The period I chose to focus on was the Antebellum Period of 1789-1812. From this period the three things I chose to touch upon were the Cotton Gin, Early Industrialization and the Rise in Manufacturing in the North, and the canal system during the Antebellum Period in American history. This period is considered to be the period right before the civil war and after the War of 1812. It was described by the rise of abolition and the gradual polarization of the country between abolitionists and supporters of slavery.
During this time, the country’s economy began shifting in the south; a cotton boom made plantations the center of the economy. While in the north, manufacturing the Industrial Revolution began. The reinforcement and the actions of American individuals and the creation that Americans and the introduction of the United States are superior and Americans are compel to share these institutions. In the South, before overplanting leached most of the nutrient from the soil, cotton wool plantations were very profitable.
According to Starbird, “there were advances with processing the fiber from Eli Whitney’s cotton noose to the development of exponent looms and the sewing machine increased demand for cotton to export from the South to England and the milling machinery of New England”(Starbid). In 1830, The Indian Removal Act was passed which allowed plantation owners to be able to obtain large pieces of land for little money. These plantations depended on an astronomically immense violence of slave labor to cultivate and harvest home the crop.
Most gabardine farmers wanted and were able to obtain their own farms as the United States grew bigger through the south and west, and striver not only provided a labor origin that couldn’t resign or demand higher wage, their progeny insured person that labor germ would perpetuate for generations. The United States rejected the importing of more slaves from Africa; the slave trade prices increased, which made it more favorable for the farmers who had already settled areas to sell their slaves further south and west.
Farmers in located in the South had very small to medium-sized farms with just a small amount of slaves, but the extremely large plantation owners who was rich, managed them considerable and had political power. As the quality of land started to diminish from cultivation, slave owners had found that the majority of their wealth maintained in the form of their slaves; they drove them to begin looking to other land that were in the Caribbean and the Central America, where they were able to preserve their way of life and expand their land.
The textile industry began in during the early industrial revolution In New England, the early, which was brought about by Samuel Slater. Slater a previous apprentice to Britain’s biggest material production lines who moved to Rhode island after taking in that American states were paying bounties to kin who might help reproduce British material machines. For example, the turning Jenny, even in spite of the British administration forbidden the exporting of these machines or emigration of people with some sort of knowledge about them. In Beverley Massachusetts, in 1787, the horsepowered Beverly cotton manufactory opened. The New England cotton manufacture introduced, a new element into the national economy, placing industry beside agriculture and commerce in the nation and making it dominant in one region” (Ware & Lincoln). In 1793, slater opened a completely mechanized Plant within Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
His mills spread all through Plant town sand through Blackstone valley and Massachusetts. In the 1820s, Slater’s system was replaced by a more efficient Waltham or Lowell system. The Waltham system included power looms in the mill, rather than Slater’s practice of having eaving done at local farms. The Waltham system also included trained employees mainly young women giving rise to the concept of wage labor. “The relatively attractive conditions of high wages, independent town life, social companionship, and intellectual stimulation that had drawn Yankee farm girls into the mills in the 1820s had deteriorated markedly in the face of speed-ups and cuts in the piece-rates by the 1840s, when workers labored long hours in dim and stinking factories and returned to poor food and crowded living conditions in the boarding houses” (Kennedy).
A population movement begun, yet the guarantees about finer salary inside the production line accelerated that movement. Manufacturing developments were not restricted to those materials alone. Comparable developments happened over different industries, including fabricate of equipment, machinery, furniture, paints, paper, and glass. All aspects of the American industry and the production processing were affected. Following the Revolutionary War, political leaders and businesses realized the need to further unify the country by adding roads.
The planners of the canal, which was completed in 1825, shared the optimism of the founding fathers that saw in their naked land the raw materials of future strength and expansion. Their prophecy was part of the basic pattern which was, as it always has been, one of hopeful vision” (Black). Private turnpikes, railroad companies and the local governments began building canals and roads. The War of 1812 and between the plantations in the south and north, manufacturers proved the problem of internal transportation and a federal system was needed, but several proposals to fund and build the transportation system were considered unconstitutional.
The conservative Democratic Party in particular disagreed with federal funding of internal improvements. Instead, the private companies proposed the roads and canals, and then offered investors to provide the building fund. In 1817, construction took place on the Erie Canal which would link Lake Erie and the Hudson River; this canal building lasted well into the 1840s when railroads superseded canals. Companies of the turnpike also experienced a hike by 1830, which allowed for more than 10,000 miles of turnpikes to be operating in the east.
At this time, the commissioners were responsible for maintaining the stretch of road under their care and were authorized to collect tolls. The building of the canal system created shorter trade routes into many different parts of the interior, and port cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore witnessed some of their business shifting to ports along canal routes. Starting a railroad boom in the 1830s, they began investing in railroads to reach the interior of the country. This would last up until the Civil War and begin anew following the war.
The Railroads expanded quite quickly in the 1830s that they surpassed the mileage of the canals. Many were small run railroads that were built to connect ports with points inland, which were then connected to each other by rail. Railroads were more direct, faster and more reliable than turnpikes or t canal system. Soon after the east coast were connected by railroad to the west side of the Great Lakes, Chicago, and Mississippi. With canals, and roads, railroads were built with private funds generated subscriptions the sale of stocks or bonds.
The effects that came out of the Antebellum Period were religious and social movements that had an extreme effect on the course of American history, which included the westward expansion to the Pacific, sectional divisions that ended in civil war, a population shift from farms to industrial centers, the abolition of slavery and the growth of feminist and temperance movements. Ultimately, this period led America to the brink of its most devastating war one fought between neighbors and brothers, the Civil War.
