North vs. South
By: Christina Burdette
North
- Turned into urbanized economic powerhouse.
- the Market Revolution—the shift from an agricultural economy to one based on wages and the exchange of goods and services.
- experienced a manufacturing boom
- Internal improvements such as the Erie Canal and new modes of transportation such as the steamboat and railroad, allowed goods and crops to flow easily and cheaply between the agricultural West and manufacturing North.
- Poor Irish and German immigrants fueled the labor source for manufacturing
- The wage labor system played a large role in transforming society because it gave birth to America’s first middle class.
- Middle class comprised mostly of white-collar workers and skilled laborers
- Middle class responsible for most reform movements
- The Great Awakening also influenced many reforms.
- More northerners came to realize the horrors and injustices of slavery.
- By no means supported racial equality
Susan B. Anthony
Irish and German immigrants
Children working in textiles
Northern Family Tree
John Jackson- 27
Margaret Jackson-23
Children:
Mary, female, 4
William, male, 6
Elizabeth, female, 1
George, male, 7
All other children have passed away
Live in New York City, New York
Free time: dancing, school work, church
Father: blacksmith
Mother: care taker
children: they run errands and make deliveries for a store keeper, and George apprenticed to his father as a blacksmith.
South
- Reliance on cotton production
- Cotton gin made the cotton industry boom
- At the top were a select few, extremely wealthy, white plantation owners who controlled the southern legislatures and represented the South in Congress
- Then came the farmers who owned one or two slaves
- poor and sometimes landless whites
- Black slaves were confined to the bottom of the social hierarchy.
- only about one in four southern males owned slaves in the 1850s, and those men usually owned only one or two slaves.
- Most southern whites were poor subsistence farmers who grew food only for their own use.
- the poorest whites often were the most ardent supporters of slavery, because they dreamed of becoming rich planters with slaves of their own
- Some championed the “paternal” nature of slavery by arguing that they took care of the “inferior race” as fathers would small children
- Others told themselves that blacks were better off as slaves in America than as “savages” in Africa.
- the South generally clung to King Cotton and slavery and thus remained essentially the same
- White wealthy woman. Privately educated. Look pretty and have lots of children. Fewer rights than women in north
- Wealthy male: Privately educated then Went to University in north then Inherited plantation
- Poor in south were called "Plain Folk".
- Own little land
- South didn't have public education system
- Needed children to work on farm so they couldn't learn
- Appalachian population was the most poor of all
- Most lived off wilderness and had rates of starvation
White child tending to farm
King Cotton
Slavery
Southern Family Tree
James Beauregard -25
Nancy Beauregard- 22
Billy, male, 9
Henry, male, 4
Martha, female, 7
Margaret, female, 7
Charlie, male, 2
All others passed away
Free time: fishing, telling stories, reading out of the bible, reading newspapers (which were not thrown away, but read over and over again). Nancy made luxury items like lace and quilts. With the community they quilted bee, where women would gather to finish a quilt top that someone had made. They had barn raisings, where families gathered to build a barn in a short time, taffy pulls, and church and "singings" where people gathered to sing the folk songs of their region together.
Work: The whole raised cattle, chickens, and hogs and grew corn, fruits, garden vegetables, hay, and wheat. They produced barely enough for themselves. Henry and Billy tasks include cutting, splitting, and carrying firewood for the stove or fireplace, tending to the farm animals, carrying water to the house, putting up and repairing fencing, working in the gardens and fields, and hunting, trapping or fishing to provide food for the family. Martha, Margaret and Nancy spent long days cooking, milking cows or goats, collecting eggs, churning butter, making breads and cheeses, preserving foods, cleaning, doing laundry, making candles, sewing clothes for the family, preparing fibers like wool and flax to spin and weave, and care for Charlie.