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
10 A Time of Change Notable Inventions Several important American inventions of the 1830s and 1840s had a great impact on the quality of life in America They included 1831 the reaper invented by Cyrus H McCormick 1835 the revolver invented by Samuel Colt 1837 the steel plow marketed by John Deere 1844 the telegraph put into operation by Samuel F B Morse after he invented it in 1832 1846 the sewing machine invented by Elias Howe 1849 the safety pin invented by Walter Hunt The sisters developed a network called the Underground Railroad to help runaway slaves They also sent petitions to members of Congress demanding the abolition of slavery But for eight years from 1836 to 1844 southern congressmen in the House of Representatives were able to rely on the gag rule a measure that had been adopted to prevent such petitions from being read In the late 1840s a women’s rights movement was formed Elizabeth Cady Stanton Lucretia Mott and others sponsored a convention at the town of Seneca Falls New York in 1848 The convention adopted a Declaration of Sentiments that was modeled after the Declaration of Independence It said We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal The Declaration of Sentiments went on to say that man had oppressed woman He has endeavored in every way he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers to lessen her self-respect and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Also active during these years were some of America’s greatest thinkers and writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were neighbors in Concord Massachusetts Poets and essayists the two were also members of the Transcendental Club Transcendentalism stressed the uniqueness of individual experience and the importance of self-reliance Nathaniel Hawthorne of Massachusetts and Herman Melville of New York began publishing fiction in the 1830s and 1840s although their most well-known works came a little later Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston and grew up in Virginia He wrote many gripping poems and stories before dying of alcoholism in 1849 Artist William Sartain created this head and shoulders portrait of Edgar Allen Poe in 1896 A Time of Change 11 Among the many important artists of the period were George Catlin and John James Audubon Catlin is known especially for his paintings of Native Americans and Audubon is famous for his studies of birds Audubon also did pioneering work to protect the environment George Caitlin shows Native Americans celebrating with the snow shoe dance in order to thank the great spirit for the first appearance of snow The Growing Split Between the North and the South Despite the country’s economic industrial and artistic gains however many thoughtful people were troubled They worried about the future of the Union The North and the South one a region with few slaves the other a region whose whole economy was based on slavery were increasingly at odds Many disputes in Congress for example reflected differences between northern and southern senators and congressmen Some leaders sought to avoid topics that in some way involved the question of slavery such as the annexation of Texas Still the issue of slavery would not go away
