CHAPTER 9 The Market Revolution, 1800–1840
This chapter concentrates on two of the three historical processes unleashed by the Revolution and accelerated after the War of 1812:
the spread of market relations and the westward movement of the population. Americans’ understanding of freedom was changing to
include economic opportunity, physical mobility, and participation in the democratic political system. The chapter chronicles the im-
portant advancements made in transportation and communication, the growth of western cities, and the expansion of the Cotton King-
dom and slavery. The chapter then explores the market society through early industrialization. First, in discussing agriculture, the chap-
ter illustrates how commercial farmers began replacing self-sufficient farmers. Then, turning to manufacturing, it explores how factory
workers were replacing skilled artisans. Most of the early New England textile workers were women. With early industrialization came
the growth of immigration, particularly from Ireland and Germany, and the prejudices that arose in the form of nativism. The material-
ism of the market society and loss of the self-sufficient farmer and artisan are in stark contrast in the next section, titled “The Free Indi-
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: The Marquis de Lafayette
II. A New Economy
1. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the market revolution changed the United States.
A. Roads and Steamboats
1. Improvements in transportation lowered costs and linked farmers to markets.
3. Improved water transportation most dramatically increased the speed and lowered the expense of commerce.
B. The Erie Canal
1. The canal was completed in 1825 and made New York City a major trade port.
3. By 1837, 3,000 miles of canals had been built.
C. Railroads and the Telegraph
2. The telegraph introduced a communication revolution.
D. The Rise of the West
1. Improvements in transportation and communication made possible the rise of the West as a powerful, self-conscious
region of the new nation.
3. Squatters set up farms on unoccupied land.
4. Many Americans settled without regard to national boundaries.
5. By 1840, 7 million Americans lived west of the Appalachian Mountains, with Ohio being the third most populous state.
E. An Internal Borderland
1. The Ohio River became a boundary between free and slave societies because the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited
slavery in the Old Northwest.
3. The area had a large concentration of people of southern ancestry that would make Indiana and Illinois key political
F. The Cotton Kingdom
1. The market revolution and westward expansion heightened the nation’s sectional divisions.
3. The cotton gin revolutionized American slavery.
G. The Unfree Westward Movement
1. Historians estimate that between 1800 and 1860, around 1 million slaves were shifted from the older slave states to the
Deep South.
3. Cotton became the nation’s most important export, with the country producing 170 million pounds in 1820.
III. Market Society
A. Commercial Farmers
1. The North became a region with an integrated economy of commercial farms and manufacturing cities.
3. The East provided a source of credit and a market.
4. Between 1840 and 1860, America’s output of wheat nearly tripled.
a. John Deere’s steel plow
B. The Growth of Cities
1. Cities formed part of the western frontier.
2. The nature of work shifted from that of the skilled artisan to that of the factory worker.
C. The Factory System
1. Samuel Slater established America’s first factory in 1790.
a. It was based on an outwork system.
3. The American System of manufactures relied on the mass production of interchangeable parts that could be rapidly
assembled into standardized, finished products.
D. The Industrial Worker
1. Americans became more aware of clock time.
2. Working for an hourly or daily wage seemed to violate the independence Americans considered an essential element of
freedom.
E. The “Mill Girls”
2. Mills had strict rules for young unmarried women.
3. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) includes an essay from 1845 by “mill girl” Sarah Bagley which
calls attention to the poor working conditions of women workers in Lowell factories.
F. The Growth of Immigration
1. Economic expansion fueled a demand for labor, which was met, in part, by increased immigration from abroad.
2. Numerous factors inspired this massive flow of population across the Atlantic.
G. Irish and German Newcomers
2. The Irish were refugees from disaster, fleeing the Irish potato famine.
3. German immigrants included a considerably larger number of skilled craftsmen as compared to Irish immigrants.
H. The Rise of Nativism
1. The influx of Irish elevated the presence of the Catholic Church in America, which many native-born Americans viewed
with great suspicion.
2. Those who feared the impact of immigration on American political and social life were called nativists. They blamed
immigrants for:
3. In the 1840s, nativism found expression both in the streets and at the ballot box.
I. The Transformation of Law
1. The corporate form of business organization became central to the new market economy.
a. It enjoyed special privileges and powers granted in a charter.
