New York City has not always had a core identity, instead, its identity has changed and developed over time. New York City’s core identity starts to develop in the early 1800’s. New York City’s core identity can be defined as the place of greatest opportunity, with a money driving commercial culture. The NYC documentary argues that New York City is the place that tested everything first, such as urbanization, immigration, and industrialization. The documentary also argues that if New York City fails, then the United States does too. Today, New York City’s core identity suggests that it is a place to reinvent yourself, it offers the possibility of change, the entertainment capital of the world, the “easiest” place to get around, and a wonderful …show more content…
place of innovation and entrepreneurship. New York City started to develop its core identity in the early 1800s, with the opening of the Grid System, the beginning of the freedom of slaves, the creation of the free school society, and the opening of the Erie Canal. The New York City documentary argues that the Dutch set a foundation for the city today, by starting the diverse, congested business orientated lifestyle. On account of something happened years ago does not mean it has any direct relation to the lifestyle that New York city is known for today. In reality, New York City started to develop its core values in the 1800s with the invention of Fulton’s steamboat, Vanderbilt and his huge shipping empire, along with his creation of the ferry service into the city, the buying and selling of real estate by John-Jacob Astor, and the start of entrepreneurship. 2. Our course has started to touch upon the most iconic and quintessential period in the history of New York City, but there are still more iconic and quintessential events to learn about. Although the documentary we watch is constantly arguing the greatness of New York City from the “discovery” in 1609, New York City is not the most important city in the United States by 1825. By 1825, New York City is just starting to make a name for themselves. New York city is known for Wall Street. In 1784, the bank of New York first opened, courtesy of Alexander Hamilton. “Alexander Hamilton, leader of the New York Federalists, successfully created a national financial system which would secure the adhesion of the wealthy to the new federal union. The main planks were the assumption of state debt, the creation of a national bank, and the reliance upon excise tax for most governmental revenue” (Homberger, 62). Although the Anti-Federalists and Republicans believed the bank to be a threat, the creation of the first bank of New York allowed Hamilton to become an important economic figure in New York City, stimulate the economy, and begin to safeguard all of the nation’s transactions. We’ve touched upon the creation of the stock exchange in 1792 and the opening of Wall Street in 1817, but there hasn’t been too much development coming from these important aspects of New York City. After doing the blogs assignment, an individual can see that New York City really values the entertainment industry and there has been no mention of the creation of Broadway or any other entertainment aspect of New York City yet. During this time, Boston was the cultural center, it was not until the mid 1800s, that New York will became the cultural center of the nation. The wealthy and the merchants spent a lot of time in coffee houses and taverns. “Many taverns had gardens in which puppet shows, concerts and musical entertainments were offered” (Homberger, 64). This was only the start of the entertainment industry of New York City, only the wealthy got to enjoy the shows in these places, but today New York City allows different platforms for entertainment for people of all socioeconomic statuses. Important city individuals did not want taverns to have these entertainment acts in their establishments. “In 1788, tavern keepers were threatened with fines and imprisonment for allowing cock-fighting, gambling, card-playing, billiard tables, shuffleboards or dice in their establishments” (Homberger, 64). Where as today, with New York City’s true identity, the entertainment industry is idolized, individuals love to go to a coffee house and hear live music or go to a bar and play pool. Overall, New York is starting to develop the foundation for the most quintessential period, but it hasn’t exactly reached the point where diversity is fully welcomed, slaves are completely free, entertainment is idolized, and innovation booming. Innovation is starting with Fulton, Vanderbilt, and Irving but it is only the beginning of the entrepreneurship of New York City, which is one of the most important themes of the city. Individuals can become anything they want to be in New York City. 3. A New Yorker is a hard working, dedicated, self-ambitious, individual. They see what they want and they go after it. The three most quintessential New Yorkers that we have studied so far are Alexander Hamilton, Dewitt Clinton, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. There are definitely a lot of important individuals that helped create the history of New York City, but these three individuals can be defined as the true New Yorkers, they helped develop New York’s identity, and shape the city into what it is today. Alexander Hamilton brought banking into New York City, which eventually created the stock market. Dewitt Clinton brought education to New York city. Cornelius Vanderbilt had the greatest shipping empire and he became the most famous home grown, self-made man in the history of New York City. Alexander Hamilton was not only a quintessential New Yorker but important to the entire nation. “Hamilton was in many ways, the early immigrant success story. He was born out of wedlock in the British West Indies in 1755 and came to New York at the age of seventeen to study at King’s College (now Columbia University). He married into one of the state’s powerful families, was a delegate to both the Continental Congress in 1782 and the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and