Transcript Chapter 12 PowerPoint

The American Nation
A History of the United States
Fourteenth Edition
Chapter
12
The Sections Go
Their Own Ways
The American Nation: A History of the United States, Fourteenth Edition
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Copyright ©2012, ©2008 by Pearson Education, Inc.
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The South
The American Nation: A History of the United States, Fourteenth Edition
Mark C. Carnes • John A. Garraty
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The South
• South less affected by urbanization,
European immigration, transportation
revolution, and industrialization
• Region was predominantly agricultural and
cotton was king
 By 1859: 1.3 million out of 4.3 million bales
were grown beyond the Mississippi
The American Nation: A History of the United States, Fourteenth Edition
Mark C. Carnes • John A. Garraty
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The South (cont'd)
 Upper South Virginia was leading tobacco
producer but states beyond the Appalachians
were raising more than half the crop,
encouraged by the introduction of “Bright
Yellow”
 Older sections of Maryland, Virginia, and
North Carolina shifted to the type of
diversified farming associated with Northeast
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Mark C. Carnes • John A. Garraty
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The South (cont'd)
• At time of Washington and Jefferson,
progressive Virginia planters had
experimented with crop rotation and
fertilizers
• In mid-nineteenth century, Edmund Ruffin
introduced the use of marl to counteract
acidity of worn-out tobacco fields
 Combined with fertilizers, proper drainage
and plowing methods, doubled and even
tripled the yield of corn and wheat
The American Nation: A History of the United States, Fourteenth Edition
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The South (cont'd)
• In the 1840s, southern planters
experimented with a variety of fertilizers,
plowing techniques and livestock breeds
• Increased importance of cotton
strengthened the hold of slavery on the
region
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The Economics of Slavery
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The Economics of Slavery
• Price of slaves rose
 1850s: prime field hand was worth 3 times as
much as in 1820 (as much as $1,800)
 Crop value per slave jumped from less than
$15 early in century to more than $125 in
1859
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The Economics of Slavery (cont'd)
• Slaves in Deep South brought several
hundred dollars more per head than in the
older regions
 Mississippi took in 10,000 slaves a year
 By 1830, black population in Mississippi
exceeded white
 Transfer of more than a million slaves from
seaboard states to West
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The Economics of Slavery (cont'd)
• Slave trading became big business
 1850s: about 50 dealers in Charleston and
200 in New Orleans
• Impact on slaves was disastrous
 Husbands and wives, parents and children
were separated
 One study suggests one-third of all first
“slave” marriages in upper South were broken
by forced separation
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A woman in a net on a Congo shore.
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The Economics of Slavery (cont'd)
 Nearly half of all children were separated
from at least one parent
• As slaves became more expensive,
ownership of slaves became more
concentrated
 In 1860, only about 46,000 of 8 million white
residents of slave states had as many as 20
slaves
The American Nation: A History of the United States, Fourteenth Edition
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The Economics of Slavery (cont'd)
• Most efficient size of plantation worked by
gangs of slaves was 1,000 to 2,000 acres
 Majority of farmers in south cultivated no
more than 200 acres
 Many cultivated fewer than 100 acres
 On eve of Civil War only one family in four
owned any slaves at all
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The Economics of Slavery (cont'd)
• Yeoman farmers: grew staple crops,
owned a few slaves, worked besides them
in the fields—hardworking, self-reliant, and
moderately prosperous
• “Poor white trash” of pine barrens and
remote valleys of Appalachians scratched
a meager subsistence from substandard
soils and lived in ignorance and squalor
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The Economics of Slavery (cont'd)
• Well-managed plantations yielded annual
profits of 10 percent or more
• Money invested in southern agriculture
earned at least moderate return
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The Economics of Slavery (cont'd)
