Slavery Dbq

During the early 19th century America was going through a phase of rapid expansion, pushing towards the West. As pioneers traveled along, the need for faster transportation was a major concern. To a certain degree did these changes help bring the country together, beginning with an easier way for the transportation of goods and ideas. There were more jobs being created by factories, but at the same time, it created labor movements. A consequence of being able to transport goods faster was the demand for slaves increasing. The internal improvements during the 1820s brought a sense of nationalism, but in some ways it decreased the amount of nationalism.
The early 18th century brought all new ways of transportations, such as canals and roads.

America’s future depended on its ability to design a transportation network that could connect the Western farmers to the East coast. In Albert Gallatin’s report, “Roads and Canals”, that he gave to Congress, he said "good roads and canals will shorten distances, facilitate commercial and personal intercourse, and unite, by still more intimate community of interests, the most remote quarters of the United States” (Senate and Treasury 1808). The three major events that brought about the Transportation Revolution were the Louisiana Purchase, westward migration, and the War of 1812. The new forms of transportation allowed more profit to be made, because less money was spent on shipping the goods. Moving a ton of freight from Buffalo to NYC cost only five dollars, compared to the $100 before the Erie Canal. Farmers in the South didn’t have to pay as much for the goods they were importing in, because most of what they needed was imported in. The effect of better transportation was that it caused more income and let farmers sell a bigger percentage of their crops. Although the farmers grew the crops, they didn’t sell them to the public. Instead, the farmers exchanged the crops with local merchants for clothing or other manufactured goods. Those local merchants shipped them to larger local markets, and from there they went to the biggest port cities, such as New Orleans or New York. Some crops that were grown primarily in the lower South, such as cotton, was needed up in the North, because it could be used to make cloth in the textile mills. The invention of the steamboat connected the North and South, because goods could be finally brought up. Local markets were brought into nationals markets, due to the Market Revolution. This lead to the chain that brought the farmers crops to large port cities, and manufactured goods to pioneers on the Western frontier.
The Transportation Revolution encouraged more growth of industry in the Northeast. It created a crucial link between the South and the North, because the North need the raw materials that was grown in the South. Cotton was the cash crops that was grown in the lower South, and was also grown on the islands of the lower East coast. The steamboat provided a way of bringing cotton up to the New England region, where it was brought to textile factories. Cotton mills were the first form of a fully developed factory system, created by a trio of merchants.The Boston Manufacturing Company opened in 1813, and had a workforce of only young unmarried women. Those women paid rent to live in dorms above the mill, and had to work for sixteen to twenty hours a day. It was expected for those unmarried women to get married and leave at some point, so that new women could replace them. In 1830, eight mills in Lowell employed over 6,000 women. The lowering of wages created a strike against the mill, eventually leading to the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. This act lead to women pulling together, but pulled apart employees and employers. The mill girls took a step for women’s right, and created the beginning of the Women’s Right Movement. The young women banding up against their employee was more of symbolic movement than anything else because the owners were already over producing textiles. If the girls didn’t work in the cotton mills, the owner had plenty of textiles that were already made. This act brought together certain groups of people, but pulled apart other groups.
The cotton that was needed for cotton mills in New England came the lower South of United States.

Cotton is an very labor intensive plant that required a lot of time to be cultivate. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, creating in 1793, let the processing of the cotton occur much faster. The demand for cotton in the North and in Great Britain created a need for more labor. Slaves were the answer to the cotton problem. Plantation owners could use the money they made from selling cotton to purchase more slaves. The fact that there was a 400% increase of slaves in America was astonishing. A single creation of new technology changed the future of African Americans. People who hated slavery detested the sudden increase of slaves, mostly from the Northerners and even some Southern whites called for an end to slavery. But there was nothing they could really do about it because cotton impacted America in an tremendous way. 58% of American exports were cotton! At first 700,000 bales of cotton were being produced, to almost 5 million bales being made. These figures are significant in understanding that transportation created a demand for a product, that created a demand for a workforce, that created a demand for equality. Cotton product could be thought of as bringing moneymakers together, but pushing slaves and whites apart. It was ultimately breaking America up because abolitionist were beginning to voice their opinion, and people who loved slavery shot back their opinion. Cotton was a factor in why the Civil War had to be fought, pulling the North and South apart. The Transportation Revolution was a domino effect that would sooner or later lead to the Civil

War.
Rapid expansion during the early 19th century created a revolution in transportation because people needed a way to move around. Farmers found an easier way to move their crops and sell them to make a bigger profit. More jobs in textile manufacturing lead to labor movements, due to the fact that they made so little money working for such long hours. Making more money off of crops lead to more slaves being imported because they could work the crops faster. Internal improvements, such as national transportation, eventually led to the Industrial Revolution during the 1800s.