The antebellum era held many beneficial innovations for the United States. The Market Revolution led to improvements in both travel and technology that guided America to become a more productive nation. More opportunities became available to all Americans which led to growth and prosperity of the people. The Market Revolution was beneficial to America in every way possible. When the term “Market Revolution” is heard, the first thing many people associate it with is Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin. Whitney’s invention was the first major innovation, revolutionizing both northern manufacturing and southern agriculture. Since the job was previously done by hand, the cotton gin produced a higher supply of cotton at a faster rate. Cotton …show more content…
The Erie Canal was the first of many canals in the North that made water travel much easier for Americans. The part of the canal being built in the town of Lockport was said to be “seven miles in length, and partly through solid rock, at an average depth of twenty feet.” (279). Thought the canal was not very wide and deep, it made trade easier between western farmers and eastern manufacturers. The canal was very beneficial to the northern residents of America because the North was a more modernized and urban place than the South, relying heavily on trade with the west. The South had no needs for the canal due to their farming capabilities. Southerners relied on Atlantic shipping to receive goods and transport cotton to the North. By 1840, one million barrels of flour were being shipped via the Erie Canal. The Erie Canal was a great innovation that showed progress of development in the nation. Water travel was not the only way of travel revolutionized during the Market Revolution. Land travel was greatly improved by the first railroad being built in the late 1820’s. It was a quicker, cheaper, and much easier way of transporting goods. Railroads could get you from one place to another in a very short amount of time, therefore being “very pleasant to people in a hurry.” (280). In the 1840’s, there was the same length of railroads as there was canals, therefore
The Erie Canal provided an extremely fast source of transportation compared to other ones of that time. A lot of the land that the Canal went through was uninhabited and therefore people weren’t able to move through these areas. Once the Canal was built it served as that pathway through these areas. The Canal also was a much cheaper source of transportation that was used by residents, tourists, emigrants, and workers during this time. Evangelical preachers used the artificial
Over time, transportation has shown to have an incredible impact on the United States. It has revealed to bring about economic and social changes in various ways. In the late eighteenth century ancient methods of traveling were still in use in America and it was often very slow. Americans were aware that if transportation advancement occurred, it would potentially increase foreign trade, increase land values as well as strengthen the American economy. In the mid 1800s it has been determined that transportation advancement has a drastic effect on our
Have you ever needed easier access to the essential items to stay alive? This is specifically what the residents of the North-East thought around the year 1817. Carol Sheriff argues in her book, “The Artificial River” that the residents of the canal corridor actively sought after long-distance trade and therefore consumer goods that markets brought to their homes. The fact that people supported the Erie Canal at all "suggests that at least some aspired to engage in broader market exchange" (p. 11). The transformation of this region because of the Erie Canal is organized around six topics, each of which is covered by a chapter. They include the; Visions of Progress, the Triumph of Art over Nature, Reducing Distance and Time, the Politics of Land and Water, the Politics of Business, and the Perils of Progress.
The new government views in the late 1800’s helped to promote America’s huge industrial growth because not one party controlled the government anymore; so all views were used to formulate new ideas.
The Market Revolution in the America was characterized by the development of technology and the desire to maximize profit. To achieve maximum profit, Americans turned to illegal means to acquire cheap labor and land. In the case of the Mexicans, Americans saw the abundance of raw materials in California and Texas and annexed the territories through border dispute. The Mexican landowners were left vulnerable to the American legal structures and lost the title to their lands. Once landowners, the Mexican became the cheap labor for the Americans and some even became the workers on the land they once owned. Taking a hard look at the core of the Market Revolution, one will find that the revolution was rooted in greed.
The economic “market revolution” and the religious “Second Great Awakening” shaped American society after 1815. Both of these developments affected women significantly, and contributed to their changing status both inside and outside the home. Throughout time, women’s roles and opportunities in the family, workplace, and society have greatly evolved.
