CHAPTER 2-9:

WORKERS, FARMERS, AND SLAVES: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE

AMERICAN ECONOMY, 18151848
1. Compare the similarities and differences in the economic changes in the North and the
South from 1815 to 1848.
2. Explain how the image of The Tree of Liberty illustrates labor in the North and the
South.
3. In the first half of the nineteenth century, why was a city like St. Louis poised for
growth?
The Market Revolution
Describe households, artisans, and trade in the rural economy. What market revolution
changed the rural system? How did the creation of a market economy affect many
farmers in the early nineteenth century? The importance of festivities combining work
and leisure to traditional community life most likely indicated that before the market
revolution by what activities?
1. Agricultural Changes and Consequences
A. What impact did commercial agriculture have on Americans after 1815? What
impact did such publications as The New England Farmer have?
B. Describe how the invention of the iron plow, threshing and racking machines, crank
powered churns, and the cotton gin changed agriculture.
C. How did the market economy change social patterns in harvest parties, corn husking,
and dances? How does the 1833 Farmers Almanac and the painting the Corn
Husking Frolic illustrate changing attitudes?
D. Explain how the upcountry Southern Farmers were different from commercial
farmers. What laws did southern states pass to facilitate livestock production?
2. A Nation On the Move: Roads, Canals, Steamboats, and Trains
A. Why were improvements in transportation important to economic growth in the
United States during this period? By 1840, which means of transportation had the
greatest impact on the speed with which goods and people could move around the
country? Before the arrival of the steamboat, what did people use for travel?
B. Identify the location of three roads and turnpikes that were built by 1830 and explain
the impact they had on travel time and the economy.
C. How did the steamboat influence transportation? Interpret the Trade and Commerce
Quilt.
D. Discuss the evolution of canal building from the 1780s to the Erie Canal in the 1820s
and explain the economic impact of canals.
E. Trace the development of the railroad from the invention in England and in the United
States. Compare the views on the value and the hazards of the railroad. Use the
Images as History: Nature, Technology, and the Railroad: George Innesss
Lackawanna Valley (1855) as a basis to explain this conflict in views.
3. Spreading the News

A. How did canals, roads, and railroads reduce the time for news to travel? Use the
Time Lag for News 1800 to 1841 to illustrate the improvement in national
communication.
B. Identify the elements electricity, Morse Code, wires --that made the telegraph work.
Which cities benefitted and which regions were unable to get connected?
C. What happened to the print technology between 1800 and 1840 that reduced the cost
for newspapers, books, and magazines? How did cost reduction help farmers and
middle class women?
D. What impact did Nathaniel Currier on printing lithographic images? Use his
Conflagration of the Steamboat Lexington to show his impact on spreading news.
Why was Currier important? As a result of the wider availability of printed material?
The Spread of Industrialization
What impact did industrialization have on the American economy during the early 19th
century? What effect did it have on artisans, consumers, and unskilled workers?
1. From Artisan to Worker
A. Describe the range of occupations for artisans. How did a person learn to became an
artisan? Which is the best definition of an artisan?
B. What roles did the owner, managers, and laborers play in the new factory system?
What impact did this system have on the manufacture of shoes and textiles? How did
the new system effect the workers social life, pride in their craft, the work place, and
control of time?
C. What effect did the depression of 1837 have on the labor movement?
2. Women and Work
A. Compared to men, how did industrialization effect women?
B. How did the outwork system function? Compare men and women in this system
with the factory system wages and goods produced.
C. What additional roles did women perform in addition to their outwork?
3. The Lowell Experiment
A. What were the characteristics of the Waltham System that manufactured textiles?
When did it start operating and where was it located?
B. In 1823, where and how did Francis Lowell organize a larger factory system? What
changes did he introduce? How many mills did he have by 1850?
C. Why did Lowell recruit young women? Why did he build boarding houses? What
amenities did he provide? Study the cover of Lowell Offering and explain why the
women published a positive view of Lowell in this magazine?
D. What evidence do the authors use to show that problems existed for the women who
labored at Lowell? Study the Competing Visions: The Lowell Strike of 1834 and
explain why the women were dissatisfied?
E. Study the label showing women at work in the mill. Why did the owners used this
label? What was the immediate cause of the Lowell strike of 1834? Whereas the
Lowell mill women who took part in the strike of 1834 saw themselves as heirs to the

