Focus on the North and the West

Market RevolutionFirst Half of the Nineteenth Century

West

Search for Cheap Land and new opportunities

Immigrants

Ralph Waldo Emerson - “Self Reliance”

Exhausting the Soil

0

4500000

9000000

13500000

18000000

1790 1820 1840

Population of America

Immigration

“Land of Freedom and Opportunity”

“American Letters”

Rate of Immigrants to America

0

650000

1300000

1950000

2600000

1840s 1850s

Irish Immigration

Potato Famine

Swarmed to America

Too poor to move west

Settled in seaboard cities (Boston and New York)

“No Irish Need Apply”

German Immigrants

Between 1830 and 1860 over a million and a half Germans stepped onto America soil

Farmers and Political Refugees

Many will be able to move west!

Anti-Foreignism

“Nativists”

American Native Association (1837)

Opposition to Roman Catholics

Know-Nothing Party (American Party)

Wealth and Population now in the North

Market Revolution in the North

Changes in the Economy and Workforce

The Factory System

“The Father of the Factory System” - Samuel Slater

New England was looked upon the center for Industrial growth

Interchangeable Parts - Eli Whitney

Working in the Factories

Long Hours

Low Wages

Unsanitary Conditions

Child Labor

Unionize?Commonwealth v.

Hunt

Lowell SystemWomen in Factory Jobs

Changing Role of WomenLowell System (Young Girls)

“Cult of Domesticity”

“Women’s Sphere”

“Domestic Feminism”

Close connection between the West and North

Impact in the West New Farming Techniques and Settlement in the

west

Transportation

Cumberland Road

Steamboats

Canal System

Erie Canal 1817-1825

“Clinton’s Big Ditch” Linked the Great

Lakes with the Hudson River

The “Iron Horse”