Enduring Vision A History of the

American People 8th Edition Boyer

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CHAPTER 9
The Transformation of American Society, 1815–
1840

CHAPTER OUTLINE
Westward Expansion
The Sweep West
Western Society and Customs
The Far West
The Federal Government and the West
The Removal of the Indians
Working the Land: The Agricultural Boom
The Growth of the Market Economy
Federal Land Policy
The Speculator and the Squatter
The Panic of 1819
Traversing the Land: The Transportation Revolution
Steamboats, Canals, and Railroads
The Growth of the Cities
Industrial Beginnings
Causes of Industrialization
Textile Towns in New England
Artisans and Workers in Mid-Atlantic Cities
Equality and Inequality
Urban Inequality: The Rich and the Poor
Free Blacks in the North
The “Middling Classes”
The Revolution in Social Relationships
The Attack on the Professions
The Challenge to Family Authority
Wives and Husbands
Horizontal Allegiances and the Rise of Voluntary Associations

CHAPTER THEMES
By 1840 one-third of Americans lived between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.
Most migrants to the West moved as families, stayed near sources of transportation, sought stability,
and maintained relations with others like themselves. In assisting westward expansion, the federal
government offered military-service bounties in land, and when Andrew Jackson became president, he
instituted a more coercive Indian removal policy. The Cherokees in Georgia sought to prevent
enforcement of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Cherokees
were entitled to federal protection, but Jackson refused to act. Between 1835 and 1838, the Cherokees
left Georgia to cross the Mississippi. Thousands died on the “Trail of Tears.”

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Chapter 9: The Transformation of American Society, 1815–1840

After 1815, farmers increasingly produced for a market economy that linked distant regions. Federal
land prices fell, and preemption rights of squatters were recognized. Speculation in public lands was
constant, assisted by an increase in the amount of money in circulation. State banks were quite
unrestrained in their credit policies. Farmers who came after the speculators were often forced to
expand their cash crops for the market in the hope of paying off creditors. An agricultural boom
encouraged them after the War of 1812. In 1819 the bubble burst when competition with British
textiles, high crop yields in Europe, and the tightening of credit by the Second Bank of the United
States had their effect. State banks called in their loans. Land prices and commodity prices fell. Hard
times stimulated demands for protection for domestic industries.
The river systems of North America helped bring goods to market, but the great rivers west of the
Appalachians ran primarily from north to south. Flatboats could carry produce downriver, and keelboats
could return, but only very slowly. The introduction of the steamboat on the Mississippi-Ohio river
system solved the problem of upriver navigation and stimulated the construction of canals. The first
major canal project was the Erie Canal, which linked New York City by inland waterway all the way to
Ohio. The canal boom drastically reduced shipping costs, and many states built canals until the 1837
depression and the coming of the railroad. By 1840 the United States had some three thousand miles of
track. Unlike canals, most railroads were constructed by private corporations. The transportation
revolution contributed to the rapid growth of towns and cities. Especially in the West, towns and cities
grew with dramatic suddenness, generally serving as commercial hubs adjacent to rivers and canals.
Many factors also stimulated industrialization. The Embargo Act of 1807 diverted capital from trade to
manufacture. The Era of Good Feelings saw general agreement on the need for protective tariffs.
Improvements in transportation put distant markets within reach. Growing numbers of immigrants
contributed to industrialization as laborers and consumers. New England was the first industrial region,
as tensions in the rural economy pushed farm families toward increasingly sophisticated manufacturing.
At mills in Lowell, 80 percent of the workers were unmarried women between the ages of fifteen and
thirty who lived under strict supervision as in a family. Working conditions were difficult and
impersonal, and several strikes occurred as early as the 1830s.
Industrialization involved new technologies and the division of the manufacturing process into a series
of small steps so that each worker made only a part of the finished product. Workers gathered in
factories for the specialized operations. Power-driven machinery replaced fabrication by hand. Because
the growth of industrialization was gradual and uneven, it was not always clear at the time that the
system of hand fabrication by skilled artisans was being destroyed. Such artisans began as early as the
late 1820s to form trade unions and “workingmen’s” political parties to defend their interests.
The gap between the rich and the poor widened during the first half of the nineteenth century,
particularly in the cities. The wealthy lived in magnificent houses in their own neighborhoods, while the
poor lived close to the margin of poverty, depending heavily on their children’s labor. Conditions of
hardship affected most people. Contemporaries usually classified the destitute either as the “deserving
poor” or the “undeserving poor,” loafers and drunkards. Most Americans convinced themselves that
success was within the grasp of everyone and were inclined to blame the poor for their poverty. The
“middling classes” were farmers and artisans, whose ideal was self-employment. These were the
nation’s sturdy producers, who often added entrepreneurial or middleman activities to their primary
economic role. Race as well as class led to major social divisions in nineteenth-century America. In
addition to immigration, which also played a major role in urban growth and development,
discrimination against blacks both North and South, including free blacks, was significant. In the
majority of states, blacks were restricted from voting and often forced by societal strictures into the
lowest paying and least skilled jobs. Many areas also restricted the migration of even free black
Americans.

