The Complex Tapestry of American Industrialization

The Industrial Revolution began in 1740 and it was a burst of inventions and economic expansion based on steam and water powered technology. The Northeast became the first center of industrialization because it had educated and skilled workers, it had a constant flow of immigration so there were plenty of people to work in factories, and there were lots of wealthy families in the area that were investing in industrialization. The poor soil of this area also made manufacturing more profitable than farming, and it had numerous swift moving waterways that could power machinery.

The south on the other hand lagged in economic industrialization because there economy was strictly agricultural based because farming, especially cotton, was highly profitable there. The south also had little educated and skilled workers and had very little immigration, which highly limited the number of people able to work in a factory. The main source of labor in the south, slavery, did not have the ability to easily be incorporated into a factory system. There were however, a few technological advances surrounding agriculture during the Industrial revolution, such as the cotton gin and mechanical reaper which became widely used in southern farming.

The American government contributed and promoted industrialization growth and economic expansion in a multitude of ways. Firstly, Hamilton’s Financial plan focuses on industrialization and helps plan the growth of the industry. The government system of laissez-faire, or free enterprise, also helped grow industrialization because it allowed for more people to specialize and industrialize their business. Secondly, President Thomas Jefferson paid for spies to “steal” English manufacturing technology. The spies would go to England, get a job in the factory, and then come back to the US and rebuild the machinery here. This allowed for Americans to not only get in on the lucrative manufacturing textile industry, but it also allowed for them to focus on improving designs and make the machines more efficient. Third of all, Jefferson’s Embargo Act protects budding industry, like factories. The Embargo Act bans all trade with Europe, which overall has a disastrous effect on economy, but it has forces Americans to manufacture goods for themselves. This allows for the megar industrialized factories America had to grow and eventually become successful.

Women played a major role in the reform movements that came out of the Second Great Awakening because of ideals that became prevalent during this time, such as Republican motherhood and Women’s responsibility as the moral compass of the family. Republican motherhood is the belief that the primary political role of a women is to insure her children have a sense of patriotic duty and that they turn into upstanding republican citizens, and many also believed a women’s role went a step further than that and that she was responsible for guiding her family on the path of righteousness and moral correctness. These beliefs played a key role in a women's ability to participate in reform movements because they made it acceptable for women to protest in the case of making things morally correct. This is why the Temperance movement grew so quickly, and was so large, because it was headed by women who were looking to change the severe drinking habits of their husbands and sons, and led them into a better life of sobriety. This increased role in political society however, began to make many women also call for women’s suffrage. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 was the first ever women’s rights’ meeting held in the US ,and it was used to create a letter, styled after the Declaration of Independence, to send to Congress to push them into giving women the right to vote. This reform movement was not as popular, or successful, as abolition or the Temperance movement, but it did create the foundation for further arguments for women's suffrage.

The Second Great Awakening and the Industrial revolution both promote social reform by endorsing reform groups and encouraging their ideals. The Second Great awakening encouraged social reform because it was a religious revival that heavily preached that people are able to save themselves through works of good, which lead many to try and improve society so they could make it to heaven. The Second Great Awakening also encouraged social reform because it encouraged women to speak out and protest the immoral. Ideas such as Republican Motherhood and that women are the moral compass of the family arose and became widespread during the Second Great Awakening, and helped make it socially acceptable for women to protest and be the leader of protest. The Industrial revolution influenced social reform in three different ways, with the first being it encouraged wage earners to fight for their basic rights and be more involved in decisions that concern them. One way this is represented is through the formation of workplace unions, which were created in order to protest the deplorable conditions and long days they were forced to work. The second is that big business factories and manufactures supported the reform movements, especially the Temperance movement, because it benefited them and their business. The Temperance movement was widely supported by big business because factory workers would often be drunk on the job, causing them to perform slower and produce less quality work than their sober counterparts. Industrialization also encouraged social reform by making society as a whole more educated. Factories provided basic education for both men and women that came to work their, which allowed for them to make better decisions when it came to things such as voting. This easily obtainable education also helped workers better understand their situation and how they can change it. Together both the industrial revolution and the Second Great Awakening influence social reform by giving the reformist the ideals, education, and backing they need to support the movement and make it possible.