Patriots of the American Revolution, their critics viewed them as

4. Urban Industrialization
A. In what ways were urban centers such as New York and Philadelphia more diverse
than the mill towns in Massachusetts? What was the range of products
manufactured?
B. What did the labors do to help protect themselves from the inequality in the market
system? What gains did they achieve? Why did these unions fail?
C. Study the chart of the Average Height of Native Born American men year by year
of Birth. What do you think of the authors argument that because military recruits
were about an inch shorter in 1860 than they had been in 1800, Americans were less
prosperous?
The Changing Urban Landscape
What changes occurred with the populations of cities from 1820 to 1860? What were the two
sources of this urban growth? What ethnic problems did these urban centers have?
1. Old Ports and the New Cities of the Interior
A. What major changes occurred in American cities during the first half of the nineteenth
century?
B. Read the text, study the Five Point Image, and explain how the working class and the
wealthy residents viewed this region in New York City.
C. How did the middle and upper class people escape from the lower classes? What
does the cartoon St. Johns Park illustrate? What happened to the walking cities
such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston by 1820?
D. Why did these cities grow so fast? Discuss five methods of mass transportation.
How did the cities deal with the problems of sanitation and fresh water?
E. What impact did the Erie Canal have on the growth of inland cities? List the inland
cities. What did Michel Chevalier say about Pittsburgh?
F. How did Cincinnati become an industrial center?
2. Immigrants and the City
A. What were two sources of growth in the cities? Examine the illustration Sources of
European Immigration and identify the percentage of immigrants who came from
Europe. Why did the come? During the 1840s and 1850s, the greatest proportion of
immigrants to the United States came from which nation?
B. Compare the Irish and German immigrants wealth, occupation, location for
settlement, music, and other characteristics.
C. How did the Irish and German immigrants change the ethnic composition? On My
History Lab, read Petition of the Catholics of New York, (1840), and explain the
value of the document.
D. Urban populations grew rapidly in nineteenth-century America because of both
immigration and
3. Free Black Communities in the North

A. Why was racial segregation for free Blacks more pronounced in the North than in the
South?
B. What is the racist message to those who fought to abolish slavery in the poster The
Results of Abolitionism? Tell the story of Henry Boyd. What does this one story
illustrate? How many free African Americans were able to follow this example?
4. Riot, Unrest, and Crime
A. Describe the religious riots that occurred in Boston and Philadelphia explain the
sources for this conflict.
B. Tell the stories of racial violence in Cincinnati, Rhode Island, and New York what
were the sources of this violence?
C. What kind of problems did single men and women create for cities? If most crime
that was done was not sensational crime, why did newspapers capitalize on the
sensational problems? What was one important factor in the rise of prostitution
during the nineteenth century? The portrayal of the murdered prostitute Helen Jewett
in the print by Currier and Ives seemsto emphasize?
D. Why were most cities unable to cope with crime? What did New York do to keep the
peace? Study the Envisioning Evidence: The Economics and Geography of Vice in
Mid-Nineteenth Century New York. Does this evidence support the concerns of the
moral reformers about the prevalence of commercial sex in New York?
Southern Society
Compare the similarities and differences between the Northern and Southern societies. What
did author Alexis de Tocqueville believe caused almost all the differences which may be
noticed between the characters of the Americans in the Southern and in the Northern states?
Given that wealthy white Southerners enjoyed such entertainment as jousting and settled
matters of honor with dueling, what seems to have been one major difference between
Southern and Northern cultures?
1. The Planter Class
A. Compare Henry McAlpins Hermitage plantation [Schematic Map of Hermitage
Plantation] and John Hampden Randolphs plantation with the other members of the
planter class. What is one reason that cotton cultivation spread westward after 1820?
B. Compare the differences between the Northern industrialists and Southern planters in
their style of management at work and home.
C. On the plantation, compare the various roles of the men and women. What evidence
do historians used to reconstruct these roles?
2. Yeomen and Tenant Farmers
A. Who were the yeomen farmers? Most Southern whites were yeoman farmers who?
How many were in the South? What crops did they raise to make a survive? What
did they do to buy products they could not produce.
B. What relationships did most of the yeomen have with the planters? How did the
upcountry yeomen feel about the planters? What role did the yeomen perform in the
illustration A Slave Caught Without a Pass?

