Group

Name: ___________________________________________________
B
North Packet: Reading Set #1
Early United States History

Free Enterprise and Factories

Industrial:
The War of 1812 brought great economic changes to
Having to do with the United States. It sowed the seeds [to do something that
factories would cause a future result] for an Industrial Revolution like the
one begun in Britain during the late 18th century. During the
Revolution: a Industrial Revolution, factory machines replaced hand tools,
sudden, complete
change
and large-scale manufacturing replaced farming as the main
form of work. For example, before the Industrial Revolution,
Manufacturing: Spinning wheel
To make
women spun thread and wove cloth at home using spinning
something with wheels and hand looms. The invention of such machines as
machines the spinning jenny and the power loom made it possible for
Unskilled:
unskilled workers to produce cloth. These workers, who were
Lacking often children, could produce more cloth, more quickly.
specialized
training The factory system brought many workers and
machines together under one roof. Most factories were built
Wages: amount
of $ paid to a near a source of water to power the machines. People left their
worker based on farms and crowded into cities where the factories were. They
how many hours worked for wages, on a set schedule. Their way of life
or days they work
changed, and not always for the better. Power loom
Free enterprise:
a system in which
private businesses Many Americans did not want the United States to industrialize. But the War of 1812 led
are able to the country in that direction. Because the British naval blockade kept imported goods from
compete with reaching US shores, Americans had to start manufacturing their own goods. The blockade also
each other with stopped investors from spending money on shipping and trade. Instead, they invested in new
little control by American industries. Taking advantage of the countrys
the government
free enterprise system, American businessmen built
their own factories, starting in New England. These
businessmen and their region grew wealthier.

Factories Come to New England

New England was a good place to set up factories for
several reasons. Factories needed water power, and New
Spinning England had many fast-moving rivers. For transportation, it
Mill:
Factory also had ships and access to the ocean. In addition, New
where England had a willing labor force. The areas first factory
workers workers were families who were tired of scraping a living from their stony fields.
would turn
wool or Samuel Slater built his first spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1790. He hired eight
cotton into
thread or children between the ages of 7 and 12, paying them a low wage. Later, he built a larger mill and employed
yarn whole families. As Slater influenced others to start mills, his family system of employment spread through
Rhode Island, Connecticut, and southern Massachusetts.
 The Lowell Mills Hire Women
In 1813, the American textile industry leaped forward when Francis Cabot
Lowell built a factory in Waltham, in eastern Massachusetts. This factory not only
spun raw cotton into yarn, but wove it into cloth on power looms. Lowell had seen
power looms in English mills and had figured out how to build them. Like Samuel
Slater, he had brought secrets to America.

Textile: The Waltham factory was so successful that Lowell and his
cloth, fabric partners built a new factory town, Lowell, near the Merrimack and
Concord rivers. The Lowell mills, textile mills in the village, employed farm girls who lived in
Deafening: company-owned boardinghouses. Lowell girls worked 12 hour days in deafening noise.
extremely
loud
Young women came to Lowell in spite of the noise. In the early years, wages were high
between two and four dollars a week. Older women supervised the girls, making them follow strict rules
and attend church. Girls read books, went to lectures, and even published a literary magazinethe Lowell Offering.
Usually they worked for only a few years, until they married. By the 1830s, however, falling profits meant that wages
dropped and working conditions worsened for the Lowell girls.

The Lowell mills and other early factories ran on water power. Factories built after the 1830s were run by
more powerful steam engines. Because steam engines used coal and wood, not fast-moving water, factories could be
built away from rivers and beyond New England.

Reading Source: Garcia, Jesus et al. Creating America. Evanston, IL: McDougal Little, 2007. Print.
 Group
Name: ___________________________________________________
B
North Packet: Reading Set #2
Early United States History

A New Way to Manufacture

Manufacturing
methods: Ways to New manufacturing methods changed the style
make goods with of work in other industries besides the textile industry. In
machines 1797, the US government hired the inventor Eli Whitney
to make 10.000 muskets for the army. He was to have
Muskets: Type of guns the guns ready in two years. Before this time, guns were
Standard: accepted as made one at a time by gunsmiths, from start to finish.
normal Each gun differed slightly. If a part broke, a new part had
to be created to match the broken one.
Management: the
actions and decisions Whitney sought a better way to make guns. In 1801, he went to Washington with a
involved in running a
business box containing a pile of musket parts. He took a part from each pile and assembled a musket
in seconds. He had just demonstrated the use of interchangeable parts, parts that are
Uniform: the same exactly alike.