• After allowing for the cost of land and
capital, average plantation slave “earned”
cotton worth $78.78 in 1859
 $32 a year to feed, clothe and house a slave
 60% of product of slave labor was
expropriated by the masters
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The Economics of Slavery (cont'd)
• South failed to develop locally owned
marketing and transportation facilities
 1840: $2.85 to move a bale of cotton from
farm to seaport
 Additional charges for storage, insurance,
port fees, and freight to a European port
exceeded $15
 Most of this money earned by middlemen
outside of South
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The Economics of Slavery (cont'd)
 Middlemen also supplied most of foreign
goods purchased by planters
 Nearly everyone in New England could read
and write, while over 20% of white
Southerners could not
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Antebellum Plantation Life
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Antebellum Plantation Life
• Medium to large operation employing 20
or more slaves
 Master’s house with complement of barns
and stables
 Kitchen
 Smokehouse
 Washhouse
 Home for the overseer
 Schoolhouse, perhaps
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Antebellum Plantation Life (cont'd)
 Grist mill
 Forge
 Slave quarters
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Antebellum Plantation Life (cont'd)
• Husbands and wives did not function in
separate spheres though functions were
different and gender related
• Planters purchased fine clothes, furniture
and china, as well as other manufactured
goods
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Antebellum Plantation Life (cont'd)
• Plantations were also busy centers of
household manufacture




Clothes for slaves (except shoes)
Everyday clothing for their own children
Bedding and other textiles
Spinning, weaving, and sewing were
women’s work
 Food was raised on the plantation except for
coffee, tea, and a few other items
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Antebellum Plantation Life (cont'd)
• Master was in charge—paternalistic
system
• Wife had immense responsibilities





Supervising servants
Nursing the sick
Taking care of vegetable and flower gardens
Planning meals
Seeing to the education of her own children
and training of young slaves
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Antebellum Plantation Life (cont'd)
 Generally married in their teens so had to
learn by doing
• Majority of slaves of both sexes were field
hands who labored on the land from dawn
to dusk
• Household servants and artisans, any
slave but old and infirm, might be called on
for field labor when needed
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Antebellum Plantation Life (cont'd)
• Slave women were expected to cook for
their own families and do other chores
after working in fields
• Children, free and slave, were cared for by
household servants
 Infants were brought to their mothers in the
fields for nursing several times a day
 Slave children were not put to work until they
were 6 or 7 years old and until 10 they were
only given small tasks
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Antebellum Plantation Life (cont'd)
 Black and white children played together and
were often cared for by the same nursemaid
• Slave cabins were simple and crude:
single dark room with a fireplace
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The Kingsley plantation, on Fort George Island
in Jacksonville, Florida.
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The Sociology of Slavery
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The Sociology of Slavery
• Whipping
 20 lashes for ordinary offenses: shirking work
or stealing
 39 for more serious offenses: running away
 Sometimes slaves were whipped to death,
though by 1821 master could be charged with
murder if caused slave death through
excessive punishment (conviction resulted in
relatively minimal fine)
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The Sociology of Slavery (cont'd)
• Most owners provided adequate housing,
clothing, and food
 Infant mortality among slaves was twice that
of whites
 Life expectancy was five years less
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The Sociology of Slavery (cont'd)
• U.S. only country in western hemisphere
where slave population grew by natural
increase
 After ending of slave trade in 1808, black
population grew at nearly same rate as white
 From founding of Jamestown to Civil War,
only slightly more than 500,000 slaves were
imported (5 percent of slaves carried to New
World) yet in 1860 there were 4 million blacks
in U.S.
