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In Episode 8 of Star-Spangled Studies, Dr. G breaks down how steam, railroads, canals, and cotton transformed the young Republic. Key topics include:

• Post–War of 1812 “Era of Good Feelings” and rising nationalism

• Transportation revolution: steamboats, Erie Canal & railroads

• Telegraph & communication revolution

• Market integration: from subsistence farms to cash crops

• Cotton gin, “King Cotton” & the internal slave trade

• Rise of Northern factories: Lowell Mill girls & early labor protests

• Republican Motherhood and separate spheres

• Immigration surge, nativism, & the Know-Nothing movement

• Debating the Market Revolution: progress vs. dislocation

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Historian Dr. G covers the steam engine, Erie Canal, railroads, cotton gin, factory growth, telegraph, and the paradox of free labor vs. expanding slavery in the early 19th century.

Keywords: Market Revolution podcast, Erie Canal, steamboat, railroads, cotton gin, Lowell Mill girls, telegraph, King Cotton, Dr. G

Hello y'all.

2

It's me.

3

It's me.

4

It's Dr.

5

G.

6

The last time we were together on

Star Spangled Studies, the United

7

States was basking in the glow.

8

In the era of good feelings, the nation

survived a second war with Great Britain.

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A new wave of nationalism

swept through the country.

10

And the old Federalist party was

all but dead, leaving Jefferson's

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Democratic Republicans in charge.

12

But this good feeling was a thin line

over a society that was about to be torn

13

apart and rebuilt from the ground up

in the early years of the 19th century.

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In almost quote, universal ambition to

get forward as one Baltimore newspaper.

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Put it in 1815.

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It remade the nation.

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This wasn't a political revolution, fought

with guns and pamphlets, but a revolution

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of technology, commerce, and labor.

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It was a revolution of steam engines

and telegraph wires of newly built

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canals that cut through mountains and

factories that rose from the river banks.

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Historians call this the market

revolution between the American Revolution

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and the Civil War, the old world of

subsistence farming where families

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produce mostly everything for themselves.

24

Died and in its wake a new,

more commercial nation was born.

25

It was an age of explosive economic

growth of staggering new fortunes

26

and what felt like endless promise.

27

The American dream was in its

infancy, but this revolution.

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Market Revolution had its costs.

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It created new forms of labor,

and it formed new social classes.

30

It sparked devastating financial

depressions and panics, and as

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northern factories boomed their

demand for cotton also boomed, which

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accelerated an entrenched slavery,

that brutal institution in the South.

33

Even more so today we're gonna

explore this massive transformation

34

that we call the Market Revolution.

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How did these new technologies

knit a vast continent together?

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How did the way Americans

worked, lived and thought about

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themselves change forever?

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And how did this new world of free labor

and slavery of wealth and inequality.

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Set the stage for the conflicts to come.

40

So let's go.

41

So this was a revolution basically at

first in transportation and communication.

42

In order for us to really understand

the market revolution, we have to

43

start with a simple problem that was

occurring in these United States, and

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that was the problem of overcoming

distance In the early 18 hundreds.

45

The United States was a huge country

with a transportation system that.

46

Could not keep pace moving goods from

the interior to the coast was slow and

47

it was incredibly difficult, and to do

so was actually prohibitively expensive.

48

It could cost as much to ship a ton of

goods 30 miles over land as it did to ship

49

it from the ports on the coast to England.

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That's how difficult and costly it was.

51

The reality of this kept

the nation's economy then.

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Very local and very agrarian.

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Everything you needed had to be

within a close distance of you because

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of the costs of transportation.

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But with the market revolution that

was about to change after the war

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of 1812, a new spirit of nationalism

led to calls for the government to

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invest in what they called internal

improvements to strengthen the nation.

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In his 1850 under address to Congress

President James Madison, a man once

59

very wary of federal power like

Jefferson before him now called for the

60

government and for public investment

from the government to create a

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system of national roads and canals.