The literature of the early 19th century reflected Jacksonian Age democracy because writings at the time reflected the Jacksonian ideal that we did not need to only recognize the wealthy and well educated, and it reflected the importance of the common man. The new democracy of the Jacksonian Age placed a large amount of stress on the importance of the common man to American society, and worked to include them more in the happenings of the government. President Jackson was seen as a “Man of the people” because of this, and the fact that he was a living example of how a common man can grow to have extreme success. Literature at the time was based off of Transcendentalism, which was an intellectual movement that proposed the importance of an ideal world with mystical senses and called for critical examination of society and individuality. Authors like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller were at the head of this movement, and celebrated the idea that a person could learn from their own experiences and follow there “Inner Light” to the truth through the 5 senses. Following your “Inner Light” would allow for people to come to a better understanding of the world around them. The movement also placed a high importance on the common man and his contributions to society, while they deemed learned experts and inordinately wealthy unnecessary.

The Knickerbocker group, Hudson River school, and transcendentalism all represent the nationalism at the time because they were all part of the American Romanticism movement and gave Americans the ability to produce high quality arts that reflected the nation. The Knickerbocker group was an indistinct group based out of New York that wrote literature and enabled America to have for the literature that matched its magnificent landscapes. They pioneered many different literary fields and gave them a uniquely American feel, with the notable authors of this group being; Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen Bryant. The Hudson River school was not a real school, but a group of artist who worked in the Hudson River Valley in New York. It was founded by Thomas Cole in 1825 and the painters used the river and surrounding landscape to paint realistic and aesthetic paintings of this stunning area. Their style was influenced by the Romanticism and was inspirational for Americans, especially in the New England. Transcendentalism is a 19th century movement that stressed the importance of an ideal world of mystical senses. Many transcendentalist called for critical emphasized individuality, self-reliance, and non-conformity, and expressed these views in their writings. The best known transcendentalist authors were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. Transcendentalism did also inspire darker work views which were best illustrated in the literary works of Moby Dick by Herman Melville and the Scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Transcendentalism was an original American philosophy and did not take place or start in Europe.

Cotton production and slavery were more of a burden to the south because it made them rely on world conditions, was expensive, and was monopolistic in nature. The south relied on world conditions because cotton is a very sensitive plant and very susceptible to disease and weather, making it easy to destroy the entire crop. Cotton also depleted the soil of nutrients, making farmers constantly having to switch their fields.The southern economy was also very monopolistic because it was a one-crop system,with almost all farmers larger scale or small scale growing cotton. With little economic diversity if something happened with the crop, whether prices fell or the crop failed, many southerners would go broke. The slaves needed to work large plantations were also super expensive, and many could not afford them. Slaves were also expensive to keep up with because they needed you to provide them healthcare, clothes, water, and food. Slaves would also fake sickness, work slow, destroy crops, and runaway which cost the plantation owners lots of money.

The Gag Resolution is a procedure used in the House of Representatives from 1836 to 1844 that made anti-slavery petitions automatically tabled so that they would not become the subject of debate. The gag resolution symbolises the threat slavery had for the constitution because it denied people the right to protest the government and denied them the full first amendment. The gag ruled stopped people from abolition groups from using the part of the first amendment in which the could petition the “Government for a redress of grievances”. The censorship was pushed through the house every year by pro-slavery southerners that believed this was protecting their right to their “Property”. By passing this rule both Southern lawmakers and Northern lawmakers believed that this would help ease tensions surrounding slavery in the House and help keep the nation solidified. They did not want antislavery and proslavery debates breaking out in and dividing the House. However, the gag rule was eventually dropped after a long campaign by John Quincy Adams to get enough votes to repeal it.

