From home to market
Between about 1815 and 1850 the economy changed in a way historians call the market revolution. Farmers increasingly grew crops to sell rather than just to eat. Better transport made this possible: roads, steamboats, and above all canals. The Erie Canal (opened 1825) linked the Great Lakes with New York City, cutting freight costs sharply and making New York the nation's leading port. Railroads followed in the 1830s and 1840s.
In the North, early factories, such as the textile mills at Lowell, Massachusetts, employed young women and later immigrants. In the South, the cotton gin (1793) made short-staple cotton profitable, and cotton became the largest export. That growth increased demand for enslaved labour, so the same market forces strengthened slavery in the South.
Politics: Jacksonian democracy
By the 1820s and 1830s most states dropped property requirements for voting by white men. Andrew Jackson, elected in 1828, presented himself as the champion of ordinary citizens. He vetoed the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States, arguing it favoured the rich. His Indian Removal policy, under the Indian Removal Act (1830), forced Native nations such as the Cherokee west on the Trail of Tears, even after the Supreme Court had ruled in the Cherokee's favour on a related question. Democracy widened for some people while it was denied to others.
Reform
A religious revival, the Second Great Awakening, encouraged people to improve themselves and society. Reform movements included temperance (cutting alcohol use), public schools led by Horace Mann, asylum and prison reform, and abolitionism. The Seneca Falls Convention (1848) launched the organised women's rights movement and issued the Declaration of Sentiments, modelled on the Declaration of Independence. Leaders included Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Frederick Douglass, a formerly enslaved writer, was an important speaker for abolition and attended Seneca Falls.
Worked example: how the Erie Canal changed a farm
- Before the canal, hauling a ton of grain overland to the coast might cost many times the grain's value.
- After the canal, moving it by boat was far cheaper and faster.
- A western New York farmer could now profit from selling wheat in the east.
- So farmers specialised in wheat and bought cloth and tools from stores instead of making them.
- That demand supported Northern towns and factories.
Cheaper transport widened markets, and wider markets rewarded specialisation. This chain of cause and effect explains the whole "market revolution".