America on its way to modernity (1800-1860)

Résumé du document

The beginning of the nineteenth Century was mostly rural: indeed the Americans living in the countryside were five times in number than those living in cities. Moreover the nation grew considerably in 1790; there were four million American and seventy years later, there are thirty-nine million. That rapid rise, especially due to immigration, was followed by technological changes which modified the economy of the new nation. Nevertheless, those changes were not equal in the whole country: a gap in each matter was widening between the North and the South. To what extend can we say that the economic opposition between those two parts finally leads to modernity in the whole United States? To understand it, we will first study the two different economies, on the basis of the divide. However, we will see that there was a communication between the two worlds. Finally we will analyze the social changes which resulted from that situation.

Extraits

[...] Special education was given to handicapped children: for instance, in 1816, Thomas G. Gallaudet built in Hartford, Connecticut the first school for pupils with hearing impairments. And in 1829, the Perkins Institute for the Education of the blind was created in Boston. The statute of women The participation of women in the reform of the evangelical movement led to a campaign to remove political and economic discriminations against them. Women such as Sarah and Angelina Grimké, Frances Wright, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton demanded for their civil rights. [...]

[...] That organization was helped by technological innovations: indeed, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Americans needed to import technologies. But from 1800, they had superiority in key areas, like, for instance, with their excellent machine tool making. Furthermore, a higher-pressure engine was created and steam definitely replaced water power. The southern agriculture However, the South was still developing agricultural products: in the upper South, tobacco was produced and in the Deep South, it was rice, sugar and long-staple cotton which were cultivated. [...]

[...] Their conditions were hard proportionally to the darkness of their skins. Slave codes were established to give them fewer possibilities to be free (for instance they cannot be taught to read and write). Despite of the fact that these two worlds were opposed economically and socially, a communication was established between them by different ways. II] Communication between the North and the South Transportation In the 1830's, the importance of the steam-powered locomotive increased thanks to new technologies, but from the 1840's, the “Railroad started: the first venture, called the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, was made by Baltimore merchants and bankers in 1827 but the real improvements of that way appeared ten years later and in 1850 there wee more than nine thousands miles of rails in the country. [...]

[...] Art The American romance was one of the most important styles of literature. When the American writers had succeeded in turning their back on the British method, new and national themes appeared such as the environment of the American frontier and the impact of civilization on the natural world. Romance was considered as a way of talking about large moral subjects all around the country. The authors of that time were James Fenimore Cooper, with his romance The Pioneers (1823), and Herman Melville, with Moby Dick (1851) which described the dangers of the democracy's heroic reach. [...]

[...] Another kind of economy was developed in the South: the slave economy. Indeed there was an important demand for black slaves because promises f quick profits were made thanks to the abundance of cotton and of uncultivated lands. The fact to own slaves thus became a factor of wealth: the more a planter had slaves, the more he had social and political influence. A kind of capitalist enterprise as created with slaves as units of measure of wealth. Working conditions Generally speaking, we have to say that the working conditions at that time had to change with the arrival of European immigrants: they represented 12% of the population. [...]