1 Visions of America, A History of the United States

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R Workers, Farmers, and SlavesThe Transformation of the American Economy, 1815–1848

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1 Visions of America, A History of the United States

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Workers, Farmers, and Slaves

I. The Market Revolution

II. The Spread of Industrialization

III. The Changing Urban Landscape

IV. Southern Society

V. Life and Labor Under Slavery

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY, 1815–1848

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Workers, Farmers, and Slaves

I. The Market RevolutionA. Agricultural Changes and Consequences

B. A Nation on the Move: Roads, Canals, Steamboats, and Trains

C. Spreading the News

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY, 1815–1848

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The Market Revolution

How did technology change agriculture in the era of the market revolution?

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The Market Revolution

Market Revolution – A set of interrelated developments in agriculture, technology, and industry that led to the creation of a more integrated national economy. Impersonal market forces impelled the maximization of production of agricultural products and manufactured goods and increased consumption.

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Agricultural Changes and Consequences

What role did technological change play in the improvements in agriculture during the era of the market revolution? What kind of impact on values did such changes foster?

Why did the Farmer’s Almanac frown on huskings and frolics?

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A Nation on the Move: Roads, Canals, Steamboats, and Trains

What role did the railroad play as a symbol of American progress?

What impact did the Erie Canal have on New York’s economy?

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Images as History

• How did George Inness view technological progress in his paintings of the Lackawanna Valley?

NATURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE RAILROAD: GEORGE’S INNESS’S THE LACKAWANNA VALLEY (1855)

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Images as HistoryNATURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE RAILROAD:

GEORGE’S INNESS’S THE LACKAWANNA VALLEY (1855)

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Inness increased size of roundhouse to please patron.

Figure of boy evokes harmony with nature.

Tree stumps suggest cost of progress to nature.

Spreading the News

How did the telegraph transform communication?

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Spreading the News

Telegraph – Invention patented by Samuel Morse in 1837 that used electricity to send coded messages over wires, making communication nearly instantaneous

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Spreading the News

Why was the firm of Currier and Ives so successful?

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The Spread of Industrialization

A. From Artisan to Worker

B. Women and Work

C. The Lowell Experiment

D. Urban Industrialization

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From Artisan to Worker

How did the factory change work?

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From Artisan to Worker

Artisan Production – A system of manufacturing goods, built around apprenticeship, that defined the preindustrial economy. The apprentice learned a trade under the guidance of an artisan who often housed, clothed, and fed the apprentice.

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Women and Work

How did nineteenth-century ideas about gender roles affect the organization of the Lowell system?

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The Lowell Experiment

What was the Lowell system?

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The Lowell Experiment

Waltham System – Also known as the mill town model, a system that relied on factories housing all the distinctive steps of cloth production under a single roof. The Waltham System depended on a large labor force housed in company-owned dormitories.

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Urban Industrialization

How did urban industrialization differ from other models of industrialization such as the Waltham and Lowell systems?

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Competing Visions

Lowell mill women identified with American Revolution and sought support by focusing on issues of rights and independence.

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THE LOWELL STRIKE OF 1834

How did ideas about gender shape the response of those who were critical of the Lowell strike?

Supporters of the mill owners highlighted the radical and unladylike behavior of the strikers.

The Changing Urban Landscape

A. Old Ports and the New Cities of the Interior

B. Immigrants and the City

C. Free Black Communities in the North

D. Riot, Unrest, and Crime 

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Old Ports and the New Cities of the Interior

What was the Five Points neighborhood and why did it become so well known?

What does the creation of gated parks such as Gramercy Park tell us about urban life in this period?

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Immigrants and the City

How did immigration patterns change in the early nineteenth century?

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Free Black Communities in the North

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Riot, Unrest, and Crime

Why did urban violence increase in the early nineteenth century?

What does the murder of Helen Jewett reveal about nineteenth-century city life?

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Envisioning Evidence

Does the historical evidence support the concerns expressed by moral reformers about the prevalence of commercial sex in New York?

THE ECONOMICS AND GEOGRAPHY OF VICE IN MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY NEW YORK

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39 Visions of America, A History of the United States

Southern Society

A. The Planter Class

B. Yeomen and Tenant Farmers

C. Free Black Communities

D. White Southern Culture

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The Planter Class

What do plantation architecture and the arrangement of buildings tell us about slavery?

What values defined the planter class?

How did the experience of free blacks in the South compare with those in the North?

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Yeomen and Tenant Farming

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White Southern Culture

What role did honor play in Southern culture?

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Life and Labor Under Slavery

A. Varied Systems of Slave Labor

B. Life in the Slave Quarters

C. Slave Religion and Music

D. Resistance and Revolt

E. Slavery and the Law

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Varied Systems of Slave Labor

Where was the Black Belt?

What role did violence play in slave society?

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Varied Systems of Slave Labor

Black Belt – A swath of dark rich soil well suited to cotton agriculture that stretched westward from Alabama and eventually reached the easternmost part of Texas

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Life in the Slave Quarters

Why did so many slaves marry slaves living on other plantations?

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Slave Religion and Music

How did slaves modify Christianity to articulate their distinctive religious vision?

Why did biblical themes from the story of the Exodus figure so prominently in slave spirituals?

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Slave Religion and Music

Spirituals – Religious songs created by slaves. Spirituals’ symbolism drew heavily on biblical themes.

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Resistance and Revolt

Who was Nat Turner?

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Resistance and Revolt

Nat Turner’s Rebellion – Am 1831 slave uprising in Virginia led by Nat Turner that shocked many in the South and led to a host of new repressive measures against slaves

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Slavery and the Law

Why did Judge Ruffin (see Choices and Consequences: Conscience or Duty? Judge Ruffin’s Quandary) argue that the power of the master over the slave must be absolute?

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Slavery and the Law

State v. Mann – The 1829 North Carolina Supreme Court case that involved a white man’s assault on a slave. The case asserted that the domination of the master over the slave was complete.

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Choices and Consequences

• State v. Mann was appealed to state Supreme Court• Judge Ruffin had to decide between what he felt was

right and what law required

CONSCIENCE OR DUTY? JUSTICE RUFFIN’S QUANDARY

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Choices and Consequences

Choices regarding State v. Mann

CONSCIENCE OR DUTY? JUSTICE RUFFIN’S QUANDARY

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Affirm that temporary master’s power to discipline

was limited

Affirm that even a temporary master’s power over slaves

was unlimited

Affirm lower court ruling and focus on use of excessive

force

Choices and Consequences

Decision and Consequences•Master’s unlimited authority over slaves was affirmed•State v. Will later asserted that slaves did not surrender basic right to self-defense

CONSCIENCE OR DUTY? JUSTICE RUFFIN’S QUANDARY

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Does the law of slavery support the claim that the law is a tool of the powerful or that it is a constraint on them?

Choices and Consequences

Continuing Controversies

•What role did ideas of justice play in Justice Ruffin’s understanding of the rule of law?

CONSCIENCE OR DUTY? JUSTICE RUFFIN’S QUANDARY

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