perhaps was a primary author of the Federalist Papers endorsing ratification” (Jackson & Dunbar, 103). Hamilton believed in the creation of banks, advocated for an economy with checks and balances, creation of the national tax system, and a strong federal government. He was a self-made man and an important founding father in the history of New York City and the nation as a whole. Hamilton was able to bring the city to a quintessential upstart and eventually its ultimate destiny, the capital of commerce. Not only did Hamilton bring banks to New York, but he also convinced New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution in 1788. Hamilton’s ultimate impact on New York City was that he left the nation with a bank to trust and start an economic boom. Governor DeWitt Clinton is another quintessential New Yorker, without him, New York City might have never financed the Erie Canal, which opened up the city’s harbor to more trade opportunities. “...New York had a potential all-water, low-level route to the Great Lakes and the interior of the continent. This potential was realized in 1817 when Governor DeWitt Clinton persuaded the state to finance the Erie Canal. This little ditch, never more than forty feet wide, opened in 1825 and promptly revolutionized transportation” (Jackson & Dunbar, 102). DeWitt Clinton was one of the first individuals to realize how New York’s location on the water allowed a multitude of ways to make money, sparking the ideas of Fulton and Vanderbilt. Besides the Erie Canal, Clinton believed in education for the entire population, including the rich and the poor. In 1805, he founded the New York Free School Society, which allowed the rich and poor to learn together in the same school. Education is so crucial to New York’s identity, without the creation of this school society, which allowed New York to take advantage of the coming market revolution. Cornelius Vanderbilt is another example of a quintessential New Yorker. “Cornelius made his mark with the steamboat by running blockades during the War of 1812, and by the 1830s the ‘Commodore’ was worth more than half a million dollars and was on his way to running the largest shipping empire in the world” (Jackson & Dunbar, 104). Vanderbilt became one of the most famous self-made, homegrown men in the history of New York City. With only one hundred dollars from his parents, Cornelius was able to purchase a steamboat to start his success. In 1810, he started the first ferry service from Staten Island to Manhattan. Within only a year he was able to pay his parents back and had already made a significant profit. Cornelius Vanderbilt was just the beginning of his family’s fame and fortune. 4. The five most pivotal events or developments in New York City history between 1609 and 1825 are creation of the Erie Canal, creation of the first bank in New York, first ferry service in 1810, creation of the free school society, and the Gradual Manumission Act of 1799. Between 1609 and 1825, there were many amazing developments and events that are important to learn, but these events and developments helped New York City become what it is today. The Erie Canal is one of the most important developments of New York City that we have studied so far.
“This little ditch, never more than forty feet wide, opened in 1825 and promptly revolutionized transportation. The price of shipment from Buffalo to New York City fell by more than 90 percent in 1825 compared with a decade earlier. By most measure, the Erie Canal, which ran for 325 miles between Albany and Buffalo, benefitted New York more than anyplace else and ranks as the most ambitious and successful public works projects in the nation…” (Jackson & Dunbar, 102). The Canal brought enormous growth, transformation, and revolution to New York’s economy. The Erie Canal opened in 1825, which opened up commerce and business. The Canal is the reason why New York City becomes an international port. The Erie Canal connected Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes to the Hudson River, allowing the western states direct access into the Atlantic Ocean, avoiding shipping goods downstream on to the Mississippi River and New Orleans. The amount of days of shipping and cost significantly decreased, sparking an economic …show more content…
growth. In 1784, the first bank of New York opened. The creation of this bank sparked the start of the Stock Exchange and Wall Street. “As a result of the renewed confidence in federal bonds issued by Hamilton, money began to flood into the city almost immediately. Two years later on May 17, 1792, in response to a financial panic, twenty-four brokers met under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street and created what would become the most powerful securities trading system in the world, the New York Stock Exchange” (Jackson & Dunbar, 103). New York City is known for Wall Street, the financial district. Empirically and symbolically, Wall Street is the most important financial center in the world because it is the trading hub of the world. Without the creation of the first bank of New York, New York City would not have gotten the Stock Exchange in 1792, and Wall Street might have not been the financial center of the world. After the creation of the bank, New York City had an amazing economic boom. In 1811, the Commissioners Society created the Grid Plan.
The Grid system is crucial to New York’s core identity because it is the basic map of how the city is constructed. “The rationale was economic: irregular shaped plots, right-angled intersections, valuable corner lots and straight streets would encourage the city’s economic development” (Homberger, 68). The creation of the grid system allowed real estate to be packaged in small units, which began to ignite the development of New York City. New York City would not have a strong identity without its grid system. The grid system started the rapid growth of urbanization in New York City, making it easy for the population to get around because of the numbered streets, starting with First Avenue.