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 Chapter 9: The Transformation of American Society, 1815–1840

Social relationships underwent significant change as Americans questioned authority to an

unprecedented degree. Individualism now meant self-reliance, and Americans subjected authority
figures like lawyers, ministers, and physicians to mounting criticism. Even within the family, economic
change created new opportunities, and young people, who no longer depended on their parents for land,
questioned parental authority. More than ever before, marriage was approached by the two partners on
the basis of romantic love and as a compact between equals. Traditionally women had been viewed as
subordinate to men in all spheres of life. The concept of a separate female sphere within the family
assumed growing importance. Supporters of the ideal of separate spheres did not advocate full legal
equality for women, but the ideal of separate spheres did enhance their power. As hierarchical, or
“vertical,” allegiances were being challenged, horizontal allegiances multiplied. In the mill, the
operatives discovered common interests. Wives increasingly associated with other married women.
Large numbers of voluntary associations were formed in the 1820s and 1830s, organizations that
allowed members to assert their influence at a time when the traditional forms of authority were
weakening.
This was a period of significant change. While population expansion and the growth of the market
economy and industry were modest in comparison with what came late in the nineteenth century, by
1840 the pace of change seemed breathtaking to contemporaries. These developments laid the
foundation for America's emergence half a century later as a major industrial power.

LECTURE SUGGESTIONS
It is a commonplace to observe that nowadays the pace of change is exceedingly rapid. Sometimes
students make the unwarranted inference that in the past not much change took place at all. You can
help them understand that change is a constant in human affairs with a lecture reviewing the elements
of the transportation revolution. The story of transportation can be dramatic when emphasis is placed on
the effort to solve the problems of each mode—road, river, canal, railroad—rather than merely relating
the events that took place. The achievement of the Erie Canal, the drama of building it, the celebration
attending its inauguration merit special consideration. See Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River: The Erie
Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817–1862 (1996), and Ronald E. Shaw, Canals for a Nation: The
Canal Era in the United States, 1790–1860 (1990). For a closer look at skilled craftsmen and toilers
with pick and shovel, consult Peter Way, Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of North
American Canals, 1780–1860 (1993). The story of the railroads can be broken off prior to the building
of the first transcontinental railroad, then resumed later in the term. See especially George Rogers
Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (1951), the classic work on the subject, and also
John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular
Government in the Early United States (2001), which provides a good overview of the subject.
Another approach to change will emphasize social relations. In this instance, rather than trace change
over time, you can sharply contrast two different time periods. The concepts of social hierarchy,
obligation, deference, and responsibility in the seventeenth century were far more rigid than in the
period discussed in Chapter 9. Provide a sketch of a family of the middling sort in Massachusetts late in
the seventeenth century, the roles of family members, their obligations to religious and civil authorities,
to equals, and to subordinates. Provide a similar sketch for a family of the middling sort in 1840.
Suggest some explanations for the change over 150 years: the Enlightenment, republicanism, relatively
easy access to land, the market revolution. Or leave the lecture unfinished: ask students to suggest
reasons for such great changes and complete the lecture in a later class, using their comments. See
Louis B. Wright, The Cultural Life of the American Colonies (1957), and in particular Lawrence A.
Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (1970). Cremin’s view of
education is much wider than mere schooling, and he provides a fine bibliographical essay. For the
nineteenth century, see Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790–1840 (1988). See also

