12

The Sections Go

Their Own Ways

The Sections Go

Their Own Ways

CONTENTS

■In this painting by Andrew W. Melrose, Westward the Star of Empire Takes Its

Way, a railroad engine pierces the darkening wilderness. Will the crops from

the recently cleared land soon be making their way to eastern cities?

321

This thesis is speculative: Over the past 200 years,

countless peoples have washed over the regions of the

United States; how distinctive cultural patterns could have

been continually imprinted upon such different peoples is

unclear. Yet nowadays many people still speak of distinc-

tive regional cultures; and a glance at the political maps in

this book illustrates the persistence of regional voting pat-

terns: Over the past forty-six presidential elections, for

example, Massachusetts and South Carolina have voted

for the same candidate only thirteen times.

If regional cultural variations have become an endur-

ing trait in American life, this was largely a consequence of

changes that gained momentum during the three decades

after 1830. Each section of the country was shaped by

distinctive economic systems and workforces.

Industrialization took hold of much of the Northeast,

attracting immigrants who found work in factories in the

burgeoning cities and factory towns. To the West, farming

became more commercial and productive, attracting immi-

grant and other forms of free (if lowly paid) labor. The

South was characterized in large part by the production of

cash crops, especially cotton, and by its unwilling immi-

grants, the slaves.

But countervailing forces after 1830 also reduced the

differences among regions. The Northeast and the West

became economically interdependent, linked by an increas-

ingly elaborate network of canals and railroads. The South,

whose transportation infrastructure lagged, nevertheless

■The South

■The Economics of Slavery

■Antebellum Plantation Life

■The Sociology of Slavery

■Psychological Effects of Slavery

■Manufacturing in the South

■The Northern Industrial

Juggernaut

■A Nation of Immigrants

■How Wage Earners Lived

■Progress and Poverty

■Foreign Commerce

■Steam Conquers the Atlantic

■Canals and Railroads

■Financing the Railroads

■Railroads and the Economy

■Railroads and the Sectional

Conflict

■The Economy on the Eve of

Civil War

■American Lives:

Sojourner Truth

■Debating the Past:

Did Slaves and Masters Form

Emotional Bonds?

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