Machines that produced exactly matching parts soon became standard in industries. Interchangeable parts
speeded up production, made repairs easy, and allowed the use of lower-paid, less-skilled workers. But the new
system also required a new style of management, with inspectors to make sure each piece was uniform. Workers
who were used to more independence disliked such close supervision.

Moving People, Goods, and Messages

New inventions increased factory production. They also improved
transportation and communication. Steamboats carried people and goods
farther and faster and led to the growth of cities like New Orleans and St.
Louis. Robert Fulton invented a steamboat that could move against the
current or strong wind. He launched the Clermont on the Hudson River in
1807. Its steam engine turned two side paddle wheels, which pulled the boat
through the water.

The Clermont was dubbed Fultons Folly and described as looking precisely
Folly: Mistake like a backwards saw-mill mounted on a scow [boat] and set on fire.
But it made the 300-mile trip from New York to Albany and back in a
record 62 hours. Even Fulton had not expected to travel so quickly.

In 1811, the first steamship traveled down the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. But
its engine was not powerful enough to return upriver, against the current. Henry Miller
Shreve, a trader on the Mississippi, designed a more powerful engine. He installed it on a
double-decker boat with a paddle wheel in the back. In 1816, he sailed this boat up the
Mississippi and launched a new era of trade and transportation on the river.

In 1837, Samuel F.B. Morse first demonstrated his Telegraph machine and Morse Code
National telegraph. This machine sent long and short pulses of electricity
unity: the along a wire. These pulses could be translated into letters of a message. With the telegraph, it
feeling of being took only seconds to communicate with someone in another city! In 1844, the first long-distance
connected with telegraph line carried news from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., about who had been
people across all
parts of the nominated for president. Telegraph lines spanned the country by 1861, bringing people closer as
country a nation. Both the telegraph and the steamboat brought more national unity.
 Deeres steel plow
Plow: A piece Technology Improves Farming
of farm
equipment that Other new inventions increased farm production. In 1836, the
is used to dig blacksmith John Deere invented a lightweight plow with a steel cutting
into and turn edge. Older cast-iron plows were designed for the light, sandy soil of
over soil, New England. But rich, heavy Midwestern soil clung to the bottom of
especially to these plows and slowed farmers down. Deeres new plow made
prepare it for
planting preparing ground much less work. As a result, more farmers began to
move to the Midwest.

The mechanical reaper and the threshing machine were other inventions that improved agriculture.
Cyrus McCormicks reaper, patented in 1834, cut ripe grain. The threshing machine separated kernels of wheat from
husks.

New technologies linked regions and contributed to national unity. With new farm equipment, Midwestern
farmers grew food to feed Northeastern factory workers. In turn, Midwestern farmers became a market for
Northeastern manufactured goods. The growth of Northeastern textile mills increased demand for Southern cotton.
This led to expansion of slavery in the South.

Roads and Canals Link Cities

Representative
Canal: a man-
made waterway John C. Calhoun of South
for trade and Carolina also called for
travel better transportation
systems. Let us bind the
Republic [the US] together with a perfect
system of roads and canals, he declared
in 1817. Earlier, in 1806, Congress had
funded a road from Cumberland,
Maryland, to Wheeling, Virginia. By 1841,
the National Road, designed as the
countrys main east-west route, had been
extended to Vandalia, Illinois.

Water transportation improved, too, with the building of canals. In fact, the period from
Nationalism: 1825 to 1850 is often called the Age of Canals. Completed in 1825, the massive Erie Canal created
A feeling of a water route between New York City and Buffalo, New York. The canal opened the upper Ohio
pride in ones
country Valley and the Great Lakes region to settlement and trade. It also fueled nationalism by unifying
these two sections of the country.

The Erie Canal allowed farm products from the Great Lakes region to flow east and people and
manufactured goods from the East to flow west. Trade stimulated by the canal helped New York City become the
nations largest city. Between 1820 and 1830, its population swelled from less than 125,000 to more than 200,000.