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Chapter 9: The Transformation of American Society, 1815–1840

Christopher Clark, Social Change in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War (2006), an
important recent study.
One of the tragedies in the history of the United States is the story of the Trail of Tears. Students will
find a full account valuable in understanding U.S. Indian policy, and they can hardly remain unaffected
by the story’s drama. The Cherokees had done what was necessary to be “civilized.” They were ahead
of many Americans in their education and lifestyle. But they were in the way. See Grant Foreman,
Indian Removal (revised edition; 1953); and Theda Perdue, “The Trail of Tears: Removal of the
Southern Indians,” in The American Indian Experience: A Profile, edited by Philip Weeks (1988).
Two vignettes will provide students with a look at lesser-known but significant aspects of American
life. What was life like in the Indian Territory for the migrants from the very different landscape of
Georgia and Alabama? See Angie Debo, The Road to Disappearance (1941), and Grant Foreman, The
Five Civilized Tribes (1934) and Advancing the Frontier (1933). For fuller treatment of the Cherokees,
see Russell Thornton, The Cherokees: A Population History (1990), and John Ehle, The Trail of Tears:
The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation (1989).
A second vignette will describe life among the mountain men. Danger and loneliness are major
elements in the story, but comparisons are also to be made with more settled lives with respect to such
matters as the profit motive and race relations. See Bernard DeVoto, Across the Wide Missouri (1947),
for an excellent account. See also Robert G. Cleland, This Reckless Breed of Men: The Trappers and
Fur Traders of the Southwest (1950), and Dale L. Morgan, Jedidiah Smith and the Opening of the West
(1953).

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONAL SUGGESTIONS

Following consideration of the transportation revolution, ask students two questions. First, was
transportation of great, moderate, or little influence in the economic development of the United States?
Second, was geography of great, moderate, or little importance in the transportation revolution?
Whatever the answers, proceed to the next step. Display a blank outline map of the United States (using
an overhead projector, PowerPoint, or tablet computer). Where the Rocky Mountains are, write in
“mountains.” From approximately Montana all the way east and south to Virginia, write in “rain
forest.” Put two major rivers in the rain forest, one emptying into the sea at approximately Boston, the
other at Washington. Put in another river flowing northwest in the state of Washington and still another
flowing southeast from the rain forest to the coast at about Charleston. The area surrounding this last
river is “grasslands.” The very center of the country is labeled “generally inhospitable: some farmland,
much wasteland.” On the west coast from San Francisco south, mark “desert.” Give each student a
photocopy of this geographic arrangement and ask each—using what he or she knows about the
development of roads, canals, rivers, and railroads—to devise a theoretical scheme of transportation
development leading to economic growth. After wrestling with the problem, students will recognize
that given the technology of the early nineteenth century, the United States was geographically very
fortunate and that economic growth might otherwise have been much feebler.
It is almost a certainty that in any given October, politicians seeking office will speak about traditional
American values. How they are defined seems to matter rather less than that they are “good.” Let us not
permit students the luxury of such ambiguity. Ask them to define traditional American values and give
them some headings: “democracy,” “opportunity,” “sex,” “love,” “religion,” “table manners,” and
others that the instructor, or the class, may care to name. In class ask students for responses and initiate
a discussion. It will be surprising if there is widespread agreement on anything except that such ideas
change over time. See especially Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790–1840 (1988).
Chapter 9 points out the difficulty of defining adequately words like democracy and equality. Equality
before the law is one thing, equality of opportunity another, and social equality a third. Without

