Introduction:The nation in crisis
America in the mid-nineteenth century
was a nation of conflicting ideological and
cultural identities attempting to forge out
of its agrarian traditions and industrial
impulses a republic that remained
committed to the ideals of its founding
fathers. Bound by a common belief in
freedom and independence as realized
through democratic principles and
republican virtues, Americans came to
believe that their nation was God's chosen
nation. However, although the country
had been unified for more than 60 years,
political, economic, social, and cultural
differences stretching back to the nation's
origins brought about a crisis for
the young republic in 1861.
The development of an
industrial society
In the early nineteenth century, the United
States was predominantly an agrarian
society. Land was fundamental to freedom,
self-sufficiency, and independence. Most
Americans believed that owning land and
tilling the soil nurtured freedom and
independence, and that those without land,
engaged primarily in manufacturing, posed
the greatest threat to that freedom. So long as
land was plentiful, Americans believed, they
could maintain the virtues granted them as
the rightful beneficiaries of republican
liberties. They could therefore escape poverty,
dependency on others, and overpopulation
produced by a manufacturing society. Thus,
the desire to own land was at the core of the
initial republican vision, as conceived by
revolutionary leaders such as Thomas
Jefferson.
Few Americans of Jefferson's generation,
however, could have imagined that thequest for land that sparked the settlement
of the west would actually accelerate rather
than deter urban and industrial
development. The very nature of the
migration west was as much a cause as it
was a consequence of the ideological
differences and sectionalism that prevailed
in the decades before the Civil War.
Significantly, the migration and settlement
of the west transformed an agrarian society
that defined itself as a virtuous farming
republic into an industrial society that
came to accept the free-labor ideology as
paramount in achieving republican dreams
of a truly free and democratic society.
Beginning in the 1820s, westward
expansion flowed along America's natural
arteries, such as the Ohio and Mississippi
Rivers and their tributaries, which allowed
western farmers to channel goods south to
New Orleans. After the 1830s, however,
steamboats, canals, and railroads redirected
western trade to the flourishing urban
markets of the northeast. The cumulative
impact of more effective transportation
resulted in widening market opportunities.
Simultaneously, the small manufacturing
initiatives shifted from artisan shops to
small factories, and merchant capitalists in
the northeastern cities assumed the lead in
organizing production for the expanding
markets. In the four decades before the
Civil War, urbanization and manufacturing
reinforced each other in their growth
patterns and came to shape the character
of the North.
Although Southern whites moved west
for basically the same reasons that
Northerners did, slavery provided a different
experience. The cotton industry was directly
linked to the size and substance of slave
plantations. Between 1790 and 1860, cotton
production exploded from 3,000 bales to