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The Sociology of Slavery (cont'd)
• Most owners felt responsibilities toward
their slaves and slaves were imitative of
white values
 Powerful fears existed on both sides
• Slaves had no rights
 Marriages had no legal status though
partnerships appear to have been loving and
stable
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The Sociology of Slavery (cont'd)
• Slave religion mixture of African traditions
and Christianity
 Religious meetings provided slaves with the
opportunity to organize
 Sustained sense of own worth
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The Sociology of Slavery (cont'd)
• As price of slaves rose and northern
opposition grew, slave system hardened
 1822: after conspiracy of Denmark Vesey was
exposed, 37 slaves executed and 30
deported though no overt act had occurred
 Louisiana: 16 slaves were decapitated after
an uprising
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The Sociology of Slavery (cont'd)
• As price of slaves rose and northern
opposition grew, slave system hardened
 Nat Turner uprising in Virginia in 1831 cost 57
whites their lives
 White southerners treated runaways almost
as brutally as rebels
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The Sociology of Slavery (cont'd)
• After Nat Turner revolt, interest in
abolishing slavery vanished in white South
 Southern states made it increasingly difficult
for masters to free slaves
 During 1859 only about 3,000 were given
their freedom (.00075 percent)
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The Sociology of Slavery (cont'd)
• Slavery did not flourish in urban settings
and cities did not flourish where slavery
was important
 Southern cities were small
 Slave labor minor since harder to control in
urban setting
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The Sociology of Slavery (cont'd)
• Southern whites considered existence of
free blacks undesirable
 Undercut notion that blacks are helpless on
their own
 Set bad example for slaves
 Many southern states passed laws aimed at
forcing free blacks to emigrate but these were
not well enforced
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Table 12.1 Major Slave Rebellions
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Psychological Effects of Slavery
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Psychological Effects of Slavery
• Slavery had a corrosive effect on the
personalities of southerners, black and
white
• Bore heavily on all slaves’ sense of self
worth
• Most slaves appeared resigned to their
fate
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Psychological Effects of Slavery
(cont'd)
• Slaves had strong family and group
attachments and a complex culture of their
own
 By a mixture of subterfuge, accommodation,
and passive resistance, slaves erected
defenses against exploitation, achieving a
sense of community that helped sustain the
psychic integrity of the individuals
 Slavery discouraged, if not extinguished,
independent judgment and self-reliance
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Psychological Effects of Slavery
(cont'd)
• Whites were also harmed by slavery
 Associating working for others with servility
discouraged many poor white Southerners
from hiring out to make a stake
 Slavery provided the weak, shiftless, and
unsuccessful with a scapegoat that made
their own situation easier to bear but harder
to escape
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Psychological Effects of Slavery
(cont'd)
 Patriarchal nature of slave system reinforced
tendency toward male dominance over wives
and children
 Power of ownership could be brutalizing
• Slavery caused basically decent people to
commit countless petty cruelties
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Manufacturing in the South
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Manufacturing in the South
• Small flour and lumber mills flourished
• Rope making plants in Kentucky
• Commercial cotton presses existed in a
number of southern cities
• Iron and coal were mined in Virginia,
Kentucky, and Tennessee
 1850s: Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond did
an annual business of about $1 million
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Manufacturing in the South (cont'd)
• Availability of raw materials and
abundance of waterpower on Appalachian
slopes made it possible to manufacture
textiles profitably
 1825: thriving factory in Fayetteville, North
Carolina
 William Gregg’s factory at Graniteville, South
Carolina, established 1846, was employing
300 people by 1850
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Manufacturing in the South (cont'd)
• Yet in 1850 all of South Carolina employed
fewer than 900 in textile manufacturing
• The town of Lowell, Massachusetts, had
more spindles in 1860 than the entire
South
• Less than 15% of all goods manufactured
in United States came from the South
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The Northern Industrial Juggernaut
• Immediately after War of 1812 the United
States was manufacturing less than $200
million worth of goods annually
• In 1859, northeastern states alone
produced $1.27 billion of national total of
almost $2 billion
 Factory system made great strides
 Development of anthracite coal mine fields in
Pennsylvania
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The Northern Industrial Juggernaut