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So this shift in thinking helped what

launched a transportation revolution.

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The first great breakthrough

was technological.

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It was the invention of the

Steamboat Robert Fulton successfully

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launched the Claremont on the

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just the beginning of steam boats.

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Boats powered by steam.

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By the 1830s Steamboats, plied,

the rivers of the American

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West, especially the Mississippi

turning frontier towns like St.

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Louis and Cincinnati, which

were on the periphery now

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into bustling commercial hubs.

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So what made steam powered

ships so important?

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Well.

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It can go against the current.

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The power of the steam meant that boats

can go in both directions on a river,

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not just one direction, and not pulled

by animals back against the current.

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That's literally what they had to do.

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Now, boats can go in both directions.

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In the steam power was

much faster as well too.

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But maybe the most spectacular example

of this revolution in transportation

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was the building of canals, and

specifically the Erie Canal.

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This was completed in 1825.

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This was a 350 mile manmade

waterway, and it was a marvel of

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technological engineering at the time.

85

Why was this so important?

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To put it simply, it linked the Great

Lakes to the Hudson River, and for

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those that don't know, the Hudson

River flowed from upstate New York.

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To New York City.

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So it linked New York City with the

agricultural heartland in the northeast.

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The impact of this was immediate and

staggering the cost of shipping a

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ton of wheat from Buffalo, New York

to New York City, New York plummeted

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from roughly a hundred dollars to $10

towns along this route, like Rochester.

93

Exploded into cities overnight.

94

A British visitor named Basel

Hall described the scene in

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Rochester because of this in 1829.

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Everything in this bustling

place appears to be in motion.

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The very streets seem to be starting

up of their own accord, ready

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made, and looking as fresh and new.

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As if they had been turned out of

the workman's hands, but an hour

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before sawmills planning machines,

flower mills were all hard at work.

101

The canal banks were covered

with boats loading and unloading.

102

End quote.

103

The Erie Canal made New York City,

the nation's premier port and

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commercial center, a status that

it has maintained to this very day.

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The success of the Erie Canal sparked a

canal building boom, across the country.

106

It is also in this time period

that the next technological.

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Innovation.

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The one that would help change this

transportation even more in the

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decades to come was the railroad.

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In 1827, the Baltimore and Ohio

Railroad, or the b and o Railroad for

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you Monopoly fans, became the first

long distance rail line in America.

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Though initially slower and more

expensive than Canal Transport

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Railroad had a couple of advantages

over canals, which would lead to it

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becoming, uh, the country, becoming more

dependent on them in the years to come.

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The first was that it

could operate year round.

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Winter did not affect going on

rivers or into lakes as would canals.

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And second.

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The railroads can go anywhere.

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There was land as long as you built a

bridge to go over water canals really

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only went where you could dig them.

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So by 1860, the United States

had over 30,000 miles of track.

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This was more than the

rest of the world combined.

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The transport revolution was then matched

with a revolution in communication.

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These two things together,

the invention of the telegraph

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by a man named Samuel Morse.

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No wonder we have a Morse

code after Samuel Morse.

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This happened in the 1840s and this

itself was another game changer.

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Suddenly, information could travel

at the speed of electricity,

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not by the speed of a horse.

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By the time of the Civil War, there

was a web of telegraph lines that

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connected the nation, transforming

businesses, politics, journalism.

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People could talk to each other.

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At the same time in different places,

that is absolutely revolutionary.

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Think about how social media has

allowed you to do the same thing.

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That's the power of the telegraph.

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So together, these innovations,

one in transportation, and then

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later one in communication,

reshape the American economy and

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fundamentally change the lives.

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Of all people, especially ordinary

people, farmers who once produced

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mainly for their own families or their

local community now could grow crops

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and send them to distant markets.

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They earned cash for what they had

previously consumed, and they were

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now able then to purchase goods.

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That they had previously

made for themselves.