In 1799, the Gradual Manumission Act was passed, which ignited the freedom of slaves, and created the beginning of the end of slavery, by allowing the freedom of children of slaves born after July 4th. Without this the long death of slavery would have been even longer. “Slavery’s demise throughout the North in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century marked a critical starting point in the nation’s arduous path toward abolition” (Chapter 4, Rael, 113). This beginning of Northern emancipation and freedom showed African Americans what they could ultimately accomplish,
abolition. In 1805, the New York Free School Society was created to educate the rich and the poor, creating the democratization of the education system, which New York holds important today. By having students with different socioeconomic statuses, Clinton believed that the students would learn from each other, and the rich would provide a positive role model for the poor, allowing students to learn not only from the teacher, but also each other. Ultimately, DeWitt Clinton created one of the best school systems in not only New York city, but the entire nation. The last important development that we have studied so far was the first ferry service to Manhattan on Vanderbilt’s steamboat. Vanderbilt’s steamboat service truly shows the American Dream, with only very little money, an individual can create amazing wealth and success. Without this ferry, Staten Island would not have had such easy access into the Manhattan. The ferry service continues to operate today, which is now known as the Staten Island Ferry, running free, every half hour from Staten Island to Manhattan and Manhattan to Staten Island. Based on all that has been discussed, New York City was not always a city with such an amazing identity. Just because something happens at the beginning and end of its history, such as diversity, does not mean there is any direct relation. Until after 1825, New York City was not as diverse as it is today. The immigrants that were coming into New York were actually coming in from other states, not other countries. Over time, New York City will eventually become the greatest city in the world, this is only the beginning.
The North is popularly considered the catalyst of the abolitionist movement in antebellum America and is often glorified in its struggle against slavery; however, a lesser-known installment of the Northern involvement during this era is one of its complicity in the development of a “science” of race that helped to rationalize and justify slavery and racism throughout America. The economic livelihood of the North was dependent on the fruits of slave labor and thus the North, albeit with some reluctance, inherently conceded to tolerate slavery and moreover embarked on a quest to sustain and legitimize the institution through scientific research. Racism began to progress significantly following the American Revolution after which Thomas Jefferson himself penned Notes on the State of Virginia, a document in which he voiced his philosophy on black inferiority, suggesting that not even the laws of nature could alter it. Subsequent to Jefferson’s notes, breakthroughs in phrenological and ethnological study became fundamental in bolstering and substantiating the apologue of racial inadequacy directed at blacks. Throughout history, slavery was indiscriminate of race and the prospect acquiring freedom not impossible; America, both North and South, became an exception to the perennial system virtually guaranteeing perpetual helotry for not only current slaves but also their progeny.
The National Bank created a standarad form of currency and helped pay off the revolutionary war debt. In 1816, there was a second twenty year charter. It was founded during the administration of U.S. President James Madison to stabilize currency. The estblaishment of a national bank led improvements in transportation because now roads could be paid for. These Improvements in Transportations were good for communication around the nation, which helped send messages faster. In 1818, the national road started the growing road systems that tied the new west to the old east. The Erie Canal was built in New York and runs from the Hudson River to Lake Erie, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean.
There is one reason Chicago is as big as it is today and that is the fact that it is the largest rail city in the world. The railroad made Chicago what it is today, and although the canal was very important in the history of Chicago the railroads importance out weighs it by far. The canal was important because it was the vision of the first settlers of Chicago to have an all water trade route that would go through Chicago. What those first explorers saw was a way to make a canal so that they could transport goods from the St Lawrence River all the way to the Gulf of Mexico with less cost and with more efficiency. The canal was the reason Chicago was settled in the first place if not for it there might very well not be a city called Chicago. You could argue that the canal was the most important thing in Chicago's history but I think the railroads were much more important. The railroads enabled Chicago to become one of the biggest cities in the world by bringing in different business and all types of goods. Chicago is a very key location to have a railroad-shipping hub. This is because it is centrally located in the United States so goods can be shipped in almost any direction and received in a shorter amount of time. William Butler Ogden was the one who pushed for Chicago to adopt a large rail system and he should be known as the one who made this city boom. St. Louis or another centrally located city could have very well adopted the rail system and they would have reaped all the benefits.
essence of New York and all its nuances in the form of terse observations. Whether
While the formal abolition of slavery, on the 6th of December 1865 freed black Americans from their slave labour, they were still unequal to and discriminated by white Americans for the next century. This ‘freedom’, meant that black Americans ‘felt like a bird out of a cage’ , but this freedom from slavery did not equate to their complete liberty, rather they were kept in destitute through their economic, social, and political state.
During the period of time between 1789 and 1840, there were a lot of major changes occurring on the issue of slavery such as the impact it had towards the economy and the status of slaves in general. There were two types of African Americans slaves during the era, either doing hard cheap labor in a plantation usually owned by a white and being enslaved, or free. Undoubtedly, the enslaved African Americans worked vigorously receiving minimal pay, while on the other hand, the free ones had quite a different lifestyle. The free ones had more freedom, money, land/power, are healthier, younger and some even own plantations. In addition, in 1820 the Missouri compromise took into effect, which made it so states North of the 36°30′ parallel would be free and South would be slave and helped give way to new laws regarding the issue of slavery.
