Chapter 12
The North and the South
Section One Revolutions in Industry
The Industrial Revolution
By the mid-1700s, people in Great Britain began to want manufactured goods goods made outside of the home
Began to look for machines to make goods faster and cheaper than by hand
Industrial Revolution period of extremely rapid growth in the use of machine to manufacture goods; started in Britain
Textiles cloth products were the first to be produced by machine
Spinning Jenny and water frame were first machines for textiles
Merchants needed a source of power and looked to build water mills
Illegal to export plans from England
Samuel Slater memorizes plans for a textile factory and come to US to build one in 1789 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island
New England has conditions for mills workers, investors, and many rivers for power
Mass Production
Mass production Making of large numbers of identical goods
Eli Whitney creates mass produced muskets in 1798, proving machine made parts work
Interchangeable parts all parts are alike, and therefore can be replaced when worn out
Industrial Revolution under way in the US by late 1830s
Steam power allows factories to be built away from rivers for first time
Factory Workers
Factory work boring and repetitive
Business try to find ways to attract new workers
Rhode Island System Slater hires whole families and puts kids on simple jobs (low wages save money)
Lowell System Young, unwed women hired to work in textile mills in New England. Life focused around the factory, working six days a week, 12 hours per day for low wages
Trade Unions organizations of people who do a similar job shoemakers for example. They seek higher wages and better working conditions
Strike Union tactic in which union members refuse to work unless they get better working conditions
Companies usually fired striking workers most citizens/police/courts support factory owners over workers
Section Two New Technologies and Transportation
The Transportation Revolution
Transportation Revolution rapid improvement in speed, ease, and cost of transportation
Steam engines replaced horses, water, and other natural sources of power
Robert Fulton successfully tests his steamboat, the Clermont, on the Hudson River in 1807
Fultons Folly is turning a profit in a few months
500 steamboats are traveling the Mississippi by 1840 at over twice the speed of before
Steam locomotives arrive in U.S. in 1830s
By 1840, U.S. had laid 2,800 miles of track, 1000 more miles than all of Europe
30,000 miles of track by 1860
Railroad companies are some of the most powerful business in the U.S.
Trains average 20 MPH while wagons average 2 MPH
Gibbons vs. Ogden
Supreme Court case in which two steamboat operators sue for control of travel in New York waters.
Aaron Ogden had been given a license by state of NY to operate in the NYC area
Thomas Gibbons is given a federal license to travel from NJ to NY waters.
Ogden sues Gibbons and wins.
Gibbons appeals to Supreme Court
Marshall decide in favor of Gibbons, saying again federal law is superior to state law, therefore the federal license is more important.
Communication by Wire
1832 Samuel Morse invents the telegraph a device that sends pulses of electrical current over wires
Morse develops Morse Code to translate sounds to letters to spell out messages
Poles with wires strung all over
First transcontinental line finished in 1861
Agricultural Improvements
Improvements in communications and transportation allow for business and settlement growth
John Deere invents the steel plow in 1837, allowing hard Midwestern dirt to be cultivated without breaking
Cyrus Mc Cormick creates the reaper that cuts wheat and uses mass production in his Chicago plant
In 1830 it took 20 hours to harvest an acre of wheat. The reaper took an hour.
Home Technology
Sewing Machine invented by a factory worker in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1846
Isaac Singer improves it, allowing it to be run by foot power
Iceboxes (1830s) allow families to store frozen meat for longer periods
Iron cookstoves replaces fireplaces
Mass production lowers prices of many goods, such as clocks
Cities create public water systems, and wealthy have indoor water pumps rather than use public pumps (plumbing above first floor very rare still)
Matches and safety pins also created
Section Three The South and King Cotton
Southern Agriculture
Demand for tobacco, rice, and indigo drop.
Cotton transforms the southern economy just as the south was beginning to give up and free their slaves
Cotton requires removal of seeds very labor intensive (it took a day for one person to create a pound of cotton)
Cotton Gin created by Eli Whitney and others in 1793 and speeds up production by removing seeds by hand driven machine
The Cotton Boom
Cotton Belt South Carolina to Eat Texas where cotton was the number one product
Cotton is easy to grow, transport, and doesnt spoil
Scientific Agriculture use of science to improve crops production
Cotton drains soils of nutrients
Farmers learn to rotate fields, growing a different crop on fields every few years
More slaves are needed
Importation of slaves is illegal as of 1808, but domestic slave trade is okay
Great Britain is the major trading partner of the south
Focus on cotton stops growth of other industries (short sighted)
Southern Society
1800 to 1850 only 1/3 of families own slaves
Planters owners of more than 20 slaves (very few)
Planters serve as political leaders and oversee the crop production and sale
Planters wife runs the household and educates the kids and supervises household slaves
Wealthy southerners often arranged marriages of their children for business or political reasons
Yeomen owners of small farms and worked alongside slaves in the fields
Most blacks in south were slaves
By 1860, 250,000 blacks in south were free by escape, being freed, or buying freedom
Churches formed the center of freed blacks lives
Discrimination was rampant blacks cannot vote, travel freely, hold certain jobs, live in most areas, or own guns
Section Four The Slave System
Slaves and Work
Treatment of slaves varied from owner to owner
Slaves on small farms did many different jobs
Large plantations had slaves who specialized in one job and hired overseers to supervise slaves
Slaves usually did not get breaks or even to stop for lunch, eating in the fields and worked from dawn to dusk
Some slaves served as butlers or cooks in the planters home
Skilled slaves, such as blacksmiths and carpenters, were very valuable and were sometimes allowed to hire themselves out to others and then buy their freedom
Life Under Slavery
Slaves were treated as property, not people
Bought and sold for profit
Sometime free blacks were kidnapped and sold into slavery
Most had terrible living conditions with leaky roofs and dirt floors
Some were permitted to grow own vegetables or raise chickens
Most were punished for bad behavior rather than rewarded for good behavior
Public punishments were common to set an example
Teaching slaves to read or write was usually illegal
Slave Culture
Slaves formed strong ties to one another We are all in this together
Slaves feared having family members sold far more than punishment
Folktales oral stories with a moral used to teach lessons; often using clever animals to show how to survive by outsmarting owners
Slaves were very religious and clung to idea that they would live in freedom like the Jews escaping ancient Egypt
Spirituals Christian songs of sorrow rooted in African and European traditions root of blues, jazz, and gospel
Challenging Slavery
Slaves often worked slowly or ran away to challenge slave owners
Slave revolts were rare, but scared planters
Nat Turners Rebellion (1831) most violent slave revolt in U.S.
- Turner leads a slave group to kill his owner and family in Virginia
- Move on to kill 60 whites in area
- Turner claimed God told him to end slavery during a solar eclipse
- 100 slaves were killed in stopping the rebellion
- Turner caught and hanged
