Salt Lake Community College

Research Paper

Maria Barbosa

American Civilization 1700

Professor Mark Welsh

December 8, 2014

Barbosa 1

The Market Revolution

During the late 1700s, the United States was a market for industrial goods and the world ’s major

source for tobacco, cotton, and other agricultural products. A labor revolution started to occur in the

United States throughout the early 1800s. There was a shift from an agricultural economy to an industrial

market system. After the War of 1812, the domestic marketplace changed due to the strong pressure of

social and economic forces. Major innovations in transportation allowed the movement of information,

people, and merchandise.

Eli Whitney invented a machine in 1793 that would set America as the worlds number one supply

of cotton. It was called cotton gin and it separated the seeds from the lint, which required a lot of time and

slave labor. Before its introduction a slave would process a pound of cotton a day and after it had been in-

troduced the same slave could process up to 50 pounds.

Transportation was a large factor in the market revolution. During the first half the 19th century,

there were many forms of improved transportation. Roads, steamboats, canals, and railroads lowered the

cost and shortened the time of travel. By making these improvements, products could be shipped into

other areas for profit. Steamboats set off a huge industry and by 1830, more than 700 steamboats were op-

erating up and down the Ohio and Mississippi River. Steamboats also had some flaws, due to the fact of

deforesting the paths along the rivers because wood was needed to refuel the power to the boat and the

carbon emissions from the steamboats polluted the air.

What steamboats did for transportation, Samuel Morse did for communication, when in 1837 he

patented a device that sent electrical pulses over a wire, and before long, telegraph lines linked various

parts of the country instantaneously. By 1860 more than 50,000 miles of telegraph lines had been laid.

The telegraph lines sped business information, linked the transportation network, and allowed newspaper

to provide readers with up-to-date news.

The mart revolution changed more than where people sold their goods, it provided new opportu-

nities and increased freedom but it also generated a great deal of concern, because a distant market meant

a unknown trade partner.

Barbosa 2

Trench Warfare

When World War I broke out in Europe, President Wilson announced that the United

States would stay out of European affairs and remain neutral. He issued a declaration of US neu-

trality and called upon the American people to support his policy by not taking sides. He hoped

that the United States would remain neutral and continue to supply the warring nations. The

United States hoped to stay out of the way because there was no reason for the U.S. to intervene

with European affairs due to isolation. Wilson's desire to remain impartial was dying as America

drew closer and closer to Britain and France.

President’s Wilson wishes of staying out of the War from war collapsed, when in 1917 a

telegram from the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmerman was intercepted on its way to

the Mexican ambassador. The telegram offered Mexico guns, money, and promised to give

Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona back if Mexico attacked the United States. President Wilson

ordered gun crews aboard merchant ships to shoot u-boats on sight. U-boats torpedoed the Amer-

ican merchant vessel Algonquin and in April 6 of that same year, the U.S. joined the war.

World War 1 proved America to be the nation producing the highest amount of propa-

ganda. Through his use of propaganda President Wilson was able to draw American support for

the war by convincing Americans to join the army, to ration food, and also by involving women

in the workforce.

Barbosa 3

The Progressive Era

The Progressive Era was formed by people from the old-middle class, new middle class,

women, modern anti feminists, and moral reformers. Some fought to make government efficient

and honest. Some progressives looked to purify society by outlawing alcohol, prostitution, and

restricting the new flood of immigrants. Others sought social justice for the poor and working

class, social welfare to protect marriage and children.

A good example of a progressivist was Margaret Sanger who was a visiting nurse of the

Lower East New York, and after seeing many women suffer from unwanted pregnancies, and

overburdened with children, decided that no women could be considered equal with men until

they had control over their reproduction functions. In 1912 when Sadie Sachs accidentally killed

herself on the attempt to stop a fourth pregnancy, Sanger vowed that she would do something to

change the lives of the poor mothers. She became a champion on what she called birth control

and distributed information about contraceptive methods to all women independent of their race,

or social positions.