After the American Revolution, slavery began to decrease in the North, just as it was becoming more popular in the South. By the turn of the century, seven of the most Northern states had abolished slavery. During this time, a surge of democratic reform swept the North to the West, and there were demands for political equality, economic and social advances for all Americans. Northerners said that slavery revoked the human right of being a free person and when new territories became available i...
This story was set in the deep south were ownership of African Americans was no different than owning a mule. Demonstrates of how the Thirteenth Amendment was intended to free slaves and describes the abolitionist’s efforts. The freedom of African Americans was less a humanitarian act than an economic one. There was a battle between the North and South freed slaves from bondage but at a certain cost. While a few good men prophesied the African Americans were created equal by God’s hands, the movement to free African Americans gained momentum spirited by economic and technological innovations such as the export, import, railroad, finance, and the North’s desire for more caucasian immigrants to join America’s workforce to improve our evolving nation. The inspiration for world power that freed slaves and gave them initial victory of a vote with passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. A huge part of this story follows the evolution of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment more acts for civil rights.
The American Revolution was a “light at the end of the tunnel” for slaves, or at least some. African Americans played a huge part in the war for both sides. Lord Dunmore, a governor of Virginia, promised freedom to any slave that enlisted into the British army. Colonists’ previously denied enlistment to African American’s because of the response of the South, but hesitantly changed their minds in fear of slaves rebelling against them. The north had become to despise slavery and wanted it gone. On the contrary, the booming cash crops of the south were making huge profits for landowners, making slavery widely popular. After the war, slaves began to petition the government for their freedom using the ideas of the Declaration of Independence,” including the idea of natural rights and the notion that government rested on the consent of the governed.” (Keene 122). The north began to fr...
Dumenil, Lynn, ed. "New York City." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2012. Oxford Reference. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
In The Artificial River, Carol Sheriff describes how when the digging of the Erie Canal began on July 4, 1817, no one would have been able to predict that the canal would even be considered a paradox of progress. One of the major contradictions of progress was whether or not triumphing art over nature was even considered progress. People were not sure during the nineteenth century if changing the environment for industrialization was necessarily a good thing. Another contradiction to progress that resulted from the Erie Canal was when people started holding the state government responsible for all their financial misfortunes. An additional contradiction to progress that the Erie Canal displayed was how many of its workers were either children, or men that lived lives that were intemperate and disrespectful to women. As American history students look back at the Erie Canal today, they generally only imagine how the canal was extraordinary for the residents of New York, but not all the issues and problems it also produced.
The Erie Canal created what was the first reliable transportation system, connecting the eastern seaboard (New York) and the western interior (Great Lakes) of the United States that did not require on land travel. Along with making water routes faster then travel on land it also cut costs of travel by 95 percent. The canal started a population surge in western New York, and opened regions farther west to settlement. This was the start of New York City becoming the chief U.S. port.
“Our cultural diversity has most certainly shaped our national character,” affirmed Julie Bishop. From my perception, New York City is one of the most densely inhabited metropolitan collection of cultural diversity in the world in which structures our temperament. New York City applies an imperative influence upon trade, economics, mass communication, skill, style, and education. Frequently it is known that New York City is a crucial core for global politics and has been depicted as the ethnic headquarters of the globe. New York City has been known as a melting pot of culture and as this prolong throughout towards the current day, the city has become ornate with distinct cultures. Just walking around the streets of the city can be like walking around the halls of a cultural museum. From borough to borough, you can straightforwardly experience several features of different cultures by going to the different ethnic neighborhoods that exist throughout the city. For instance, if you wanted to take a trip to China that you've always dreamed of but couldn’t afford it, when living in New York City you can hop on a subway to Canal Street and be in Chinatown for just a few dollars. Certainly, it's not the same as literally being in China, however, you can experience a quantity of the culture and perchance grab some bona fide Chinese food for dinner. Several places holds their culture to denote each individual in New York City, to make an abundant of people to visit and feel each culture one setting at a time.
Knowles, H. J. (2007). The Constitution and Slavery: A Special Relationship. Slavery & Abolition, 28(3), 309-328. doi:10.1080/01440390701685514
When you associate anything with New York City it is usually the extraordinary buildings that pierce the sky or the congested sidewalks with people desperate to shop in the famous stores in which celebrities dwell. Even with my short visit there I found myself lost within the Big Apple. The voices of the never-ending attractions call out and envelop you in their awe. The streets are filled with an atmosphere that is like a young child on a shopping spree in a candy store. Although your feet swelter from the continuous walking, you find yourself pressing on with the yearning to discover the 'New York Experience'.