(cont'd)
• Great receptivity to technological change
• By 1850, the U.S. led the world in the
manufacture of goods that required the
use of precision instruments
 Clocks, pistols, rifles, and locks were
outstanding
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The Northern Industrial Juggernaut
(cont'd)
• By 1850s prejudice against corporations
had broken down
 By end of decade northern and northwestern
states had all passed incorporation laws
 Corporations made possible the larger
accumulation of capital
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The Northern Industrial Juggernaut
(cont'd)
• Industrial growth led to increase in
demand for labor
 Skilled artisans, technicians, and toolmakers
earned good wages and found it relatively
easy to become independent craftsmen or
small manufacturers
 Expanding frontier drained off much
agricultural labor that might have gone into
industry
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The Northern Industrial Juggernaut
(cont'd)
 Pay of unskilled worker was never enough to
support a family decently
 New machines weakened the bargaining
power of artisans by making skill less
important
 Immigration increased rapidly in the 1830s
and 1840s
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The Northern Industrial Juggernaut
(cont'd)
• Growth of capital
 European investors poured large sums of
money into booming American industry
 Gold from gold rush
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The Northern Industrial Juggernaut
(cont'd)
• Other important factors




Improvements in transportation
Population growth
Absence of internal tariff barriers
Relatively high per capita wealth
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A Nation of Immigrants
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A Nation of Immigrants
• “Immigrant” only developed as a term after
the creation of the United States and
nationalism associated with it
• “Native” population disliked immigrants
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A Nation of Immigrants (cont'd)
• Immigrants developed their own
prejudices
 Irish disliked blacks—often competed for
same jobs
 Most immigrants adopted views of local
majority
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A Nation of Immigrants (cont'd)
• Unskilled immigrants caused serious
disruptions of economic patterns wherever
they appeared
 By 1860, Irish immigrants made up more than
50 percent of the labor force in New England
textile mills
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How Wage Earners Lived
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How Wage Earners Lived
• Many wage earners lived in urban slums
with extremely crowded conditions
 City streets were littered with trash
 Recreational facilities were almost nonexistent
 Police and fire protection were inadequate
• Early factory town families had
supplemented incomes with gardens but
not a choice in industrial slums
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How Wage Earners Lived (cont'd)
• Horace Greeley figured minimum weekly
support for a family of 5 in 1851 was
$10.37 while a factory hand rarely made
$5
 Wife and children therefore also had to work
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How Wage Earners Lived (cont'd)
• Unions
 Relatively few workers belonged
 Most unions were craft unions
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How Wage Earners Lived (cont'd)
• Skilled workers improved lot in 1840s and
1850s
 Working day declined from 12.5 hours to 10–
11 hours
 Many states passed 10 hour laws and laws
regulating child labor (poorly enforced)
 Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842,
Massachusetts) established legality of labor
unions
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How Wage Earners Lived (cont'd)
• Flush times of 1850s revived labor unions
 Strikes and national organizations
 Panic of 1857 ended most of this
• Why Unions not very successful
 Craftsmen took little interest in unskilled
workers
 Few common laborers considered
themselves part of a permanent working
class
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How Wage Earners Lived (cont'd)
• Why Unions not very successful
 Wage labor seemed un-American, a violation
of republican values of freedom and
independence
 Union organization made difficult as a result
of republican value system, fluidity of society,
influx of job-hungry immigrants and
widespread employment of women and
children in unskilled jobs
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Progress and Poverty
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Progress and Poverty
• Prior to Civil War, United States was a
land of opportunity; a democratic society
with a prosperous, expanding economy
and few class distinctions; people had a
high standard of living compared to
Europeans
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Progress and Poverty (cont'd)
• Within this country existed a class of
miserably underpaid and depressed
unskilled workers who were worse off
materially than almost any southern slave
 In 1848 more than 56,000 New Yorkers (1/4
population) was receiving some form of public
relief
 Police drive in New York in 1860 brought in
nearly 500 beggars
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Progress and Poverty (cont'd)
• Economic opportunities were great and
taxation was little so the rich got richer
