As a result of westward expansion, the Market Revolution in the early 1800s saw “population growth” and “urbanization” that had a positive impact on “economic growth” and the effects of the “Market Revolution” intensified the American division over slavery. The “improvements in transportation and communication”, as well as, inventions during the time such as the cotton gin by Eli Whitney “revolutionized American slavery” through the increased “demand for cotton” coupled with “new lands in the West”. Moreover, the rise of the Cotton Kingdom is a direct result of the cotton gin that “centered on factories producing cotton textiles with water-power spinning and weaving machinery”. Northern states focused on factories and industrialization, meanwhile, the “Lower South” was growing the cotton because of “its climate and soil fertility”. The cotton gin aided in an …show more content…
Blacks living in the free states “suffered discrimination” with the majority of them living in “the poorest and unhealthiest sections of cities”. Even white Americans that “critizied slavery” viewed “freed slaves as low-wage competitors” and “sought to bar them from skilled employment”. Given these points “free Blacks” took “advantance of the opening of the West to improve their economic status” which was considered “a central component of American freedom”. Although federal laws “barred them from access to public land” and some states like “Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Oregon prohibited them from entering their territory altogether” making it more difficult for Blacks at the time to achieve economic freedom. The effects of the Market Revolution that awarded white Americans “a life of economic accumulation and individual advancement” conversely meant “free Blacks experienced downward mobility” and “division of American society and its conception of