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 Chapter 9: The Transformation of American Society, 1815–1840

reference to the several types of equality, ask each student to define the word in writing. Tocqueville
has pointed out that equality of opportunity leads to inequality of condition. Have students confront this
dilemma. Initiate a class discussion and attempt to arrive at some consensus. Add the word democracy.
Students will invariably begin the definition with a reference to majority rule, although some will
recognize the need to include minority rights. Providing for equality of opportunity, majority rule, and
minority rights while accepting inequality of condition is no easy matter. How were the elements in this
pattern dealt with in the 1830s and 1840s? Students may wish to consult Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America (1833).
Those who are “other” to white Americans must also be involved in any discussion of democracy.
Return to the story of the Cherokee removal. Ask two students to prepare a statement on the
relationship between U.S. Indian policy and Tocqueville’s view of American democracy. Consult the
brief account by Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians
(1993).
Chapter 9 makes several references to the mobility of Americans. Have students read, or read to them,
significant excerpts from George W. Pierson, “The M-Factor in American History,” American
Quarterly 14, Part 2 (Summer 1962): 275–289. Ask students to list where their family has lived as far
back as they are aware up to three generations. Assuming that there has been migration, ask students to
account for the family’s reasons for moving. Relate these questions to the Pierson article and to the
previous discussion on democracy and equality. Ask students to ascertain in their own minds whether
such frequent mobility is a good thing or a bad thing and to defend their point of view.
One characteristic of a group of people that helps explain their view of life is the kind of stories that
they tell. Among many American folk stories are those of Johnny Appleseed, Mike Fink, Paul Bunyan,
and John Henry. In thinking about the changes in the 1830s and 1840s, it will be interesting to have
students examine such folk tales and try to identify some of their themes. A chief resource will be
Benjamin A. Botkin, editor, A Treasury of American Folklore (1944). Other leads can be found in
Cathleen C. Flanagan and John T. Flanagan, American Folklore: A Bibliography, 1950–1974 (1977).
Some contrast with lonely and dangerous reality can be found in Michael Allen, Western Rivermen,
1763–1861: Ohio and Mississippi Boatmen and the Myth of the Alligator Horse (1990). The central
position of the Erie Canal in the antebellum American imagination can be sampled through Lionel D
Wyld, Low Bridge! Folklore and the Erie Canal (1962).

PRINT AND NONPRINT RESOURCES

In 1987, PBS produced a thirty-minute presentation on The Expanding Nation, which treats the
rapid growth of industry, commerce, and agriculture in the first half of the nineteenth century and
its effects on society. It is available in VHS format through many libraries. See www.worldcat.org,
and search under “The American Adventure / The Expanding Nation.” Films for the Humanities
and Sciences (http://ffh.films.com/) offers a 45-minute video, The Trail of Tears (1996, DVD and
streaming), and the 60 minute The Trail of Tears: We Shall Remain—America Through Native Eyes
(2009, streaming).
A number of films are available that may be helpful in furthering understanding of the period.
Fuller information about the films may be obtained from the Educational Film & Video Locator
(Consortium of College and University Media Centers and R.R. Bowker, 1990). Cherokee is a
twenty-six-minute film dealing with a reconstruction of the Cherokee village of Tsa -La-Gi in North
Carolina. Both the reconstructed village and the film about it are vulnerable to the criticism that
they are at least as concerned about tourism as about history. The film Jedidiah Smith: America,
1826 (fifty-two minutes) establishes among other things the relationship between the mountain
men of the fur trade and the beaver-hat industry. The end of commercial demand for beaver hats
led to the end of the mountain-man era. Two transportation films are worth noting. Canals West:

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Chapter 9: The Transformation of American Society, 1815–1840

The Story of the Development of the American Canal System in the Nineteenth Century (sixteen
minutes) and Railroads and Western Expansion, 1800–1845 (fourteen minutes) provide visual and
auditory material useful in supplementing the text and other readings
In addition, The American History PicturePack (www.historypictures.com) offers a vast
collection of images that that will illustrate virtually all the topics and themes in this chapter.
For students interested in good fiction, you might suggest Robert J. Conley, Mountain Windsong: A
Novel of the Trail of Tears (1992).

