Episode 8

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Published on:

1st Aug 2025

S1E8 - The Market Revolution: Transportation, Factories & Cotton | American Yawp Chapter 8 Explained

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In Episode 8 of Star-Spangled Studies, Dr. G breaks down Chapter 8 of The American Yawp—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


**Links & Resources:**

The American Yawp – Chapter 8: Market Revolution

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Explore Chapter 8 of The American Yawp in this episode of Star-Spangled Studies: “The Market Revolution.” 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, American Yawp Chapter 8, Erie Canal, steamboat, railroads, cotton gin, Lowell Mill girls, telegraph, King Cotton, Dr. G

Transcript
Speaker:

Hello y'all.

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It's me.

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It's me.

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It's Dr.

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G.

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The last time we were together on

Star Spangled Studies, the United

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States was basking in the glow.

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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.

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And the old Federalist party was

all but dead, leaving Jefferson's

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Democratic Republicans in charge.

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But this good feeling was a thin line

over a society that was about to be torn

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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.

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Died and in its wake a new,

more commercial nation was born.

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It was an age of explosive economic

growth of staggering new fortunes

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and what felt like endless promise.

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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.

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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.

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Even more so today we're gonna

explore this massive transformation

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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.

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So let's go.

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So this was a revolution basically at

first in transportation and communication.

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In order for us to really understand

the market revolution, we have to

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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.

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The United States was a huge country

with a transportation system that.

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Could not keep pace moving goods from

the interior to the coast was slow and

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it was incredibly difficult, and to do

so was actually prohibitively expensive.

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It could cost as much to ship a ton of

goods 30 miles over land as it did to ship

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it from the ports on the coast to England.

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That's how difficult and costly it was.

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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

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very wary of federal power like

Jefferson before him now called for the

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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

Hudson River in:

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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.

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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.

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Exploded into cities overnight.

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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.

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The canal banks were covered

with boats loading and unloading.

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End quote.

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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.

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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

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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

million in the:

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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

being banned by:

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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

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story by the beginning of the 18

hundreds, but that's actually not true.

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The North was deeply implicated

and complicit in the slave economy

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that grew up until the Civil War.

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There's many ways to

think about this, right?

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The first is that.

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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

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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,

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and of endless promise and untold perils.

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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.

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It changed where people worked, but

also the very nature of work itself.

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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.

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And to avoid quote.

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Haunting Ale, houses,

taverns or playhouses.

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End quote.

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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.

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I.

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But the market revolution brought rise to

the factory system and this shattered the

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skilled master craftsman world production

now was broken down into discreet,

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repetitive steps, a process that's

called peace work, and this required a

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lot less skill and could be performed

by a lot less experienced worker.

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The artisan who was once the

master of his own time and his own

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labor was increasingly replaced

by something we call wage work.

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Your life was governed by the factory

bell and the demands of the boss no

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longer was the entire production from

start to finish created by one person.

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It was now broken up into many people,

and those many people only had to learn.

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One small skill of a larger skill set.

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This brings less skilled laborers

into the factory system, and the most

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famous of this example of this new

factory system was the textile mills I

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had mentioned a moment ago in Lowell,

Massachusetts to avoid creating a

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permanent dependent factory class like

the ones they had seen in England.

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The founders of the Lowell Mills

recruited a unique labor force.

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Young, unmarried women from the farms

of New England, the Lowell Mill girls,

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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

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through lectures and their own

literary magazine called The Lowell

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Offering for many of these young women.

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Coming to Lowell was a chance

for economic independence and

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a break from the drudgery.

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Hierarchy in a farm life,

but the realities of factory

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work were then and now harsh.

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They worked from five in the morning

until seven at night, six days a week

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in a very noisy lint filled factory.

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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.

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As the mill owners continually try

to speed up production to make more

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things that they could sell and

thus make more money, as well as to

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cut the wages, that is to pay the

workers less, to make more money.

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These young women fought back in 1836

when the corporation announced a wage cut.

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The mill girls organized one of the

first strikes in American history.

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As Harriet Robinson remembered it,

quote, when it was announced that

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the wages were to be cut down,

great indignation was felt, and

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it was decided to strike on mass.

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This was done.

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The mills were shut down and the

girls went in procession from their

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several corporations to the grove on

Chapel Hill and listen to incendiary

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speeches from early label reformers.

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End quote.

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These protests led to the formation

of the Lowell Female Labor Reform

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Association in 1845, the first union

of working women in the United States.

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They organized petition drives,

demanding a 10 hour workday, and

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published their own newspaper called

The Voice of Industry to expose the

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harsh realities of factory life.

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In a letter to a friend, the association's

president, Sarah Bagley, a former mill

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girl herself, they wrote that they were

not willing to see our sex made into

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living machines to do the bidding of

the incorporated aristocrats End quote.

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These early labor movements had limited

success, but they show that the new

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working class was now not just a

passive victim of the market revolution.

