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Home | 18-19th Centuries Index
CANADA and the UNITED STATES, 1814-46
The United States had been expanding territorially. Vermont, in 1791, had become the fourteenth state to join the union of federated states. Kentucky joined in 1792, Tennessee in 1796 and Ohio in 1803. In 1812, nine years after the purchase from France of territory west of the Mississippi, Louisiana joined the union. Indiana joined in 1816, Mississippi in 1817, Illinois in 1818, Alabama in 1819, Maine in 1820 and Missouri in 1821.
The United States was advancing economically. In 1800 it took thirty days to reach New York from New Orleans; in 1830 it took only fifteen days. The world's first journey by steam-powered boat took place in 1807 on the Hudson River from New York to Albany -- a 150 miles in 32 hours. In the northeast, water powered flour milling and textile manufacturing was changing over to steam power, the mills employing women and children from the age of seven -- a leftover from farming culture, which used child labor extensively. The middleclass saw itself as above the common laborer and perpetuated its values in education, thrift, sobriety and hard work. And they were increasing their consumption of goods. Republicans -- the party of Jefferson -- was becoming as interested in commercial enterprise and manufacturing as Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists had been.
Tobacco farming and horse breeding spread to Kentucky. Tobacco farming spread also to Tennessee. Sugar was grown in Louisiana, but in Mississippi and Alabama, with their rich soils and warm climate, cotton growing dominated. [note] Eli Whitney, a Yale College graduate in Massachusetts, in 1793 had developed a machine for a more efficient separating of cottonseeds from cotton fibers. The British were paying a good price for cotton for their textile mills, and cotton growing had become a profitable industry.
People were migrating across the Appalachian Mountains. Between 1800 and 1820, the combined non-Indian population of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi and Alabama is estimated to have increased almost six fold. People in the southern states were putting more of their capital into more land and more slaves and into cotton production rather than into ships for transporting goods or into manufacturing. The bales of cotton produced doubled between 1820 and 1830. The economies of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee were becoming tied to the boom in cotton growing in the deeper south. Arkansas Territory was a part of the boom in cotton growing. Arkansas had 1,617 slaves in 1820. It became a state in 1836, and, with an increase in settlement, by 1840, its slave population jumped to 20,000.
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Copyright © 2003 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.