Antebellum (Unit II)

In 1800 the second federal census reported that there were approximately 5,308,483 people living in the United States. By 1860, the nation’s population had burgeoned to 31,443,321, certainly a dramatic increase. During the period 1800-1860, the United States grew from infancy to adolescence. Agriculture boomed, in part because of high cotton prices early in the era as well as of the growing demand for tobacco. Much of the agricultural labor in the South was done by slaves, which made up about 14% of the total U.S. population. Western agriculture was also booming, however rather then focus on cotton or tobacco, these family farms grew grains and raised cattle. At the same time, manufacturing firms also were established, the large factories being located mostly in the North. Beginning in the 1830s railroad fever infected all three sections of the nation. Thus one could legitimately claim that the central theme for the period of United States history from 1800 to 1860 would be growth and expansion.

In his Pulitzer Prize winning book What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), historian Daniel Walker Howe begins his monumental study with the May 24, 1844 public demonstration by Samuel F. B. Morse and his assistant Alfred Vail of Morse’s telegraph and asserts that the period’s main theme is that of the “twin revolutions in transportation and communication [that] integrated the continental expansion of the United States.” For our purposes, however, a more general central theme of growth and expansion provides a larger umbrella under which to collect the period’s major sub-themes, issues, people, and events.