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So a new integrated

national market was born.

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You could grow things in the heartland,

sell them to the East coast and use

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that money to buy goods that were being

produced in the East coast that could

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now from the factories be sent inland.

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What a change that really was.

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So the new market had.

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A voracious appetite and its

hunger would be unfortunately

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fed by a system of human bondage.

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It is one of the great and terrible

ironies of United States history.

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The market revolution, which

created a dynamic economy of free

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labor in the north, also led to the

dramatic expansion and entrenchment

156

of unfree slavery in the South.

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These two systems were not separate.

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They were deeply and

tragically intertwined.

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The key to this story is cotton.

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Before the 1790s, cotton was a minor crop.

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The long staple cotton that

was easy to clean grew only off

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the sea islands off the coast.

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The short staple cotton that could

grow inland was filled with sticky

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green seeds that took a full day

for an enslaved person to clean

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just one pound of cotton by hand.

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Then in 1793, a young new

Englander named Eli Whitney.

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Invented the cotton gin, a simple machine,

and you used a hand crank to turn a

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cylinder with wired teeth that would

pull the cotton fibers through a mesh

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screen, separating it from that sticky

seed, a single hand cranked gin could

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now clean 50 pounds of cotton in a day.

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The effect of this one machine.

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Was explosive as it was tragic

cotton production because of it

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skyrocketed the South, which had been

facing an economic crisis as its old

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crop di tobacco declined in value.

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The south was now reborn

as the cotton kingdom.

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It came king cotton and as cotton

production boomed, so did the

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demand for land to grow cotton on.

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And with that.

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More slaves to pick the cotton.

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This created a massive

internal slave trade.

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A second middle passage that saw

over a million slave forcibly moved

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from older slave states in the

upper South to the new cotton lands

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of the deep south and the west.

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The number of enslaved people

in the United States also

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grew from around 700,017 90 to

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So by the end of the Civil War,

cotton accounted for nearly two

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thirds of all American exports.

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Do keep in mind that with the slave trade

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slave trade, the only way that one

could get slaves was internally.

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The priority now in Upper South States

was to now keep your slaves alive, have

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them have offspring, and sell those

offspring to the deep south, ripping apart

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families and the destruction in black

culture that we cannot underestimate.

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We like to think sometimes that

slavery was basically a southern

194

story by the beginning of the 18

hundreds, but that's actually not true.

195

The North was deeply implicated

and complicit in the slave economy

196

that grew up until the Civil War.

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There's many ways to

think about this, right?

198

The first is that.

199

There were new textile mills in the

north places like Lowell, Massachusetts.

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The textiles that they were using or

creating were made from cotton grown

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in the deep south using slave labor.

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The northern banks also were a part of

financing this market of revolution.

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They provided loans to southerners and

those loans purchased not only the land

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in the south, but also the slaves as well.

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Northern Insurance companies made money

insuring southern property and part of

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the southern property that was insured.

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We're slaves.

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The ironies about all this is that

at the exact same time as the market

209

revolution is going on, slavery was

actually slowly dying out in the north.

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After the American Revolution, most

Northern states had passed either complete

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emancipation or gradual emancipation laws.

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Gradual is the word here.

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That is key.

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These laws were designed to protect the

property interests of the enslavers.

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Most of them only freed the future

children of enslaved mothers, and

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only those children who had served

their mothers, uh, enslave for a

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period of indentured servitude that

could last into their twenties.

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This means that slavery lingered in

states in the north, some like New Jersey,

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until the very end of the Civil War.

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Despite being a northern state, this

created a nation that was, as our textbook

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puts it, quote, a nation of free labor

and slavery, of wealth and inequality,

222

and of endless promise and untold perils.

223

And as this new world of work was

transforming, not just in the north.

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But in the South as well.

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The market revolution

changed several things.

226

It changed where people worked, but

also the very nature of work itself.