Document Set 9–1

The Women of Lowell: Enslavement or Liberation?

1. Harriet Robinson Remembers Preindustrial Lowell, ca. 1836
2. The Lowell Work Force Described, ca. 1840s
3. A Lowell Workers Petition and the Legislative Response, 1845
4. Orestes Brownson Questions the Lowell System, 1840
5. A Lowell Worker Defends the System, 1841
6. A Worker’s Memories of the Mills, ca. 1840s
7. The Lowell Offering Emphasizes the Dignity of Labor, 1842
This chapter permits the instructor to capitalize on the text’s discussion of the rise of manufacturing,
including the causes of industrialization. Instructors may wish to use the documents to initiate
discussion of the distinctions between labor systems in the Massachusetts and Rhode Island mills.
Similarly, there is rich potential for discussion in comparing the Lowell model with the more diverse
and disorderly industrialization described in the text section on New York and Philadelphia
manufacturing. Finally the development of pressures on artisans and unskilled workers could be
discussed in connection with the nascent labor movement.
Another workable discussion strategy would focus on the “cult of true womanhood,” so obviously at
odds with the new sexual division of labor in the Lowell system. After exploring the concept of
separate spheres, the instructor may ask students to scan the documents for evidence of efforts to
reconcile traditional views of womanhood and female roles with the new demands of an industrial
society. This exercise provides an excellent opportunity to engage students, both male and female, in a
discussion of gender constructions and the relevance of a nineteenth-century issue to modern
assumptions.
The documents also invite students to explore questions such as the meaning of work, development of
self-image, and assumption of responsibility, which are an important part of American republicanism.
Instructors may pursue this line of discussion through questions dealing with the growth of resistance to
exploitation. Discussion will flow from consideration of the impact of the Lowell regimen and
environment on the “girls” and their relationships with each other. Students should be encouraged to
examine the documents for underlying reasons for the turnout, petition, and movement to associate in
the 1840s.
On a simpler level, most students should be able to extract from the sources ample evidence of
industrialism’s effect on workers, the work process, and the physical, economic, and moral well-being
of employees. Instructors should ask students why the social and ethnic makeup of the labor force had
changed so dramatically by the 1850s and what the changes implied about the validity of the Boston

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 Chapter 9: The Transformation of American Society, 1815–1840

Associates’ assumptions. What did the new labor system reflect about management’s values and
requirements in an unrestrained capitalist system?

Recommended Readings for Document Set 9–1

Ava Baron. Work Engendered: Towards a New History of American Labor (1991).
Mary H. Blewett. Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New England Shoe
Industry, 1780–1910 (1980).
Robert Dalzell. The Lowell Associates and the World They Made (1987).
Thomas Dublin. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell,
Massachusetts, 1820–1860 (1979). Note: A useful shortcut to the essence of Dublin’s work can be
found in Dublin, “Women, Work, and the Family: Female Operatives in the Lowell Mills, 1830–1860.”
Feminist Studies 3 (Fall 1975): 30–40.
———. Transforming Women’s Work (1994).
Alice Kessler-Harris. Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (1982).
Gerda Lerner. “The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson.”
American Studies Journal 10 (1969): 5–15.
Jonathan Prude. The Coming of Industrial Order: Town and Factory Life in Rural Massachusetts
(1983).
Barbara Welter. “The Cult of True Womanhood.” American Quarterly 18 (1966): 151–174.
David A. Zonderman. Aspirations and Anxieties: New England Workers and the Mechanized Factory
System, 1815–1850 (1992).

