{"id":157,"date":"2015-08-02T14:57:43","date_gmt":"2015-08-02T14:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=157"},"modified":"2021-08-01T16:37:16","modified_gmt":"2021-08-01T16:37:16","slug":"the-market-revolution","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/the-market-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"The Market Revolution Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"This

N. Currier, \u201cThe Propagation Society, More Free than Welcome,\u201d 1855, via Library of Congress<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Introduction<\/h1>\n

In the early years of the nineteenth century, Americans\u2019 endless commercial ambition\u2014what one Baltimore paper in 1815 called an \u201calmost universal ambition to get forward\u201d\u2014remade the nation. Steam power, the technology that moved steamboats and railroads, fueled the rise of American industry by powering mills and sparking new national transportation networks. More and more farmers grew crops for profit, not self-sufficiency. Vast factories and cities arose in the North. As northern textile factories boomed, the demand for southern cotton swelled, and the institution of American slavery accelerated. The market revolution sparked not only explosive economic growth and new personal wealth but also devastating depressions\u2014\u201cpanics\u201d\u2014and a growing lower class of property-less workers. Many Americans labored for low wages and became trapped in endless cycles of poverty. Although northern states gradually abolished slavery, their factories fueled the demand for slave-grown southern cotton that ensured the profitability and continued existence of the American slave system. And so, as the economy advanced, the market revolution wrenched the United States in new directions as it became a nation of free labor and slavery, of wealth and inequality, and of new promise and peril. These sources illustrate how the market revolution transformed how Americans worked, traveled, politicked, and even loved.  <\/p>\n

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Documents<\/h1>\n

1. James Madison asks Congress to support internal improvements, 1815<\/a><\/h2>\n

After the War of 1812, Americans looked to strengthen their nation through government spending on infrastructure, or what were then called internal improvements. In his seventh annual address to congress, Madison called for public investment to create national roads, canals, and even a national seminary. He also called for a tariff, or tax on certain imports, designed to make foreign goods more expensive, giving American producers an advantage in domestic markets. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

2. A traveler describes life along the Erie Canal, 1829<\/a><\/h2>\n

Basil Hall, a British visitor traveled along the Erie Canal and took careful notes on what he found. In this excerpt, he described life in Rochester, New York. Rochester, and other small towns in upstate New York, grew rapidly as a result of the Erie Canal. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

3. Blacksmith apprentice contract, 1836<\/a><\/h2>\n

The factories and production of the Market Revolution eroded the wealth and power of skilled small business owners called artisans. This indenture contract illustrated the former way of doing things, where a young person would agree to serve for a number of years as an apprentice to a skilled artisan before venturing out on his own. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

4. Maria Stewart bemoans the consequences of racism, 1832<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Maria Stewart electrified audiences in Boston with a number of powerful speeches. Her most common theme was the evil of slavery. However, here she attacks the soul-crushing consequences of racism in American capitalism, claiming that the lack of social and economic equality doomed Black Americans to a life of suffering and spiritual death<\/em>. <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Rebecca Burlend recalls her emigration from England to Illinois, 1848<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Rebecca Burlend, her husband, and children emigrated to Illinois from England in 1831. These reflections describe her reaction to landing in New Orleans, sailing up the Mississippi to St. Louis, and finally arriving at her new home in Illinois. This was her first experience encountering American slavery, the American landscape, and the rugged living conditions of her new home.\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

6. Harriet H. Robinson remembers a mill workers\u2019 strike, 1836<\/a><\/h2>\n

The social upheavals of the Market Revolution created new tensions between rich and poor, particularly between the new class of workers and the new class of managers. Lowell, Massachusetts was the location of the first American factory. In this document, a woman reminisces about a strike that she participated in at a Lowell textile mill. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

7. Alexis de Tocqueville, \u201cHow Americans Understand the Equality of the Sexes,\u201d 1840<\/a><\/h2>\n

The French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville travelled extensively through the United States in gathering research for his book <\/em>Democracy In America. In this excerpt, he described the belief that American men and women lived in \u201cseparate spheres:\u201d men in public, women in the home. This expectation justified the denial of rights to women. All women were denied political rights in nineteenth century America, but only a small number of wealthy families could afford to remove women from economic production, like de Tocqueville claimed.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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Media<\/h1>\n

Abolitionist Sheet Music Cover Page, 1844<\/a><\/h2>\n
\"This<\/a>

Jesse Hutchinson and B.W. Thayer & Co, \u201c\u2019Get off the track!\u2019 A song for emancipation, sung by The Hutchinsons,\u201d 1844, via Library of Congress<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The \u201ctransportation revolution\u201d shaped economic change in the early 1800s, but the massive construction of railroads also had a profound impact on American politics and culture. This sheet music title page shows how abolitionists used railroad imagery to advocate for the immediate emancipation of enslaved people and to promote their political platform before the 1844 presidential election.<\/a><\/p>\n

Anti-Catholic Cartoon, 1855<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
\"This<\/a>

N. Currier, \u201cThe Propagation Society, More Free than Welcome,\u201d 1855, via Library of Congress<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Irish immigration transformed American cities. Yet many Americans greeted the new arrivals with suspicion or hostility. Nathanial Currier’s anti-Catholic cartoon reflected the popular American perception that Irish Catholic immigrants posed a threat to the United States. <\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Introduction In the early years of the nineteenth century, Americans\u2019 endless commercial ambition\u2014what one Baltimore paper in 1815 called an \u201calmost universal ambition to get forward\u201d\u2014remade the nation. Steam power, the technology that moved steamboats and railroads, fueled the rise of American industry by powering mills and sparking new national transportation networks. More […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":8,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-157","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2186,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/157\/revisions\/2186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}