227

Before the market revolution, the

dominant mode of production was something

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that we call the artisan system.

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For instance, a young man would serve

for years as an apprentice to a skilled

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master craftsman learning the trade over

time before branching out on his own.

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We can see this from a contract in 1836

where, uh, in this case a man named

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James agrees to serve as a blacksmith's

apprentice, promising not to quote

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absent himself day nor night from his

said master service without his leave.

234

And to avoid quote.

235

Haunting Ale, houses,

taverns or playhouses.

236

End quote.

237

In return, this master craftsman

agreed to teach him, quote.

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The art, trade and mystery of a

blacksmith end quote, as well as provide

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him with food, lodging, and clothing.

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This was a world of skilled labor where

work and home were often intertwined.

241

I.

242

But the market revolution brought rise to

the factory system and this shattered the

243

skilled master craftsman world production

now was broken down into discreet,

244

repetitive steps, a process that's

called peace work, and this required a

245

lot less skill and could be performed

by a lot less experienced worker.

246

The artisan who was once the

master of his own time and his own

247

labor was increasingly replaced

by something we call wage work.

248

Your life was governed by the factory

bell and the demands of the boss no

249

longer was the entire production from

start to finish created by one person.

250

It was now broken up into many people,

and those many people only had to learn.

251

One small skill of a larger skill set.

252

This brings less skilled laborers

into the factory system, and the most

253

famous of this example of this new

factory system was the textile mills I

254

had mentioned a moment ago in Lowell,

Massachusetts to avoid creating a

255

permanent dependent factory class like

the ones they had seen in England.

256

The founders of the Lowell Mills

recruited a unique labor force.

257

Young, unmarried women from the farms

of New England, the Lowell Mill girls,

258

as they came to be known, were housed

in clean supervised boarding houses and

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were offered wages and opportunities

for education and cultural enrichment

260

through lectures and their own

literary magazine called The Lowell

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Offering for many of these young women.

262

Coming to Lowell was a chance

for economic independence and

263

a break from the drudgery.

264

Hierarchy in a farm life,

but the realities of factory

265

work were then and now harsh.

266

They worked from five in the morning

until seven at night, six days a week

267

in a very noisy lint filled factory.

268

Harriet Robertson, who started

working in the mills as a

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10-year-old, wrote later about her

experiences as a Lowell Mill girl.

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In her autobiography, she recalled that

the greatest hardship was the long hours,

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nearly 14 hours a day, six days a week.

272

As the mill owners continually try

to speed up production to make more

273

things that they could sell and

thus make more money, as well as to

274

cut the wages, that is to pay the

workers less, to make more money.

275

These young women fought back in 1836

when the corporation announced a wage cut.

276

The mill girls organized one of the

first strikes in American history.

277

As Harriet Robinson remembered it,

quote, when it was announced that

278

the wages were to be cut down,

great indignation was felt, and

279

it was decided to strike on mass.

280

This was done.

281

The mills were shut down and the

girls went in procession from their

282

several corporations to the grove on

Chapel Hill and listen to incendiary

283

speeches from early label reformers.

284

End quote.

285

These protests led to the formation

of the Lowell Female Labor Reform

286

Association in 1845, the first union

of working women in the United States.

287

They organized petition drives,

demanding a 10 hour workday, and

288

published their own newspaper called

The Voice of Industry to expose the

289

harsh realities of factory life.

290

In a letter to a friend, the association's

president, Sarah Bagley, a former mill

291

girl herself, they wrote that they were

not willing to see our sex made into

292

living machines to do the bidding of

the incorporated aristocrats End quote.

293

These early labor movements had limited

success, but they show that the new

294

working class was now not just a

passive victim of the market revolution.

295

They were active participants

fighting to shape their own

296

destiny and challenging the power.

297

Of the new industrial capitalists,

298

the market revolution transformed

American society, not just its economy.

299

It transformed the idea

of the American family.

