Economic and Social Changes in the 1800s

260 Words2 Pages
• Unpaved roads • Paved turnpikes (toll roads)-1790s; advances in network of roads 1840-60; stagecoaches • National Road (1811-38) • Overland trails (Oregon mapped 1836, Great Migration beings 1843, Santa Fe: US survey of trail authorized 1825; Mormon 1846) • Canal building: full effect felt in the 1820s and1830s. (Little canal construction in east by the 1830s, went on in the west until 1850s) • Erie canal (1817-25): 250 miles) • Steamboat (Fulton 1807; 700+ steamboats on Miss. & Ohio Rivers early 1830s) • Clipper ships • Steamships (1840s-1850s) • Railroads (beginning in 1830s); by 1860s, approximately 30,000 miles of track • Pony Express (1859) Economic Change: • Market Revolution: emergence of national economy • Steamboats and canals reduced freight rates to 1/10 of overland rates • Cheap land/ preemption/ speculation • Demand for agricultural commodities; Ohio, Indiana, Illinois become the breadbasket • Extended slavery • Plantations in the Old Southwest; not many small commercial communities • With advent of Erie Canal, the value of farm produces in western New York and the Ohio Valley more than doubled • The East provides capital and markets. New York is favored over New Orleans. Change in Mississippi River traffic. • Industrialization in Northeast (Lowell Factory system) • Gibbens v. Ogden (1824); Charles River Bridge case (1837) • Clay’s American system (internal improvements, banks, protective tariff) • Panics of 1837 and 1857 Social Change: • Urbanization: poverty in cities leading to social reform movements • Westward migration (Mormons) • Extension of slavery • New Englanders going into old Northwest; brings orderly community development and interest in education • Immigration (population shift westward) • Lowell Factory System (provides job opportunities; mill girls) • Indian wars and

More about Economic and Social Changes in the 1800s

Open Document