6 A Time of Change A man is photographed by R W Johnson studios in Pittsburgh on February 16 1909 The photo was printed from a process using four separate negatives The inset print also of Pittsburgh was taken in 1849 As a result the total land area of the The growth in the urban population United States in 1849 was nearly 3 million square miles 7 8 square kilometers That was more than three times what it had been in 1789 when the Constitution went into effect In addition the winning of the Mexican War 1846 1848 brought America a vast region from which the states of California and New Mexico as well as Arizona Colorado Nevada and Utah would later be created America’s population too had greatly increased In 1789 the population was a little less than 4 million people By 1849 it had increased almost six times to about 23 million people Most Americans still lived on farms Only about 15 percent lived in cities but that was a big increase from earlier times In 1789 there were no cities in America with a population of more than 100,000 people By 1849 there were five New York City New York Philadelphia Pennsylvania Baltimore Maryland Boston Massachusetts and New Orleans Louisiana was partly the result of immigration to the United States Earlier in the 1800s the rate of immigration was very low But in the 1830s about 500,000 people settled in America In the 1840s the number rose to 1 5 million In 1850 alone about 370,000 people came The majority emigrated from Ireland Germany and Great Britain Kellogg depicted this bombardment of Vera Cruz during the Mexican War on March 25 1847
A Time of Change 7 The Economy America’s economy was also growing but different regions were developing in different ways The overall economy was based on agriculture which would be the case until the end of the 1850s But manufacturing was on the rise especially in the North Steam power derived from the burning of coal was replacing water power The leading industries of the time were flour milling iron production and the manufacture of cotton textiles The South remained overwhelmingly agricultural Cotton tobacco corn and wheat were the main crops Unlike the economies in other parts of the country the South’s economy was almost entirely dependent on slavery This was so even though only one southern white family in four owned slaves Still most southerners could not imagine a society without slavery to support it Consequently the South was very sensitive to any movement that seemed hostile to slavery Both the North and the South continued to import or buy from other countries more goods than it exported or sold to other countries Textiles and iron products were major imports Cotton was the main export Gold was discovered in California in 1848 altering the economy of the West A gold rush began as people traveled the long and difficult land and sea routes to the new territory in the hopes of getting rich fast Prospectors pan for gold in California Words to Know immigration IM-uh-gray-shun The movement of people to one country from another country in order to live there import IM-port To buy goods from another country or a good that is bought from another country export EK-sport To sell goods in another country or a good that is sold in another country
8 A Time of Change Both contributing to and resulting from economic growth was what historians call the transportation revolution This was the great boom in the construction of roads canals and railroads that made moving people and goods from one place to another faster easier and cheaper The estimation is that in 1817 shipping goods from Cincinnati Ohio to New York City would have taken 52 days After the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and other canals after that shipping the same goods took as few as 18 days By the 1850s shipping goods by railroad delivered them to New York in about one week Rev L Armstrong Dr B J Clark Gardiner Stow and James Mott are depicted in discussion around a table with the Holy Bible the Temperance Constitution and Blackstone’s Commentary The lower picture shows The Mawney House which was a meeting place for the first temperance society The Baltimore Ohio Railroad had begun laying track as early as 1828 although the greatest spurt in railroad construction occurred in the 1850s Following the 1848 California gold rush some political leaders and business people began devising a transcontinental rail system which eventually spanned the length of the country from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean Because most of the new transportation routes went from the Northeast to the West they served to tie the West to the North much more than to the South This contributed to the South’s view of itself as a society separate and different from the rest of the country Reformers Writers and Artists In the years 1829 to 1849 important reform movements developed including attempts to change and improve American life Many of the people involved in these movements had strong religious beliefs and solid ideas about how to live moral lives Reformers gave speeches wrote books and articles and formed organizations in attempts to persuade government at all levels to change certain laws These movements had an enormous impact on the country One such movement was the temperance movement which sought to ban alcoholic beverages In 1826 the newly created American Temperance Society worked to support the ban Several states passed laws prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages
A Time of Change 9 Another important movement was the abolitionist movement which sought to end slavery Abolitionists believed that slavery was morally wrong and should be done away with as quickly as possible Among the movement’s leaders were William Lloyd Garrison Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass Most of the abolitionists were northerners but some southerners such as the Grimké sisters of South Carolina were also involved The Tragedy of the Native Americans In the history of America the growth and development of the United States as a whole often meant tragedy for the original inhabitants of the continent These Native Americans or American Indians were pushed aside often violently to make room for the white settlers who wanted their land The story of the Native Americans took a particularly tragic turn in the 1830s and 1840s In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act which authorized the president to negotiate treaties with Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River In exchange for their lands the tribes would receive land west of the Mississippi River known as the Indian or Oklahoma Territory The government would help to move them there At the time this was considered by the government to be a humane way of dealing with the Native Americans For the Native Americans however it was a disaster The tribes were tricked and cheated Hunger disease and exposure to harsh weather killed many as they moved west in a series of journeys known as the Trail of Tears The Cherokee Chickasaw Choctaw Creek and Seminole people who had lived in the Southeast suffered especially These tribes called the Five Civilized Tribes by whites in the early 1800s lived in permanent settlements They had established schools and legislatures Historians estimated that the Indian Removal Act cost the Cherokee a quarter of their population and the Creek two fifth of theirs The Seminoles in Florida refused to move The U S government waged a seven-year war from 1835 to 1842 to force most of the Seminoles to move west This gallery represents the Five Civilized Tribes Their portraits were drawn painted between 1775 and 1850
