Chapter 9: The Market Revolution, 1800–1840
I. The Marquis de Lafayette
II. A New Economy
A. Roads and Steamboats
1. Improvements in transportation lowered costs and linked farmers to markets.
2. Toll roads did little to help the economy.
3. Improved water transportation most dramatically increased the speed and
lowered the expense of commerce.
B. The Erie Canal
1. The canal was completed in 1825 and made New York City a major trade port.
2. The state-funded canal typified funding for internal improvements.
C. Railroads and the Telegraph
1. Railroads opened the frontier to settlement and linked markets.
2. The telegraph introduced a communication revolution.
D. The Rise of the West
1. Improvements in transportation and communication made possible the rise of
the West as a powerful, self-conscious region of the new nation.
2. People traveled in groups and cooperated with each other to clear land, build
houses and barns, and establish communities.
3. Squatters set up farms on unoccupied land.
4. Many Americans settled without regard to national boundaries.
a. Florida
E. The Cotton Kingdom
1. The market revolution and westward expansion heightened the nation’s
sectional divisions.
2. The rise of cotton production came with Eli Whitney’s cotton gin.
3. The cotton gin revolutionized American slavery.
F. The Unfree Westward Movement
1. Historians estimate that around 1 million slaves were shifted from the older
slave states to the Deep South between 1800 and 1860.
2. Slave trading became a well-organized business.
a. Slave coffles
3. Cotton became the empire of liberty’s most important export.
III. Market Society
A. Commercial Farmers
1. The Northwest became a region with an integrated economy of commercial
farms and manufacturing cities.
2. Farmers grew crops and raised livestock for sale.
3. The East provided a source of credit and a market.
4. Between 1840 and 1860, America’s output of wheat nearly tripled.
a. Steel plow
b. Reaper
B. The Growth of Cities
1. Cities formed part of the western frontier.
a. Cincinnati
b. Chicago
2. The nature of work shifted from that of the skilled artisan to that of the
factory worker.
C. The Factory System
1. Samuel Slater established America’s first factory in 1790.