300

As production moved out of the home

and into a factory, a new ideal of

301

family life emerged, at least for

the growing urban middle classes.

302

It emerged, and this is the

ideology of separate spheres.

303

The public sphere, which was the

world of work, of commerce, of

304

politics, was now seen as the domain

of men, the private sphere, the home.

305

Was seen as the domain of women.

306

French Observer.

307

Alexis Deville described this arrangement

in his famous book, democracy in

308

America, which was published in 1840.

309

In no country has such constant care been

taken as in America to trace too clearly.

310

Distinct lines of action for the

two sexes and to make them keep

311

pace one with the other, but in two

pathways that are always different.

312

American women never manage the

outwork concerns of the family or

313

conduct a business or take apart

in political life, nor are they on

314

the other hand, ever compelled to

perform the rough labor of the fields.

315

If.

316

On the one hand, an American

woman cannot escape from the quiet

317

circle of domestic employments.

318

She's never forced on the

other To go beyond it.

319

End quote, of course, as our textbook

points out, this ideal was not only

320

possible for a small number of wealthy

families, for the vast majority of

321

women, however, these farm women,

working class women, and especially

322

enslaved women, economic production

remained a central part of their lives.

323

But the, I.

324

And the ideology of separate

spheres was powerful.

325

It redefined the home as the refuge

from the harsh competitive world of the

326

markets, and it elevated the role of

women as moral guardians of the family.

327

This led to the ideal of what they called

compassionate marriage, where marriage

328

was based on affection and mutual esteem

rather than just an economic calculation.

329

And the idea of a romantic childhood

where children were to be sheltered and

330

nurtured rather than seen as little du.

331

American society changed rapidly

332

over 5 million immigrants came to the

United States more than the entire

333

population of the country in 1790.

334

The largest groups of these

were Irish and Germans.

335

Irish came in huge numbers, especially

after the great famine of the

336

1840s, a catastrophe of a potato

blight that led to mass starvation.

337

It also included a lot of

British culpability in that, but

338

that's a whole different course.

339

The Irish that came were desperately

poor and they crowded into coastal

340

cities in the Northeast, taking sometimes

the most dangerous and lowest paying

341

jobs in construction and factory work.

342

We can hear the desperation and the

hopes in their letters back home.

343

I.

344

A woman named Hannah Curtis said this

quote, dear brother, I'm sorry to hear

345

of the dis distress of the poor of our

country, but thank God we are not so here.

346

We have plenty of good fire

and plenty to eat and drink.

347

I would be very glad you would come

here for, I think you would do well.

348

I.

349

German immigrants, however many of

whom were fleeing political unrest

350

after the failed revolutions of 1848.

351

Again, totally different course.

352

They often arrived with a little bit

more skill and some capital, and they

353

tended to move to the German triangle.

354

The German triangle being

the cities of Cincinnati, St.

355

Louis and Milwaukee, where they

established farms and businesses.

356

But this influx of newly arrived

immigrants was not welcomed by everyone.

357

And for whatever reason, I

guess some things never change.

358

Many native-born Protestant

Americans saw these new immigrants.

359

This time they were overwhelmingly

Catholic as a threat to the

360

nation's values and institutions.

361

There was a backlash to this, and

this backlash is known as nativism.

362

And it was fierce anti-Catholic

nativism sprang up.

363

In response, they made cartoons like

364

priests as crocodiles crawling ashore

to attack American school children.

365

And these types of cartoons were common.

366

This Nativist sentiment gave rise to a

367

American Party, more commonly known as

the Know Nothing Party, which called for

368

restricting immigration and limiting the

political power of anyone who is Catholic.

369

I.

370

For free Black Americans, the market

revolution often meant more hardship.

371

They faced intense racism and they

were shut out of most of the skilled

372

jobs, forcing them into the lowest

paying and most insecure work I.

373

The abolitionist Maria Stewart in a

374

the soul crushing consequences of racism.

