DK - The American Civil War

In 1793, Eli Whitney traveled south to

take up a tutoring post on a plantation.

Intrigued by the time-consuming manual

labor of separating the sticky seeds from

the fibers of short-staple cotton, he

designed a simple hand-cranked machine.

His cotton engine, or “gin,” used rollers to

comb the seeds from the fiber, enabling

one slave to clean 50lb (23kg) of cotton

fiber per day instead of just 1lb (0.5kg)

processed by hand. The gin opened the

interior of the South to cotton production,

giving a financial incentive for expanding

the hold of slavery on Southern society.

The State of the Nation

In the four decades after the War of 1812, the United States experienced profound changes in its population,

economy, boundaries, and social relations. New states joined the union at a rate of almost one every three

years. By 1855, the country had more cities with at least 150,000 residents than any other nation on Earth.

AN IMPERFECT UNION

and military concerns continued to drive

communities and private investors to

construct roads, bridges, and canals,

which speeded up the exchange of goods

and tied people together. One of the

most ambitious of these projects, the Erie

Canal, eventually connected New York

City to Lake Erie and the Upper Midwest

states and territories. New York state

and private investors funded the canal,

which was started in 1817 and completed

in 1825. It would pay for itself in

seven years.

In the 1830s,

railroads began to

supplant canals as

a faster, cheaper

mode of carrying

passengers and

freight. Popular

demand and congressional policy

encouraged the creation of post offices

along the frontiers, and soon the nation

had more postal clerks than soldiers.

The telegraph appeared in the 1840s

following alongside the railroads, as

I

n 1800, most Americans still farmed,

and lived in small communities poorly

connected by rough roads. When

Thomas Jefferson entered the White

House in March 1801, the nation had

around 5.3 million people living between

the Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi

River—most within 50 miles (80km) of

the eastern coastline. If more western

territory could be added, Jefferson envisaged

a nation mighty enough to compete

economically with and to defend itself

against the great European powers. Skeptics

pointed to transportation difficulties, the

presence of Native Americans, and foreign

claims to North American territory as

barriers to expansion.

In the early 19th century, a letter

mailed in Maine took 20 days to arrive in

Charleston, South Carolina, because of

the scarcity and roughness of the roads.

The War of 1812—which lasted until

1815—encouraged people to build better

roads and connections among the various

states for the purpose of defense. After the

war, growing markets, westward migration,

Victory in the American Revolution did
not finally settle the new republic’s borders.
It remained surrounded by the colonial
territories of Britain, France, and Spain.

THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE
In 1803, in order to ensure access to the mouth of
the Mississippi River, Thomas Jefferson sent a
delegation to the French Emperor Napoleon I to
negotiate the purchase of New Orleans. To the
surprise of the U.S. representatives, Napoleon
offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory
for $15 million to finance his European wars.
Overnight, the nation nearly doubled in size.

EXPANSION TO THE WEST
Jefferson announced the purchase on July 4,
1803, and the very next day the 28-year-old
Army Captain Meriwether
Lewis, a personal friend and
aide to the president, set out
from Washington to begin his
and William Clark’s
exploration of the West.
Their epic journey, which
lasted until September
1806, revealed a vast
expanse of territory
inhabited by
indigenous peoples,
and ripe for
settlement by
future generations
of Americans.

cities, hoping to exchange business and

political intelligence, clamored to join

the network. Advances in paper and

printing technology made newspapers

cheaper, and the advent of the Associated

Press in 1846 created rapid standardized

reporting from around the nation.

Northern transformations

Most Northern farming families focused

on self-reliance and subsistence, raising

their own food and bartering locally to

maintain their

independence.

As transportation

improved, people

farming near cities

planted more

specialized crops for

sale in regional

markets. Farmers in New England and

the states of the Mid-Atlantic seaboard

used cash from these market sales to buy

improved equipment, which reduced

their labor costs and increased their yields.

Steel cutting blades, threshers, iron plows,

THE COTTON GIN

A COMPASS FROM THE

LEWIS AND CLARK

EXPEDITION

COTTON GIN

TECHNOLOGY

BEFORE

The U.S.

population

in 1860. This represented an increase of

over 35 percent in the 10 years since

1850, and over 270 percent since 1815,

when the population stood at 8.4 million.

31,443,