Around the 1830s, the nation began to use steam-powered trains for transportation. In 1830, only about 30
miles of track existed in the United States. But by 1850, the number had climbed to 9,000 miles. Improvements in
rail travel led to a decline in the use of canals.

Reading Source: Garcia, Jesus et al. Creating America. Evanston, IL: McDougal Little, 2007. Print.
 Group
Name: ___________________________________________________
B
North Packet: Reading Set #3
Early United States History

Fighting for Workers Rights
As business owners tried to improve workers habits, workers called for improvements in
Boarding house: a working conditions. Factory work was noisy, boring, and unsafe. In the 1830s, American
house where people workers began to organize.
pay to live and have
daily meals
The young women mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts, started a labor union. A labor
union is a group of workers who band together to seek better working conditions. In 1836, the
Scarce: hard to find mill owners raised the rent of the company-owned boarding houses where the women lived.
About 1,500 women went on strike, stopping work to demand better conditions. Eleven year-
old Harriet Hanson helped lead the strikers.

Istarted on ahead, sayingI dont care what you do, I am going to turn
out, whether anyone else does or not, and I marched out, and was followed by the
followed me, I was more proud than I
others. As I looked back at the long line that
have ever been since.

Other workers called for shorter hours and higher wages. In 1835 and 1836, 140 strikes took
place in the eastern United States. Then the Panic of 1837 brought hard times. Jobs were scarce,
and workers were afraid to cause trouble. The young labor movement fell apart. Even so,
workers achieved a few goals. For example, in 1840 President Martin Van Buren ordered a ten-
hour workday for government workers.

Improving Education
In the 1830s, Americans also began to demand better schools. In 1837, Massachusetts
Equalizer: Something that set up the first state board of education in the United States. Its head was Horace Mann.
makes people or things
equal Mann called public education the great equalizer. He also argued that education
Northwest Territory: land creates or develops new treasurestreasures never before possessed or dreamed of by
out west that the US owned any one. By 1850, many Northern states had opened public elementary schools.
but were not states yet Boston opened the first public high school in 1821. A few other Northern cities
followed suit. In addition, churches and other groups founded hundreds of private
colleges in the following decades. Many were located in states carved from the Northwest Territory. These included
Antioch and Oberlin Colleges in Ohio, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, and Northwestern University in
Illinois.
Women could not attend most colleges. One exception was Oberlin. It was the first college to accept women
as well as men. In 1849, English immigrant Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to earn a medical degree in
the United States. Despite such individual efforts, it was rare for a woman to attend college until the late 1800s.
African Americans also faced obstacles to getting an education. This was especially true in the
Barred: South. There, teaching an enslaved person to read had been illegal since the Nat Turner slave rebellion
Did not in 1831. Enslaved African Americans who tried to learn were brutally punished. Even in the North,
allow
most public schools barred African- American children.
Few colleges accepted African Americans. Those that did often took only one or two blacks
at a time. The first African American to receive a college degree was Alexander Twilight in 1823. John Russwurm
received one in 1826 and later began the first African American newspaper.

The Seneca Falls Convention

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott held the Seneca Falls Convention for womens rights in Seneca
Falls, New York, on July 19 and 20, 1848. The convention attracted between 100 and 300 women and men, including
Frederick Douglass.
 Before the meeting opened, a small group of planners debated how to present their
Sentiments: complaints. One woman read aloud the Declaration of Independence. This inspired the
Thoughts or planners to write a document modeled on it. The women called their document the
opinions
Resolution: answer Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. Just as the Declaration of Independence said
or solution to a that All men are created equal, the Declaration of Sentiments stated that All men and
problem women are created equal. It went on to list several complaints or resolutions. Then it
Unanimous: agreed concluded with a demand for rights.
by everyone Every resolution won unanimous approval from the group except suffrage, or the
Slim margin: Small
different (of votes) right to vote. Some argued that the public would laugh at women if they asked for the vote.
Ridiculed: Made But Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass fought for the resolution. They argued
fun of that the right to vote would give women political power that would help them win other rights.
The resolution for suffrage won by a slim margin.
The womens rights movement was ridiculed. In 1852, the New York Herald poked
fun at women who wanted to vote, and to hustle with the rowdies at the polls and to be mens equals. The editorial
questioned what would happen if a pregnant woman gave birth on the floor of Congress, in a storm at sea, or in the
raging tempest of battle.