C. What are the significant differences between the yeomen and tenant farmers? Most
Southern tenant farmers viewed African Americans as? What percentage of the
southern population were tenant farmers? What relationships did tenant farmers have
with the slaves? How did white supremacy play into this relationship?
3. Free Black Communities
A. What percent of the Blacks in the South were free? How were they identified?
Where did most of them live? Which of the following is accurate regarding the rights
of free blacks in the South?
B. What did they do to earn a living? What did they do about religion? How did African
Americans react to the efforts of Southern churches to convert slaves to Christianity?
4. White Southern Culture
A. What did the wealthy southern whites do for entertainment? How did reputation and
honor function in southern culture?
B. How did men defend their honor? What did the endurance of dueling in the South
reveal about Southern white culture? What did John Wilson say about dueling in his
book Code of Honor? How did a northern abolitionist characterize the south in the
drawing, Southern Violence?
Life and Labor under Slavery
What forms did slavery take in the South? How did slaves protect themselves? What were
the most extreme methods that slaves used to resist slavery?
1. Varied Systems of Slave Labor
A. What crops did slaves produce? Which crop became the most profitable? Which
regions of the world bought this crop? How were the regions of the South that did not
raise this crop influenced by it?
B. Which region in the South raised this crop? Why did the northern South fail to grow
this item? What crops did this northern region grow? Why did this region sell their
slaves to the lower South?
C. How many hours in the day did slaves work? What variety of jobs did slaves
perform? Household slaves typically did what? What methods did large plantation
owners use to get their slaves to work?
D. What forms of rewards and punishments did the owners use to get their slaves to
work? Explain what the painting The Slave Market, Richmond, Virginia
illustrates about the feelings of the slaves? On My History Kit, read A Slave Tells of
His Sale at Auction (1848), and show how it help us understand slave auctions.
E. In what industries did employers use slaves? What resulted from a strike by white
workers at the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond,Virginia? Where were these
industries located? How many slaves worked in industry in the upper South? List the
jobs in which they labored. Include public works projects.
2. Life in Slave Quarters
A. How much did the slave population increase in the United States between 1790 and

1850? How did the living condition of the slaves in Brazil compare with those in the
United States?
B. What did Fanny Kemble Butler say about the living quarters for slaves on her
husbands plantation?
C. What about the marriage of slaves? Even though the law did not recognize slave
marriages, why did owners encourage marriage? Describe the marriage ceremony.
Compare the slave marriages on large and small plantations.
3. Slave Religion and Music
A. Why did southern churches proselyte to the slaves? What did the pastors say to them?
What did they forbid? What did the Catechism for Colored Persons tell the slaves?
B. How did the slaves interpret Christianity? What Bible stories did they repeat and why
did the enjoy them? Why was the biblical story of Exodus particularly popular among
slaves? What African traditions did they incorporate into their religious views? Why
might slave religion be regarded as a form of resistance?
C. Describe the funeral services for African Americans. Interpret the painting
Plantation Burial.
D. What musical art forms did the slaves create? What were musical themes? What
values did music provide for the slaves? What connections existed between the
music of this period and modern music?
4. Resistance and Revolt
A. What subtle tactics did slaves use to get their way? If slaves left the plantation for a
short time, where did they go?
B. How often did slaves try to escape to the North or to Canada? Where did slaves in the
deep South go to gain their freedom?
C. What was the most extreme form of resistance? What motivated Nat Turner to rebel?
What did he and other slaves do? How many people died?
D. What message did the woodcut of the Nat Turner rebellion present? What were the
consequences of this rebellion? As a result of Nat Turners Rebellion, what
happened?
5. Slavery and the Law
A. What rights did the law provide plantation owner? What protections did the law
guarantee slaves? In the 1829 decision of Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin of the North
Carolina, the Supreme Court in State v. Mann said?
B. Study the conscience or duty? Justice Ruffins quandary. Examine the decision
the judge made and trace the consequences for this decision. What issues does this
court case raise?
MyHistoryLabConnections Read all of the documents, answer the questions for each one,
view the close Look, watch the videos, and study the maps.