THE STATE OF THE NATIONAt the start of the Civil War, about a
quarter of U.S. factory workers were
women. Five years later, the proportion
had risen to a third.MODEL WORKING CONDITIONS
By 1860, the United States’ largest industrial
complex was Lowell, Massachusetts, whose
textile mills were famous for their “Mill Girls.”
The Lowell mills had been set up as a social
experiment to avoid the harsh conditions of
British mill towns. Young, single women from
farms and small towns as far away as Maine made
up the bulk of the workers. Employers promised
parents that each girl would be provided
with room and board in a supervised dormitory
and that church attendance on the one day off
was mandatory. The women published their own
periodical, The Lowell Offering, and had access
to circulating libraries, musical instruments,
and traveling lecturers.
After the war, the Lowell mills became more
dependent on French Canadian and European
immigrants, until by 1900 nearly half the city’s
population was foreign-born.WOMEN TAKING CHARGE
In the South, there were fewer factories, but
outside the wealthy planter class, most white
women were accustomed to hard work on
smaller farms, which had few if any slaves. The
chief difference the war made was that many
women had to take on the running of farms
or plantations in the absence of their menfolk.and horse-drawn rakes enabled one
farmer to do the work that formerly
needed six men. In the Northeast, the
growing populations in mill towns and
urban centers required increasing
quantities of meat, corn, wheat, wool,
fruit, vegetables, and dairy produce.
There was a steady drift of people
to the expanding cities. Seven out of
eight immigrants who arrived in
the United States
before 1860 settled
in cities such as
New York, Boston,
Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh,
Rochester, and Chicago—all north of
the Mason-Dixon Line. This historic
geographic line was surveyed in the
1760s by the astronomer Charles
Mason and the surveyor Jeremiah
Dixon to resolve a border dispute
between Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Industry takes off
Between 1815 and 1860, the people
of the United States transformed the
country’s economy. Following his
development of the cotton gin, Eli
Whitney devised a system of
interchangeable parts for weapons
manufacture that was soon used to
produce other goods, such as clocks,
sewing machines, and farm equipment.
This simplification of the manufacturing
process, known as the “American
system,” greatly reduced the costs of
production and finished goods. New
Englanders pioneered the first large,
water-powered factories, employing
local women to produce
cotton textiles.
By the 1830s, U.S.
industry had gained
unstoppable
momentum. In
1807, there were
fewer than 20
cotton mills with
around 8,
spindles for making
thread; by 1831, a
greater number of mills
had nearly 1.2 million
spindles. Steam engines
transformed mining and
iron production,
powered mills and
workshops, and moved goods by rail and
water. Factories replaced craftsmen and
household production of daily items. A
“market revolution” stimulated far-
reaching changes in American society
and the economy.North and South diverge
In 1808, a ban on the importation of
slaves—which had been prohibited by
the Constitution until that date—
became the law.
Many Americans
hoped slavery
would gradually
decline. North of
the Mason-Dixon
Line, individual states had already
passed laws banning or slowly
abolishing slavery. The free African-
American population grew rapidly in
the North, particularly in urban areas,
where African Americans founded
their own churches and schools.
Many also sheltered runaways from
enslavement. Although free, NorthernAfrican Americans faced racism
and legal barriers, preventing full
participation in society.
Life in the South was a very
different matter. Between 1800 and
1861, the southern United States
became the world’s largest and richest
slave society. Plantations in the South
generated vast wealth, while
the numbers of those
enslaved rose, as did
their monetary
value. New states
such as Texas,
as well as new
lands that had
been seized
from Native
Americans drew
thousands of white
men seeking to make
quick profits on virgin
soil. Tens of thousands
of slaves were
separated from their
families in the older
seaboard states and
sold to the new ones in the Southwest.
The slave population grew from 700,
in 1790 to four million in 1860.Cotton-based economy
On the Southern plantations, slaves
cultivated sugar, rice, and tobacco and
many acquired the skills necessary to
keep a plantation operating. It was
cotton, however, that dominated, and as
production soared, slaves worked ever
longer hours in the cotton fields. Cotton
was the key American export, accounting
for more than half of all goods exported
through 1850. In 1860, Britain took theAFTER
Voting in a rural community
George Bingham’s painting The County Election 1852
shows the democratic system in operation, as residents
from many walks of life come together to cast their vote. In
the 1800s, voting was still very much a white, male domain.
Boom town
With the Erie Canal providing vital transportation links,
Utica grew from a small settlement into a thriving city.
Its population exploded during the 1820s, with
many workers staying on after the canal’s completion.A slave economy
While the North grew rich through industrial
processes developed in Europe, the sources
of wealth in the South were raw materials—
chiefly cotton—grown and picked by slaves.bulk of American cotton exports—nearly
75 percent of the cotton Britain used
came from the United States. But the
labor of slaves and production of cotton
were not merely matters for the South.
The entire domestic economy was bound
up in them. Western food fed the slave
population, which grew and tended the
cotton, while early Northeastern textile
and shoe factories sold their output to
the South for masters to provide for
their slaves. Firms in New York City and
New England benefited by providing
financial backing and insurance for the
burgeoning cotton and slave trades.“The greatness of America lies
not in being more enlightened
than any other nation, but rather in
her ability to repair her faults.”
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, FRENCH HISTORIAN, IN DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, 1835The number
of bales of
cotton produced annually in the United States
by 1860. Each bale weighed 450lb (204kg).4 MILLION