• While political opportunity for white men
was equal, economic opportunity was
increasingly skewed
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Foreign Commerce
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Foreign Commerce
• Imports and Exports
 Increased erratically in 1820s and 1830s
 Leapt forward in next 20 years
• Remained primarily exporter of raw
materials and importer of manufactured
goods and mostly imported more than
exported
 Cotton still most valuable export
- 1860 = $191 million out of total $333 million
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Foreign Commerce (cont'd)
 Textiles number one import followed by iron
products
 Great Britain both best purchaser and best
supplier
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Foreign Commerce (cont'd)
• Whaling boomed between 1830 and 1860
 By mid 1850s sperm oil sold at more than
$1.75/gallon
 Country exported an average of $2.7 million
worth of whale oil and whalebone
 Whalers routinely cleared 100% profit
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Foreign Commerce (cont'd)
• By 1850s: average vessel was three times
size of those built 30 years earlier
 Clipper ships with undreamed of speeds
emerged—sailing around Cape Horn to San
Francisco dropped from 5 to 6 months to
three
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Steam Conquers the Atlantic
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Steam Conquers the Atlantic
• Early problems with steamships
 Early models were unsafe in high seas
 Had to carry tons of coal which reduced
space for cargo
• By late 1840s steamships were capturing
most of the passenger traffic, mail
contracts and first-class freight
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Steam Conquers the Atlantic (cont'd)
• Steamers were soon crossing Atlantic in
10 days
 For very long voyages, fast sailing ships held
their own for many years
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Steam Conquers the Atlantic (cont'd)
• Shipping rates decreased due to
competition, government subsidy, and
technological advance
 Mid-1820s to mid-1850s: cost of moving a
pound of cotton from New York to Liverpool
fell from 1 cent to one-third cent
 Transatlantic passengers could obtain best
accommodations on the fastest ships for
under $200
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Steam Conquers the Atlantic (cont'd)
 Good accommodations on slower ships could
be had for $75
 Ships went to Europe with bulky raw
materials and returned with manufactured
goods that failed to take up room—filled rest
with immigrants
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Canals and Railroads
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Canals and Railroads
• Canals: in 1830 there were 1,277 miles of
canal in U.S.; by 1840 there were 3,326
miles
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Canals and Railroads (cont'd)
• 1845: Erie Canal was drawing 2/3 of eastwest traffic from New York
 1847: more than half of traffic came from west
of Buffalo
 1851: more than two-thirds did and volume of
western commerce was 20 times more than
in 1836
 Value of western goods reaching New
Orleans in same period increased only 2 and
a half times
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Canals and Railroads (cont'd)
• Railroads:
 1830 Baltimore & Ohio, first American line,
carried 80,000 passengers over 13 mile
stretch of track
 By 1833: Charleston, South Carolina, had a
line reaching 136 miles
 By 1840: the U.S. had 3,328 miles of track—
equal to canal mileage and double the
railroad mileage of Europe
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Canals and Railroads (cont'd)
• Early railroad did not compete with canals
because
 Did not generally cross Appalachians
 Were not organized into systems
 Often used different track widths
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Canals and Railroads (cont'd)
 Engineering issues such as steep grades and
sharp curves
- Modifications in design of locomotives enabled
trains to negotiate sharp curves
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Canals and Railroads (cont'd)
• Early problems with railroads
 Sparks from wood burning locomotives
caused fires
- Engines that could burn hard coal eliminated due
to danger of fires
 Wooden rails topped with strap iron wore out
quickly and broke loose under vibration
- Iron T-rail and use of crossties set in loose gravel
to reduce vibration increased track durability and
enabled heavier equipment
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Canals and Railroads (cont'd)
• Four lines built tracks from eastern coast
to interior valley
 1851: Erie Railroad, longest in the world with
537 miles, linked Hudson River with Lake
Erie
 1852: Baltimore & Ohio reached Wheeling,
Virginia
 1853: New York Central was formed from 8
shorter lines
 1858: Pennsylvania Railroad completed a line
from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh
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Canals and Railroads (cont'd)
• By 1855: passengers could travel from
Chicago or St. Louis to the east coast in
less than 48 hours for $20 to $30
 Previously such a trip would have taken 2 to 3
weeks
• Construction was slower in the South
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Financing the Railroads
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Financing the Railroads
