The Market Revolution: America's Economic Transformation

In the middle of the nineteenth century, an economic transformation occurred in the United States. Historians refer to this event as the market revolution. Americans integrated technologies of the Industrial Revolution into a new profitable market economy. Steam power moved steamboats and railroads, fueled the rise of American industry by powering mills and sparking new national transportation networks. Alexis de Tocqueville said on his first visit to America: ”No sooner do you set foot on American soil and you will see how everything is on the move around you.” This is considered a bold term that conjures up images of radical transformation within the American economy. However, not everybody enthusiastically participated in the new market

economy. Many found the new conditions unsettling. Three of the opposition voices of the market will be further discussed..
Ralph Waldo Emerson was the central figure in a movement called transcendentalism. Emerson believed that everyone had the chance to do something good and to prove that they were worthy, but in order to do so they had to go beyond their limits. “The keynote of the times was the new importance giving up to a single person and the emancipation of the individual” (Emerson, p330). Even though the market revolution promoted commercial connections between people and countries, Individualism was one of the fundamental ideas of Transcendentalism. It inspired free thought and actions based on a person’s own values, not the values of others. The idea of the 'sovereign individual' claimed that Americans should depend on no one but their 'own shoulders'. Another American philosopher, Henry David Thoreau, illustrated Emerson's point about the primacy of individual conscience in matters political, social, and personal, and the need to find one's own path rather than following the crowd.
Many Americans experienced the market revolution as a loss of freedom.

The economic transformation produced an explosive growth in the nation’s output and trade and a rise in the general standard of living, but in the Northeast it just grew the inequality between citizens. Alarmed at the threat of being reduced to the status of dependent wage earners, skilled craftsmen in the late 1820s created the world’s first Workingmen’s Parties, short-lived political organizations that sought to mobilize lower-class support for candidates who would press for social issues in favor of the country. In 1833, journeymen carpenters struck for higher wages and warned of more protest to come. Such actions and language were not confined to male workers; the young mill women of Lowell also walked off their jobs in 1834 to protest a reduction in wages. The mill women were active through the protests even two years later. Orestes Brownson said that “Emerson’s self-trust, self-reliance, self-control, self-culture- offered an adequate response to social inequality”. (p

343)
During the late 1820s, the Democratic Party came up with their own ideas.

The Democrats believed that the states should have as much power as possible and that the federal government should only have the powers absolutely necessary for the nation to function. They were against the Protective Tariff and the national bank. They overvalued the individual and believed that anyone can be important. This message was well received by small farmers and factory workers. Slave owners also favored this message, fearing that the federal government might try to end slavery. Andrew Jackson also believed that the states should finance turnpikes, canals, and eventually, railroads. When he didn't support many Ohioans who wanted federal government assistance for roads and other forms of transportation, they went against him. In 1834 political opponents of President Andrew Jackson structured a new party to contest Jacksonian Democrats nationally and in the states. Guided by their most prominent leader, Henry Clay, they called themselves Whigs. Whigs united behind the American System, believing that via a protective tariff, a national bank, and aid to internal improvements, the federal government could lead economic development. They were strong in the Northeast, one of the most rapidly modernizing region of the country. Historians have interpreted the Whigs in strikingly different ways. They have been seen as champions of banks, business, corporations, economic growth, the positive liberal state,

humanitarian reform, and morality in politics, and as opponents of expansionism, executive tyranny, states’ rights, labor, and the democratic suffrage, among other things.
In conclusion, the market revolution transformed and divided American society and its conceptions of freedom. It encouraged a new emphasis on individualism and opened new opportunities for economic freedom, while leading others to fear that their traditional economic independence was being eroded. In a democratic society. It was certain that the market revolution causes would affect American politics too.