3. The Supreme Court ruled on many aspects of corporations and employer/employee rights.
a. Courts upheld the right of competition.
IV. The Free Individual
1. Westward migration and urban development created a mobile population.
A. The West and Freedom
2. In national myth and ideology, the West would long remain “the last home of the freeborn American.”
B. The Transcendentalists
1. Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that freedom was an open-ended process of self-realization by which individuals could
remake themselves and their own lives.
C. Individualism
1. Americans came to understand that no one person or government had the right to interfere with the realm of the self.
2. Thoreau worried that the market revolution actually stifled individual judgment; genuine freedom lay within the
individual.
D. The Second Great Awakening
2. The Reverend Charles Grandison Finney became a national celebrity for his preaching in upstate New York.
3. The Second Great Awakening democratized American Christianity.
E. The Awakening’s Impact
2. Revivalist ministers seized the opportunities offered by the market revolution to spread their message.
F. The Emergence of Mormonism
1. Competition among religious groups kept religion vibrant and promoted the emergence of new denominations.
3. Smith translated and published the plates as The Book of Mormon.
a. The Book of Mormon was seen as a holy book or work of literature.
V. The Limits of Prosperity
A. Liberty and Prosperity
1. Official imagery linked the goddess of liberty ever more closely to emblems of material wealth.
3. The market revolution produced a new middle class.
B. Race and Opportunity
2. Barred from schools and other public facilities, free blacks laboriously constructed their own institutional life.
a. African Methodist Episcopal Church
4. Free blacks were not allowed access to public land in the West.
C. The Cult of Domesticity
2. A new definition of femininity emerged based on values like love, friendship, and mutual obligation.
4. Women were to find freedom in fulfilling their duties within their sphere.
D. Women and Work
1. Only low–paying jobs were available to women.
2. Not working outside the home became a badge of respectability for women.
a. Freedom was freedom from labor.
4. Men wanted a “family wage,” which was seen as a form of social justice.
E. The Early Labor Movement
1. Some felt the market revolution reduced their freedom.
2. The first Workingman’s Parties were established in the 1820s.
F. The “Liberty of Living”
1. Wage workers evoked “liberty” when calling for improvements in the workplace.
2. Some described wage labor as the very essence of slavery.
3. “Wealth and labor” were at war, according to Orestes Brownson.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• Discuss how Americans’ understandings of freedom were changing to include economic opportunity, physical mobility, and
participation in the democratic system.
• Discuss transcendentalism and its impact on defining freedom. Who were the major transcendentalists?
• Compare the experiences of the Irish and German immigrants. What was nativism? Why were many Americans so suspicious of
newcomers?
• What were the major aspects of the market revolution?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
Catholicism, the Irish, and Nativism
Women
The Lowell Offering
Second Great Awakening
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Bernstein, Peter. Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.
Deyle, Steven. Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade In American Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Eisler, Benita, ed. The Lowell Offering: Writings by New England Mill Women (1840–1845). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.
Field, Peter. Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Making of a Democratic Intellectual. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
Hankin, Barry. The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2004.
Horton, James Oliver, and Lois Horton. In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Transform the class into a group of “mill girls” who work at the Lowell Mills in Massachusetts during the mid–1800s. As you do this, put on the screen a
series of images of the Lowell Offering, provided by the University of Massachusetts at https://libguides.uml.edu/c.php?g492497&p3369421. Ask
the students a series of questions regarding their working conditions. Encourage individual students to respond in character. Sample questions include:
• What problems are you experiencing at work?
• How does management respond to your needs?
2. Ask your students to select one of five “interest groups” representing the social and racial divisions of antebellum America: free blacks, white
nativists/working-class laborers, Irish immigrants, middle-class white women, and Mormons. Place the students in separate groups while they dis-
cuss key aspects of their group’s historical background. Then, generate a lively class discussion by asking questions such as:
• Which group has the hardest life? The easiest? Why?
• What jobs do you perform and why?
• What social activities do you participate in?