Document Set 9–2

End of The Trail: Jackson and the Rationale for Indian Removal
1. John C. Calhoun Outlines the War Department’s Indian Policy, 1825
2. The Cherokee Resist Removal, 1830
3. Andrew Jackson’s Second Annual Message to Congress, 1830
4. Christian Missionaries Oppose Removal, 1830
5. The Supreme Court’s Assertion of National Sovereignty, 1832
6. Alexis de Tocqueville Observes Legalism in American Indian Relations, 1864
Few topics generate greater student interest than the problem of Indian relations and government policy
toward the tribes occupying western lands. The discussion of land policy and Indian removal in Chapter
9 dramatizes the assimilationist bias of the commentators whose writings are reprinted in this document
set. Students should be encouraged to explore ethnocentrism and the meaning of the word civilization,
which appears in most of the documents included.
The debate over Indian relations after the War of 1812 also permits the instructor to emphasize another
trend evident in Chapter 9, the significance of a strengthened and increasingly activist national
government. Among the issues debated in the 1820s and 1830s was the question of the appropriate and
constitutional relationship between the state and federal governments as well as the separation of
powers within the federal government. Instructors may extract from the documents evidence of

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Chapter 9: The Transformation of American Society, 1815–1840

divergent interpretations of state and federal responsibilities and authority. Focusing on the Georgia
controversy, students should link their analysis of Marshall’s assertions and Jackson’s actions with the
text’s discussion of the Court decisions and their outcome. In so doing, it will be useful to consider the
significance of presidential determination to ignore a Supreme Court decision. A review of Jackson’s
actions will also raise the question of power relationships, including the validity of the “great man”
theory of historical development.
Analysis of Tocqueville’s argument might include discussion of the document’s peculiar value as
evidence drawn from an external source. In addition, students should be encouraged to assess
Tocqueville’s perspective on the American penchant for legal “correctness” and to consider the
relationship between legality and morality in this instance.
The evidence presented in this chapter is also well suited to dialectical analysis. One effective
discussion strategy would involve a debate in which teams of student advocates argue the case for and
against removal. Cross-examination and discussion could follow formal presentations, allowing other
students to explore weaknesses in the positions established.
Finally, the documents may be used to examine the definition of Jacksonian democracy. The evidence
will lead to conclusions on the beneficiaries of Jackson’s policies, the identity of his supporters, and the
consequences of his actions. Students may consider the significance of the debate over Indian policy
and its outcome as evidence of Jacksonian rhetoric and leadership. Removal should be interpreted as
part of larger national political and economic developments in the 1830s. The issue may be discussed in
terms of the removal policy’s place in Jacksonian imagery and political popularity, the key to continued
public support for his presidency.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 9–2

Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant Missions and American
Indian Response, 1787–1862 (1965).
———. The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (1978).
John Ehle. Trail of Tears (1988).
John R. Finger. The Eastern Band of Cherokee, 1819–1900 (1984).
Lucy Maddox. Removals: Nineteenth Century American Literature and the Politics of Indian Affairs
(1991).
William G. McLoughlin. Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (1986).
Roy Harvey Pearce. Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the American Mind (1967).
Francis Paul Prucha. “Andrew Jackson’s Indian Policy: A Reassessment.” Journal of American History
56 (Dec. 1969): 527–539.
Michael Paul Rogin. Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American
Indian (1975).
Ronald N. Satz. American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (1975).
Wilcomb E. Washburn. Red Man’s Land, White Man’s Law (1971).
Mary E. Young. Redskins, Ruffleshirts, and Rednecks: Indian Allotments in Alabama and Mississippi,
1830–1860 (1961). Note: A summary version of the argument is available in Young, “Indian Removal
and Land Allotment: The Civilized Tribes and Jacksonian Justice.” American Historical Review 64
(Oct. 1958): 31–45.

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