of the women
found employment. Catharine Beecher, was
responsible for be vocal about women entering the
teaching field.
- Cult of Domesticity: A widespread cultural creed that
glorified the customary functions of the homemaker.
- Love, instead of “parental arrangement” determined
more and more the choice of spouse.
Western Farmers Reap a Revolution in the Fields:
- Growth of corn and wheat changed the West.
- The yellow grain was amazingly versatile. It could be
fed to hogs (“corn on the hoof”) or distilled into liquor
(“corn in the bottle”). Both of these products could be
transported more easily than the bulky grain itself, and
they became the early western farmer’s staple market
items.
- John Deere of Illinois in 1837 produced a steel plow
that broke the stubborn soil or the West. It was light
enough to be pulled by horses instead of having to use
oxen.
- McCormick Reaper: A mechanical mower-reaper. The
clattering cogs of McCormick’s horse drawn machine
were to the western farmers what the cotton gin was
to the southern planter. Now more farmers could
plant billowing fields of wheat.
Highways and Steamboats:
- Stagecoaches and wagons lurched over bone-shaking
roads.
- Lancaster Turnpike, the first solid highway. In
Pennsylvania they made a 62 mile broad, hard surfaced
highway from Philadelphia to Lancaster.
- The turnpikes beckoned to the canvas-covered
Conestoga wagons, their creaks heralded a westward
advance that would know no real retreat.
- Cumberland Road (1811): First national road of the
government. Started in Cumberland Maryland and
eventually went to Vandalia, Illinois, 591 miles to the
west in 1839.
- Robert Fulton: He installed a powerful steam engine in
a vessel that posterity came to known as the Clermont
but that a dubious public dubbed “Fulton’s Folly.” In
1807 though his steamboat churned steadily from New
York City up the Hudson toward Albany. The run of
150 miles took 32 hours.