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They were active participants

fighting to shape their own

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destiny and challenging the power.

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Of the new industrial capitalists,

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the market revolution transformed

American society, not just its economy.

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It transformed the idea

of the American family.

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As production moved out of the home

and into a factory, a new ideal of

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family life emerged, at least for

the growing urban middle classes.

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It emerged, and this is the

ideology of separate spheres.

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The public sphere, which was the

world of work, of commerce, of

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politics, was now seen as the domain

of men, the private sphere, the home.

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Was seen as the domain of women.

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French Observer.

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Alexis Deville described this arrangement

in his famous book, democracy in

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America, which was published in 1840.

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In no country has such constant care been

taken as in America to trace too clearly.

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Distinct lines of action for the

two sexes and to make them keep

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pace one with the other, but in two

pathways that are always different.

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American women never manage the

outwork concerns of the family or

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conduct a business or take apart

in political life, nor are they on

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the other hand, ever compelled to

perform the rough labor of the fields.

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If.

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On the one hand, an American

woman cannot escape from the quiet

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circle of domestic employments.

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She's never forced on the

other To go beyond it.

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End quote, of course, as our textbook

points out, this ideal was not only

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possible for a small number of wealthy

families, for the vast majority of

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women, however, these farm women,

working class women, and especially

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enslaved women, economic production

remained a central part of their lives.

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But the, I.

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And the ideology of separate

spheres was powerful.

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It redefined the home as the refuge

from the harsh competitive world of the

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markets, and it elevated the role of

women as moral guardians of the family.

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This led to the ideal of what they called

compassionate marriage, where marriage

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was based on affection and mutual esteem

rather than just an economic calculation.

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And the idea of a romantic childhood

where children were to be sheltered and

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nurtured rather than seen as little du.

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American society changed rapidly

between:

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over 5 million immigrants came to the

United States more than the entire

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population of the country in 1790.

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The largest groups of these

were Irish and Germans.

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Irish came in huge numbers, especially

after the great famine of the

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1840s, a catastrophe of a potato

blight that led to mass starvation.

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It also included a lot of

British culpability in that, but

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that's a whole different course.

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The Irish that came were desperately

poor and they crowded into coastal

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cities in the Northeast, taking sometimes

the most dangerous and lowest paying

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jobs in construction and factory work.

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We can hear the desperation and the

hopes in their letters back home.

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I.

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A woman named Hannah Curtis said this

quote, dear brother, I'm sorry to hear

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of the dis distress of the poor of our

country, but thank God we are not so here.

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We have plenty of good fire

and plenty to eat and drink.

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I would be very glad you would come

here for, I think you would do well.

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I.

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German immigrants, however many of

whom were fleeing political unrest

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after the failed revolutions of 1848.

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Again, totally different course.

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They often arrived with a little bit

more skill and some capital, and they

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tended to move to the German triangle.

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The German triangle being

the cities of Cincinnati, St.

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Louis and Milwaukee, where they

established farms and businesses.

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But this influx of newly arrived

immigrants was not welcomed by everyone.

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And for whatever reason, I

guess some things never change.

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Many native-born Protestant

Americans saw these new immigrants.

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This time they were overwhelmingly

Catholic as a threat to the

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nation's values and institutions.

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There was a backlash to this, and

this backlash is known as nativism.

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And it was fierce anti-Catholic

nativism sprang up.

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In response, they made cartoons like

one from:

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priests as crocodiles crawling ashore

to attack American school children.

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And these types of cartoons were common.

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This Nativist sentiment gave rise to a

new political party in the:

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American Party, more commonly known as

the Know Nothing Party, which called for

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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

powerful speech in Boston in:

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,

Jacksonian America,:

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

439

:

than anyone else was a Tennessee

Slaveholder, a celebrated quote Indian

440

:

fighter, and he was also the hero

of the battle of New Orleans, a man

441

:

his supporters called Old Hickory

and his enemies called King Andrew.

442

:

Next time we get together on star

spanked studies, we're gonna dive into

443

:

this raucous and revolutionary age.

444

:

Jackson, we'll explore the rise of mass

democracy, the brutal policy of Indian

445

:

removal, the war against the bank of

the United States, and the nullification

446

:

crisis that nearly tore the nation apart.

447

:

You won't wanna miss it.

448

:

I'm Dr.

449

:

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

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Star-Spangled Studies
Star-Spangled Studies is a college-level U.S. history podcast created by professional historian Dr. G—built for students, teachers, and curious listeners alike. Season 1 covers the era from 1865 to the present, using The American Yawp, a free and open educational resource (OER) textbook, as its guide. Each episode unpacks key events, movements, and ideas that shaped the modern United States—through rich narrative, scholarly insight, and accessible storytelling.

Whether you're enrolled in a course or exploring history on your own, you’ll get clear, engaging episodes that follow the chapters of The American Yawp. Bring your curiosity, download the textbook, and join Dr. G for a star-spangled journey through American history.

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