UNIT 3 | TOPIC 3

1. Major Transportation Improvements

The National Road

• National Road was the first federally built road begun in Maryland in 1815, stretched to Illinois by 1850.

The Erie Canal

• Erie Canal ran from Albany to Buffalo in New York 

  • It was built by Irish immigrants in 1825.

  • They could send goods along the canal faster and cheaper.

  • New York City became the center for trade because of the canal.

  • It caused increased importation to the North.

The Steamboat

• Water was the way that most people traveled and did business during Antebellum times.

  • Steamboats revolutionized water travel as they could travel in shallow water, allowing them access to small waterways in the state.

• Steamboat successfully invented by Robert Fulton

  • He tested the Clermont in 1807. 

  • Steamboats increased trade by moving goods more quickly and more cheaply.

  • More than 500 steamboats were in use by 1840.

• • Gibbons v. Ogden (1824): The Supreme Court reinforced the federal government’s authority to regulate trade between states.

    • Gibbons argued that a federal license meant he could use New York waterways without another license.

    • The Supreme Court agreed with Gibbons.

Henry Miller Shreve was hired by the federal government to clear the Red River of a log jam known as the Great Red River Raft to open that river to steamboat traffic.

• Using blasting powder and steam powered boats that he designed called snagboats, he cleared the river of the jam in less than four years.

• He started in Natchitoches and worked his way North. 

• People began moving into the area and Captain Shreve and his partners opened a settlement. In 1835, he founded the city as Shreveport.

Plantations in the South: Sugar

• An invention by Norbert Rillieux, a free man of color from New Orleans, revolutionized sugar plantations just as the cotton gin increased cotton production.

• Rillieux invented a vacuum pan evaporator for refining sugar. This invention resulted in finer, whiter sugar with a huge reduction in costs and labor.

Slavery supported the southern lifestyle and economic structure.

• Slaves produced the plantation crops, did basic manual labor, worked in the plantation houses,and performed skilled tasks.

3. The NORTH

Economic Growth

• The Industrial Revolution first began in New England in the early 1800s.

• New England had best conditions for factories because:

  • Poor soil for farming

  • Rushing rivers and streams

  • Geographic location

  • Mostly merchants lived here

Factories in the North

• Francis Cabot Lowell created a new system of mill manufacturing in 1814, called the Lowell system.

• The Lowell system involved

  • Employing immigrants and young, unmarried women, who were housed in boarding houses

4. Manufacturing Breakthroughs

• U.S. factories needed better technology, or  tools, to manufacture muskets.

• Inventor Eli Whitney developed musket factories using water-powered machinery.

  • Whitney introduced the idea of interchangeable parts, or parts of a machine that are identical, to make musket manufacturing easier.
    Interchangeable parts sped up the process of mass production.

5. Working Conditions

• Working conditions began to deteriorate over time.

• Employees worked 12-to-14 hour days in unhealthy conditions.

• Craftsmen’s wages dropped in competition against cheap manufactured goods. 

• Wages of factory workers dropped as they competed for jobs.

Labor Reform

• Labor unions staged protests called strikes, refusing to work until employers met their demands.

• Millworker Sarah G. Bagley helped lead the union movement in Massachusetts.

• Bagley’s union campaigned to reduce the 12-to 14-hour workday to a 10-hour workday.

  • Union workers won some victories, as several states passed 10-hour workday laws.

  • In other states the workday remained long and child labor prevailed.

6. impact of economic development

• The growth of factories encouraged the growth of cities in the Northeast.

• Northeastern farmers migrated to cities to take manufacturing jobs.

• U.S. government passed laws to support railroads and new settlers.
  
  

• The Midwest became a major grain-growing region.

• The South began to produce more cotton than any other region.

• The Northeast became a center for manufacturing and industry.

• Technological innovations supported the growth of diverse regional economies.

New Problems caused by development: 

• 1. • Overcrowding 

     • Unsanitary condition

     • Diseases

     • Threat of fire

7. IMMIGRATION

• Large numbers of immigrants crossed the Atlantic in the mid-1800s to begin new lives in the United States.

• More than 3 million of them were from Ireland and Germany.

Immigrants from Ireland

• Fled Ireland because of potato famine in 1840s

• Most were very poor.

• Settled in cities in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania 

• Men worked at unskilled jobs or by building canals and railroads.

• Women worked as domestic servants for wealthy families.

Immigrants from Germany

• Some educated Germans fled for political reasons.

• Most were working class and came for economic reasons.

• Many became farmers and lived in rural areas.

• In cities they had to take low-paying jobs, such as tailors, seamstresses, bricklayers, servants, clerks, and bakers.

Anti-Immigation Movements

• Many native-born Americans feared losing jobs to immigrants, who might work for lower wages.

• Americans who opposed immigration were called nativists.

• Nativists founded a political organization called the  Know-Nothing Party in 1849 to make it difficult for immigrants to become citizens or hold public office.

  • Wanted to keep Catholics and immigrants out of public office.

  • Wanted immigrants to live in United States for 21 years before becoming citizens.