The big concern surrounding the Missouri debate was slavery because many Southerners feared that they were going to not allow slavery in Missouri, even though it had requested to be admitted into the Union as a slave state. If Missouri was entered as a free state it would cause the free states to outnumber slave states.This upset in the balance could potentially lead to free states having the ability to end slavery in the Union and leave the Southerns without slaves to work their plantations and upset their entire economy. Northerners believed that Congress had the power to choose whether a state was free or slave, while Southerners believed that each state had the right the choose whether it was free or slave. These debates would have filled Jefferson with terror because he was a southern plantation owner, and he was witnessing the ugly divide between the North and South that was growing ever more prominent. The idea of losing either the Union or his livelihood would have shook him to the core and left him on edge for what was to come. The Missouri debates did lead to the Missouri compromise which was composed of three main parts, Missouri entering as a slave state, Maine as a free state, and no slavery above the 36°30’ line. This compromise would keep the peace for the about the next 30 years.

The election of 1824 is so controversial because of the corrupt bargain between John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. The corrupt bargain was used to keep Andrew Jackson out of office, by Henry Clay using his power as speaker of the House to get more people to vote for John Quincy Adams and in return Adams would make Clay his Secretary of the State. This Presidential election was also different from previous elections because there were more than two candidates running, and the vote had to be decided by the House of representatives since no one won majority of the popular votes. For John Quincy Adams the preservation of an elite run political system at stake and for Andrew Jackson the hopes of the common man was at stake, but they both had the presidency at stake in this election and the ability to push their agendas further. Adams feared that by opening up the system to the uneducated, common man could result in unfit people getting into office. Jackson on the other hand needed to win so that the common man could see that they had just as much of a voice in the government as the elites did. These were not the solitary reasons for why winning the presidency was important for both of these men, but they are majorly important reasons.

The election of 1828 was more a revolution than the election of 1800 because it solidified the rise of the common man, saw another change in political parties, and it changed how politicians campaigned. The election of 1828 lead to the complete rise of the common man, which saw public opinion becoming more important, as well as popular votes because presidential electors were now being decided by popular votes. This election also saw new and more extreme campaigning tactics put into place. The campaign trail was most influenced by the extreme amounts of mudslinging, which is the use of insults, especially unfair ones, to damage the reputation of an opponent. Jackson attacked Adams over the last presidential election ,where he accused him of using unfair and corrupt politics in order to get into office. Adams on the other hand, went after Jackson’s military career and his personal life. The most mudslinging happened towards Jackson's wife, Rachel Jackson, because her past divorce and her eloped marriage to Jackson. The election of 1800 and 1828 both shared the similar feature of a shift in the power of the political parties. In 1800, the Federalist passed over the power to the Democratic-Republicans when Jefferson won the election, while in the election of 1828 the Republicans passed over the power to the Jacksonian Democrats when Jackson won the election. The election of 1800 was also less of a revolution than the election of 1828 because powers passed peaceful for one party to the other. There was not any real objection with the exchange and the campaign trail was not a hateful and derogatory one like the election of 1828.

In Calhoun’s doctrine of nullification it is assumed that states are stronger than the federal government, that states are the real sovereign entity, and have the final say over the federal government. This would allow for the states to protect their citizens from unjust laws through nullification and even secede from the Union if staying in it was unfavorable for the state. It also reflected the views expressed in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions that states had the right to nullify laws they felt were unjust. The resolutions and doctrine were also similar in the fact that they both pushed that states were the supreme power in the country and not the national government. They both also expressed that the national government had its powers given to it by the constitution, which was a contract between the states. However, Calhoun’s doctrine of nullification heavily emphasized that states could use nullification to secede from the Union, while the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions emphasized states rights and the ability for states to nullify federal laws they believe are unconstitutional. 

Did you like this example?

245

10