Continued Calls for Womens Rights

In the mid-1800s, three women lent powerful voices to the growing womens
Abolition: Movement
to end slavery
movement. Sojourner Truth, Maria Mitchell, and Susan B. Anthony each offered a special
Temperance: talent.
Movement to stop In 1851, Sojourner Truth rose to speak at a convention for womens rights in Ohio.
drinking alcohol Some participants hissed their disapproval. Because Truth supported the controversial cause
Wages: money made of abolition, they feared her appearance would make their cause less popular. But Truth won
in a job
applause with her speech that urged men to grant women their rights.

I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as
much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I
am as strong as any manIf you have womans rights give it
to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights,
and they wont be much trouble.

The scientist Maria Mitchell fought for womens equality by helping to

found the Association for the Advancement of Women. Mitchell was an
astronomer who discovered a comet in 1847. She became the first woman
elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Susan B. Anthony was a skilled organizer who worked in the temperance and antislavery movements. She
built the womens movement into a national organization. Anthony argued that a woman must have a purse [money]
of her own. To this end, she supported laws that would give married women rights to their own property and wages.
Mississippi passed the first such law in 1839. New York passed a property law in 1848 and a wages law in 1860. By
1865, 29 states had similar laws.
But womens suffrage stayed out of reach until the 1900s, and the US government did not fully abolish slavery
until 1865.
 Group
Name: ___________________________________________________
B
South Packet Reading Set
Early United States History

The Cotton Boom

Eli Whitney invented a machine for
cleaning cotton in 1793, after visiting the Georgia
plantation of Catherine Greene, the widow of a
Revolutionary War general. Mrs. Greene was
struggling to make her plantation profitable.
English textile mills had created a huge demand
for cotton, but the short-fibered cotton that grew
in most parts of the South was hard to clean (i.e.,
remove the seeds) by hand. A worker could clean
just one pound of this
Profitable: able to cotton in a day.
make money Whitneys cotton
gin (short for engine)
Development: made the cotton-cleaning
growth, advancement
process far more
Vast: large efficient. With the new
machine, one worker
Exports: sales to could now clean as much as 50 pounds of
other countries cotton a day. The cotton gin helped set the
South on a different course of development
Commercial: from the North. It made short-fibered cotton a
money-making commercial product and changed Southern life
in four important ways.

1. It triggered a vast move westward. Cotton farming moved

beyond the Atlantic coastal states, where long-fibered, easy-to-
clean cotton grew. Cotton plantations began to spread into
northern Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. Then they crossed
into Louisiana and Arkansas. After 1840, they reached Texas.
2. Because cotton was valuable, planters grew more cotton rather
than other goods, and cotton exports increased.
3. More Native American groups were driven off Southern land as
it was taken over for cotton plantations.
4. Growing cotton required a large work force, and slavery
continued to be an important source of labor. Many slaves from
the east were sold south and west to new cotton plantations.

Slavery Expands

Bales: large unit of From 1790 to 1860, cotton production

measurement for rose greatly. So did the number of enslaved
cotton people in the South. Using slave labor, the
South raised millions of bales of cotton each
year for the textile mills of England and the American Northeast. In
1820, the South earned $22 million from cotton exports. By the late 1830s, earnings from cotton
exports were nearly ten times greater, close to $200 million.
As cotton earnings rose, so did the price of slaves. A male field
hand sold for $300 in the 1790s. By the late 1830s, the price had
jumped to $1,000. After 1808, when it became illegal to import Africans
for use as slaves, the trading of slaves already in the country increased.
The expansion of slavery had a major impact on the Souths
economy. But its effect on the people living there was even greater.

