How Did The Market Revolution Affect The Economy

By the start of the year 1800, the United States began undergoing a technological modification known as the Industrial Revolution. Although such advances left outstanding impressions on the world we know today (cars, planes, cell phones etc.), they also formed a monumental impression on the economy of the early 19th century. Such transfiguration led the nation head on into a battle with itself. From the years 1800 to 1840 the Market Revolution took off and began the start of many substantial changes in the North, making the South’s lack of progression a threat to their economy’s existence. This enormous economic alteration is what would soon fuel the great separation of our nation and a civil war.
The most prominent difference in beliefs amongst

What had once been a completely agricultural economy transitioned into one ran by industrialism. New inventions led to booming cities located in the Northern region of the country while the South remained unchanged. Now, with a quicker means of transportation such as railroads and steamboats, the selling of goods was made much easier as well as less costly to those who had access. Southern farmers located far off big city borders soon found it nearly impossible to market their goods without the help that the North had. “As the war dragged on, the Union’s advantages in factories, railroads, and manpower put the confederacy at a great disadvantage.” Anger and frustration spread among the southern states as the new economy and changes it brought along with it set in. The North and its increasing economy became more and more isolated from that of the south, and civil war erupted right under the nation’s

Factory production in the North meant the invention of free labor where workers were paid low wages but goods were produced quickly and effectively benefiting factory owners. While slave labor might have been free, production was slow and inefficient and, in conclusion, left southern plantation owners struggling to keep up with the new advancements. Southern farmers who relied heavily on slave labor refused to give in to the threatening abolition despite the positive effect free labor had on the North’s active economy. In the south, it was believed that a white man’s freedom came at the price of someone else’s slavery, and freedom to a southerner meant someone else doing the laborious jobs. Since slave trade had been abolished and less and less people owned slaves, the value of a slave had risen substantially. Only approximately two-thirds of southerners owned slaves. As bad as the economy had gotten in the southern part of the country, it continued to weaken as slavery’s popularity was replaced by modern technology, ripping them further apart from its bordering