I believe that one the most major innovation that also brought change in the market revolution was the Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793 because America lacked cotton most of 1700s, regardless of the fact that they had ability to construct textile factories and had waterways for transport. The southern planters in the past made effort to grow cotton, but never succeeded because cotton was labor intensive, so they dropped the idea and went to plant rice and tobacco, because during that period they tried growing cotton, it normally takes a lot of manpower and slaves use a whole day to separate maybe a pound of cotton seeds from fibers. They basically dropped every other crop in place of the newly profitable cotton. Also With the invention of the cotton gins, factories in the North were producing cotton cloth and cotton became the major crop in the south. Also the planters wanted increases in slave labor to plant enough cotton to take advantage of their new production capacity and this made them purchase thousands of slaves from the West Indies and Africa before slave trading was banned. As a result of the purchase of this slaves and extra manpower, the individual plantations increased in sizes, from the normal small plots to big farms with as many as several hundred slaves each. Due to the economic bloom there was a demand in labor
Would the United States have insinuated its Market Revolution to have happened as quickly as it did if it weren't for certain major factors which formed during 1790-1860? These major determining factors consisted of rapid population growth, urbanization, transportation and commerce along with growth in the industry and economy. The Industrial Revolution took off with great speed as a result of Westward expansion, and rapid large scale development. The American economy grew during this first part of the Industrial revolution, but it did not affect all parts of America in the same way. As more people began to move West for better prospects, New York City's population was still booming which caused the quality of life in places like these to vary upon circumstance.
The Erie canal helped shape America. The Northwest was expanding and needed to get their products to the east coast. However, they seemed to be lacking a water source. Since the Erie canal was connected from the Hudson river to the Great lakes this made it possible for farmers to transport goods to the east coast without a problem. The Erie canal paved the pathway to a more stable America and an economic growth by allowing transportation, trade, exporting and importing goods to be more accessible through the United States. “This great work will immortalize the present authorities of N.Y. will bless their descendants with wealth and prosperity, and prove to mankind the superiority wisdom of employing the resources of industry in works of improvement rather than destruction.” The canal combined trade and transportation allowing for commerce to help speed up the Industrialization in the United States after the Erie canal was
In 1793 the cotton industry bloomed because of Eli Whitney when he invented the cotton gin. With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became a tremendously profitable industry, creating many fortunes for white plantation owners in the antebellum South. “American inventor Eli Whitney and his cotton gin improved the cleaning of raw cotton, facilitating the continuing growth of the industry in many locales.” This proves that the cotton industry rose after the gin was invented. It is evident that Eli Whitney played a major part of the growth of the cotton industry. Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the cotton industry.
This made it very hard for the individual states to come up with the money. Usually private investors took care of this issue (Roark, 260). Canals were another way for an increase in transportation. They would connect cities, such as the Erie Canal, which covered the area between Albany and Buffalo and connecting New York City to the area of the Great Lakes (Roark, 261). Railroads also came into the picture with the first railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio in 1829 (Roark, 262).
The market revolution changed the economic life for all Americans. It took place in the early decade of the 19th century. Historians and writers as Eric Foner writes in his book Give Me Liberty!, one example is when he talks about the market revolution he refers to serious economic changes that took place between 1800s and around 1840s which included many things such as great improvement in transportation, building steamboats, the telegraph and the Erie Canal, which was about 36o miles long canal from the Great Lake to the Hudson River. This upgrade made it a cheaper, easier and faster transportation. By making these great improvements, products were able to be sent to other places to make more profit. Not only profit came out of it, but this gave
The Erie Canal had a major impact on trades from Canada. First of all, before the canal, people had to trade from coming dirt roads (Doc.2). Traveling on dirt road was time consuming. It took 28 days to reach Buffalo from New York City (Doc. 2). After the canal was built, it only 8 days. Not to mention, the cost per ton was cut down about 90 bucks (Doc. 2). This paved the way for New York City to become the busiest port city in America. (Doc. 1). Also, farmers were helped by this change. When the crops were ready to be transported, farmers loaded them onto ships in the canal and took them to different places(OI). Virginia Schomp called the growth because of the canal a “terrific boon”(Doc. 1). As a result, America was changed forever.
Trade was hard to accomplish back in the 1800’s, mostly because of robbers, but the Erie Canal helped with that. First of all, the Erie Canal was safe, partly because it was on the water. The Erie Canal was also reliable not only because you can use it whenever you want, but also because you can go either ways. The final feature of the Erie Canal is its safety. On the Erie Canal, you are on water and less likely to be attacked by robbers. This brings
Railroads were the linchpin in the new industrialized economy. The railroad industry enabled raw materials, finished products, food, and people to travel cross-country in a matter of days, as opposed to the months or years that it took just prior to the Civil War. By the end of the war, the United States boasted some 35,000 miles of track, mostly in the industrialized North. By the turn of the century, that number had jumped to almost 200,000 miles, linking the North, South, and West. With these railroads making travel easier, millions of rural Americans flocked to the cities, and by 1900, nearly 40 percent of the population lived in urban areas.