Slavery Divides the South

Slavery divided white Southerners into those who held slaves
and those who did not. Slaveholders with large plantations were the
wealthiest and most powerful people in the South, but they were
relatively few in number. Only about 1/3 of white families owned
slaves in 1840. Of those slave-owning families, only about 1/10 had
large plantations with 20 or more slaves.
Bale of cotton
Most white Southern farmers owned few
or no slaves. Still, many supported slavery
anyway. They worked their small farms
nonetheless and hoped to buy slaves someday,
which would allow them to raise more cotton and
earn more money. For both small farmers and
large planters, slavery had become necessary for
increasing profits.
 Group
Name: ___________________________________________________
B
West Packet Reading Set
Early United States History

The Lure of the West

To many, the West with its vast stretched of land offered a golden chance to make
Inhabited: money, and some Americans wanted to take the land away from Native Americans who
lived in inhabited this territory.
People called land speculators bought huge areas of land. To speculate means to buy
something in the hope that it will increase in value. If land value did go up, speculators divided their land holdings
into smaller sections. They made great profits by selling those sections to the thousands of settlers who dreamed of
owning the own farms.
Manufacturers and merchants soon followed the settlers west. They hoped to earn money by making and
selling items that farmers needed. Other people made the trip to find jobs or to escape people to whom they owed
money.

Oregon Fever
Hundreds of settlers also began migrating west on the Oregon Trail, which ran from
Missionaries: Independence, Missouri, to the Oregon Territory. The first whites to cross the continent to
people who Oregon were missionaries, such as Marcus and Narcissa Whitman in 1836. At that time, the
travel around United States and Britain were locked in an argument about which country owned Oregon.
trying to spread To the Whitmans great disappointment, they made few converts among the Native
their religion Americans. However, their glowing reports of Oregons rich land began to attract other
American settlers.
Converts: new Amazing stories spread about Oregon. The sun always shone there. Wheat grew as tall
members (of a as a man. One tale claimed that pigs were running about,round and fat, and already
religion) cooked, with knives and forks sticking in them so you can cut off a slice whenever you are
hungry.
Fever: a state Such stories
of great tempted many
excitement or people to make the
interest 2,000-mile journey
to Oregon. In 1843,
Raging: very nearly 1,000 people
strong traveled from
Missouri to Oregon.
The next year, twice
as many came. The Oregon Fever has
broken out, observed a Boston
newspaper, and is now raging.
The Mormon Trail
While most pioneers went west in search of wealth, one group migrated for religious reasons. The
Mormons, who settled Utah, were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Joseph Smith had
founded this church in upstate New York in 1830. The Mormons
lived in close communities, worked hard, shared their goods, and
prospered.
The Mormons, though, also made enemies. Some people
reacted angrily to the Mormons teachings. They saw the Mormon
practice of polygamy-allowing a man to have more than one wife at
a timeas immoral. Others objected to their holding property in
common.
In 1844, an anti-Mormon mob in Common: belonging to the
Illinois killed Smith. Brigham Young, the community as a whole
rather than individuals
next Mormon leader, moved his people out of the United States. His destination was
Utah, the part of Mexico. In this desolate region, he hoped his people would be left to Mob: violent crowd
follow their faith in peace.
In 1847, about 1,600 Mormons followed part of the Oregon Trail to Utah.
There they built a new settlement by the Great Salt Lake. Because Utah has little rainfall, the Mormons had to work
together to build dams and canals. These structures captured water in the hills and carried it to the farms in the
valleys below. Through teamwork, they made their desert homeland bloom.

Rush for Gold

News of James Marshalls (first gold finder) thrilling discovery spread rapidly (in 1848).
Scarce: rare From all over California, people raced to the America River-starting the California gold rush. A
gold rush occurs when large numbers of people move to a site where gold has been found.
Tarnish: to
become dull
Throughout history, people have valued gold because it is scarce, beautiful, easy to shape, and
or not shiny resistant to tarnish.
Miners soon found gold in other streams flowing out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Colonel R.B. Mason, the military governor of California, estimated that the region held enough gold to pay the
cost of the present war with Mexico a hundred times over. He sent this news to Washington with a box of gold
dust as proof.
The following year thousands of gold seekers set out to make their fortunes. A forty-niner who wished to
read California from the East has a choice of three routes, all of them dangerous:
1. Sail 18,000 miles around South America
and up the Pacific coast-suffering from
storms, seasickness, and spoiled food.
2. Sail to the narrow Isthmus of Panama,
cross overland (and risk catching a
deadly tropical disease), and then sail to
California.
3. Travel the trails across North America-
braving rivers, prairies, mountains, and
all the hardships of the trail.
Because the adventure was so difficult, most gold
seekers were young men. A gray beard is almost
as rare as a petticoat, observed one miner. Luzena
Wilson said that during the six months she lived in
the mining city of Sacramento, California, she saw
only two other women.