375

Quote, I have been most shamefully,

wronged and scandalized, and my

376

character has been dreadfully traduced.

377

I.

378

Tell us no more of southern slavery for,

with the exception of the name, I firmly

379

believe that none have suffered more than

we look at us and see how we are situated.

380

Our sons are torn from us and

forbid to expand their minds.

381

Our daughters are refused situations

and custom has taught us to

382

believe that we were not capable.

383

Of acquiring learning, end quote

steward's words are a powerful reminder

384

that for many, the new market economy

was not a story of opportunity, but a

385

continued story of exclusion and despair.

386

So, was the market

revolution a good thing?

387

Well, the debate

continues for a long time.

388

Histor historians tended to see

it as a natural and positive step

389

in American progress, a story of

innovation and an opportunity.

390

But in 1991, the historian Charles

Sellers published a hugely influential

391

book called The Market Revolution,

392

offered a much darker interpretation.

393

He argued that the market revolution

was not a gentle evolution, but a

394

brutal and erve process that destroyed

the more egalitarian and democratic,

395

self-sufficient agrarian world.

396

He saw it as a conflict

between two Americas.

397

One based on land and subsistence

the other on capital and commerce.

398

He argued that most more ordinary

Americans resisted the encroachment of

399

the market and the revolution, which they

saw as a threat to their independence.

400

This resistance ultimately rallied

around the figure of Andrew Jackson,

401

who would become the champion of

the common man against the quote.

402

Acquisitive, entrepreneurial and

exploitative forces of capitalism.

403

Sellers argued that democracy itself

was born in tension with capitalism,

404

not as its natural political expression.

405

End quote.

406

Seller's work has been

incredibly influential, but

407

it has also been challenged.

408

Other historians argue that he

romanticizes the pre-market world and

409

underestimates the degree to which

ordinary Americans embrace the new

410

opportunities the market offered.

411

They point to that.

412

Quote almost.

413

Universal ambition to get forward, and

they argued that for many, the market

414

revolution wasn't something to be

resisted, but something to be seized.

415

So really, where does that leave us?

416

As with most big historical

questions, the answer is complicated.

417

The market revolution was both.

418

It was the story of incredible

innovation and growth and opportunity

419

that many welcomed and seized, but it

was also a story of dispossession and

420

inequality and exploitation that many

normal and ordinary Americans resisted.

421

It created immense wealth, but it

was all immense wealth creation.

422

It was not shared equally.

423

It offered new freedoms for some while

deepening the bondage for others.

424

It was in short, the

messy, contradictory birth.

425

Of modern America.

426

The market revolution then utterly

transformed the United States.

427

By the 1840s, it was a nation

bound together by canals,

428

railroads, and telegraph wires.

429

It was a nation of bustling cities and

booming factories, but it was also a

430

nation of growing inequality of new

class divisions of fierce anti-immigrant

431

backlash, and of a slave system that

expanded more vast and profitable.

432

Than ever before, this new dynamic,

deeply divided United States

433

required a new kind of politics.

434

The old deferential world of the founding

fathers were gentlemen governed was dying,

435

if not dead, a new, more boisterous,

more democratic, and often more violent.

436

Political culture was

rising to take its place.

437

It was a politics that celebrated

the common man and promise to fight.

438

The moneyed aristocracy and the man

who came to embody this new age more

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than anyone else was a Tennessee

Slaveholder, a celebrated quote Indian

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fighter, and he was also the hero

of the battle of New Orleans, a man

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his supporters called Old Hickory

and his enemies called King Andrew.

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Next time we get together on star

spanked studies, we're gonna dive into

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this raucous and revolutionary age.

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Jackson, we'll explore the rise of mass

democracy, the brutal policy of Indian

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removal, the war against the bank of

the United States, and the nullification

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crisis that nearly tore the nation apart.

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You won't wanna miss it.

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I'm Dr.

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G, and I'll see y'all in the pack.