1
CHAPTER 8
The Emergence of a Market Economy
1815–1850
This chapter follows the transformation of a young nation through many aspects of both economic and
social developments. In this chapter, one can trace developments in agriculture, transportation,
technology, industrial production, corporate organization, urbanization, immigration, labor unions, land
policy, the distribution of wealth, and urban culture.
CORE OBJECTIVES
1. Describe how changes in transportation and communications altered the economic landscape during
the first half of the nineteenth century.
2. Explain the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the way people worked and lived.
3. Analyze how immigration altered the nation’s population and shaped its politics.
4. Evaluate the impact of the expanding capitalist “market economy” on workers, professionals, and
women.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
1. The Market Revolution
A. Transportation
i. New Roads
ii. Water Transportation
iii. Railroads
iv. Ocean Transportation
B. Communications
C. The Role of Government
2. Industrial Development
A. American Technology
B. King Cotton
2
C. The Expansion of Slavery
D. Farming the Midwest
E. Early Textile Manufacturers
F. The Lowell System
G. Industrialization, Cities, and the Environment
3. Immigration
A. The Irish
B. The Germans
C. Nativism
4. Organized Labor and New Professions
A. Early Unions
B. The Rise of the Professions
i. Teaching
ii. Law, Medicine, and Engineering
C. Women in the Professional Workforce
D. Equal Opportunities
LECTURE IDEAS
1. Begin with an introductory lecture on the agricultural, industrial, and transportation revolutions that
flourished during this era. See the following titles:
• Thomas C. Cochran’s Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialization in America (1981)
• George R. Taylor’s The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (1951)
• Wilbur Cash’s The Mind of the South (1941)
• Paul W. Gates’s The Farmer’s Age of Agriculture, 1815–1860 (1966)
2. Use the biographical approach to examine the origins of American industrialization with a lecture on
one of the most profoundly important figures in the history of American technology: Eli Whitney. He
3. For two lecture ideas on the Erie Canal, see Julius Rubin’s “Canal or Railroad?” (Transactions of the
American Philosophical Society, Nov. 1961), which describes how three cities—Baltimore, Boston,
and Philadelphia—reacted to New York’s Erie Canal; and Paul Johnson’s A Shopkeeper’s Millennium
(1978), which describes the growth and changes that the Erie Canal brought to Rochester and how the
“Second Great Awakening” (Chapter 13) can be seen in part as a response to that growth. For a general
3
4. Have students trace their family roots to determine from where their ancestors came. You can then give
an introductory lecture on the issue of immigration before the Civil War in America, integrating your
5. Lecture on American agriculture include both advances and changes. Revisit the visions that some of
our founding fathers, such as Jefferson and Adams, had towards agriculture and industrialization.
Conclude the lecture by discussing why agrarians feared America becoming an Industrial Power.
Relevant websites include:
• “Revolution in Agriculture”: http://countrystudies.us/united-states/history-74.htm
• “The Agricultural Revolution”:
6. Prepare a lecture that looks at dramatic changes in levels of alcoholic consumption between roughly
1820 and 1840 to illustrate the profound social and economic changes transforming American life. See
W. J. Rorabaugh’s The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (1979) and Jack Larkin’s The
Reshaping of Everyday Life: 1790–1840 (1988) for their coverage of taverns as vital local institutions.
IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES / FLIPPED CLASSROOM SUGGESTIONS
1. The Erie Canal was one of the most successful internal improvement projects in early American
2. This chapter’s discussion of work might offer a good opportunity to have a discussion about the nature
of work in relation to gender in the early nineteenth century. Challenge students with questions about
3. Divide the class into small groups and have them research the history of patents in America. Have each
group find and discuss two patents—the most useful item and the most outlandish patent they can find.
Sources that might be helpful include:
4
• “Six significant moments in patent history”: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-moments-patent-
idUSKBN0IN1Y120141104
4. Films such as Gangs of New York (2002) can be helpful in class. This film addresses issues such as
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Discuss the transportation revolution that followed the opening of the Erie Canal.
2. What factors account for the tremendous growth in cotton cultivation from 1790 to 1860?
3. Examine the movement westward that took place in the early nineteenth century, making note of the
various pieces of legislation that played a role in the process.
4. Examine the impact the War of 1812 had on American industrial development.
5. Discuss the Know-Nothings political group, elaborating on the conditions that set a conducive
environment for the organization to develop and those that led to the organization’s demise.
6. As America continued to develop and transform into a dynamic market economy, did the promise of
inalienable rights—“Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” as outlined by our forefathers—
apply to everyone who wished to be in the workforce? Was there equality?
PRACTICING CITIZENSHIP
This chapter describes some of the ecological changes brought about by the growth of the textile industry
in New England from the 1820s onward. Of course, modern industry confronts us with environmental
challenges undreamed of in the nineteenth century. One of these new challenges is the need to