The progressives ran community center located in in slums to help the poor and foreign

born, those centers were called settlement houses. There were more than a 100 settlement houses

and the most famous one was Jon Addams’ Hull House in Chicago. The houses taught foreigners

american ways of life and served as day nursery, English and cooking classes, playgrounds, and

libraries.

The Progressive period is known for its tremendous successful efforts having everlasting

impact on American economy and society by making remarkable changes at the social, economi-

cal, and political levels. Although, reformers of this movement belonged to a diversified

Barbosa 4

group from labor and religious leaders, journalists, politicians, and teachers- both men and

women- one thing common among them was to protect people, especially working class, solve

problems of urbanization and industrialization, and concentrate on social welfare of American

people.

Barbosa 5

The Middle Passage

The "Middle Passage" was the journey of slave trading ships from the west coast of

Africa, where the slaves were captured, across the Atlantic, where they were sold or, in some

cases, traded for goods. However, this voyage has come to be remembered for much more than

simply the transport and sale of slaves. The Middle Passage was the longest, hardest, most dan-

gerous, and also most horrific part of the journey of the slave ships. With extremely tightly

packed loads of human cargo that stank and carried both infectious disease and death, the ships

would travel east to west across the Atlantic on a miserable voyage lasting at least five weeks,

and sometimes as long as three months.

No contemporary argument regarding the Middle Passage can deny its horrific immoral-

ity. Slave narratives are rare, but one such slave account by Olaudah Equiano describes seeing

and boarding a slave ship for the first time. “These filled me with astonishment, that was soon

converted into terror, which I am yet at a loss to describe...I was immediately handed and tossed

up to see if I was sound by some of the crew, and I was persuaded that I had got into a world of

bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me...when I looked round the ship too, and saw a

large furnace or copper boiling and multitude of black people, of every description, chained to-

gether, everyone of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of

my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and

fainted”.

Improvements were made in 1788 when the Dolben's law was enacted by Great Britain,

where it controlled the number of slaves aboard the ships and also required a doctor to be on

board. The doctor would separate the ill from the healthy and make sure the decks were clean.

Barbosa 6

This improvement was not driven by any humanitarian thoughts but one's profit since the death

rate lowered drastically.

It wasn't until after the 1800 that President Thomas Jefferson signed a law banning the

importation of slaves with the intention of selling in the United States and by 1820's most Euro-

pean Nations had banned slave trading. The illegal trafficking went on for another 50 years and

there were approximately 11 million Africans sold into slavery.

Barbosa 7

Mistresses And House Servants Dueling Document

The first dueling document chosen by me was a journal entry written by Mary Boykin

Chestnut, a plantation mistress in South Carolina whose husband had served in the U.S Senate

and later as an aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

On this entry Chestnut talks about how the rich people of New England live their lives “in

nice New England homes—clean, clear, sweet-smelling—shut up in libraries” writing books and

living in a self-denial type of religion. She tells how her mother, grandmother, and mother-in-law

were raised and educated in Northern schools like many of the other antislavery advocates who

own slaves but are set to ameliorate their lives giving them a “example of a perfect life-life of ut-

ter self-abnegation.” Chestnut mentions that these “holy New Englanders” dedicate their lives so

much to the negroes that they forget about their own. On the other hand, Chestnut will stay out of

the way of her slaves. Chestnut also mentions how they’re being judged by the North for being

slave owners and how much she hates slavery.

While Mary Chestnut gives her point of view on living with slaves, Harriet Ann Jacobs

on document two describes another side of the plantation mistress. Jacobs starts by saying that

“Mrs. Flint was totally deficient in energy” and that “her nerves were so strong, that she could sit

in her way chair and see a woman whipped, till he blood trickled from every stroke of the lash”.

It demonstrates the fear of everyone at the plantation who had to hope that what they had done

was liked by the master, like the cook who would be forced to eat every last grain in his presence

if her cooking wasn't of his liking. Jacobs does an excellent job writing this sad and descriptive

account about how their masters could be cruel.