• Private investors supplied about threefourths of money invested in railroads
before 1860 (more than $800 million in
1850s alone)
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Financing the Railroads (cont'd)
• For less well-placed railroads, public aid
was necessary for part of costs
 Towns, counties, and states lent money to
railroads and invested in their stock
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Financing the Railroads (cont'd)
 Granted special privileges, such as
exemption from taxation and right to
condemn property
 Few cases, states built and operated
railroads as public corporations
 1850: scheme for granting federal lands to
states to build a line from Lake Michigan to
the Gulf of Mexico passed both houses
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Financing the Railroads (cont'd)
 Success of initial grant led to additional
grants of almost 20 million acres benefiting
more than 40 railroads
• Frequently capitalists were more
interested in making money from railroad
construction than from its operation
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Railroads and the Economy
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Railroads and the Economy
• Railroads helped determine what land was
used and how profitably it could be farmed
 “Land Grant” railroads stimulated agricultural
expansion by advertising their lands widely
and selling farm sites at low rates on liberal
terms
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Railroads and the Economy (cont'd)
• New tools and machines appeared to help
ease labor shortage
 Steel plowshare: John Deere, 1839
 Mechanical reaper: Cyrus Hall McCormick
(two workers could cut 14 times as much as
with scythes)
- Competition kept prices within reach of farmers,
especially with installments
- By the 1850s, wheat output rose by nearly 75
percent
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Railroads and the Economy (cont'd)
• Railroad created transformations
 Chicago: in 1850 had no railroad tracks but
by 1855 it was the terminus of 2,200 miles
 Real estate values and the buying and selling
of land increased
 Spurred regional concentration of industry
and increase in size of business unit
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Railroads and the Economy (cont'd)
 Stimulated growth of investment banking
 First to employ large numbers of salaried
mangers and to developed internal structure
with carefully defined lines of responsibility
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Railroads and the Economy (cont'd)
• Railroad consumed half the nation’s output
of bar and sheet iron in 1860
• Proliferation of trunk lines and competition
of canal system led to sharp decline in
freight and passenger rates
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Railroads, 1860
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Railroads and the Economy (cont'd)
• Cheap transportation had a revolutionary
effect on western agriculture
 Center of American wheat production shifted
to Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana
 Boomed especially when Crimean War
(1853-1856) and European crop failures
increased demand
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Agriculture, 1860
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The 1831 test of Cyrus McCormick’s reaping
machine
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Railroads and the Sectional Conflict
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Railroads and the Sectional Conflict
• Increased production and cheap
transportation boosted the western
farmer’s income and standard of living
• Problems




Became dependent on middlemen
Overproduction became a problem
Buying a farm required more capital
Proportion of farm laborers and tenants
increased
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Railroads and the Sectional Conflict
(cont'd)
• East-West linkage had fateful effects on
politics
 Stimulated nationalism and became a force
for preservation of the Union
 When the Mississippi ceased to be essential
to them, citizens of the upper valley could
afford to be more hostile to slavery and
especially to its westward expansion
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Railroads and the Sectional Conflict
(cont'd)
• South failed to create railroad network of
its own





Scattered population of South
Paucity of passenger traffic
Seasonal nature of much of freight business
Absence of large cities
Placed too much reliance on Mississippi
River
 Leaders not interested
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The Economy on the Eve of
Civil War
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The Economy on the Eve of
Civil War
• Between mid-1840s and mid-1850s the
United States experienced one of the most
remarkable periods of growth in the history
of the world
• 1857: serious collapse as grain prices fell
in wake of Crimean war and return of
Russian grain to the market
 Checked agricultural expansion which hurt
railroads and cut down on demand for
manufactures
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The Economy on the Eve of
Civil War (cont'd)
 Unemployment increased
 Run on banks which had to suspend specie
payment
• Downturn mainly affected upper
Mississippi Valley while South and
elsewhere minimally affected
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Chapter Review
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