First, the Market Revolution—the shift from an agricultural economy to one based on wages and the exchange of goods and services—completely changed the northern and western economy between 1820 and 1860. After Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and perfected manufacturing with interchangeable parts, the North experienced a manufacturing boom that continued well into the next century. Cyrus McCormick’s mechanical mower-reaper also revolutionized grain production in the West. Internal improvements such as the Erie Canal and the Cumberland Road, combined with new modes of transportation such as the steamboat and railroad, allowed goods and crops to flow easily and cheaply between the agricultural West and manufacturing North. The growth of manufacturing also spawned the wage labor system.
Second, American society urbanized drastically during this era. The United States had been a land comprised almost entirely of farmers, but around 1820, millions of people began to move to the cities. They, along with several million Irish and German immigrants, flooded northern cities to find jobs in the new industrial economy. The advent of the wage labor system played a large role in transforming the social fabric because it gave birth to America’s first middle class. Comprised mostly of white-collar workers and skilled laborers, this growing middle class became the driving force behind a variety of reform movements. Among these were movements to reduce consumption of alcohol, eliminate prostitution, improve prisons and insane asylums, improve education, and ban slavery. Religious revivalism, resulting from the Second Great Awakening, also had a large impact on American life in all parts of the country.
Third, the major political struggles during the antebellum period focused on states’ rights. Southern states were dominated by “states’ righters”—those who believed that the individual states should have the final say in matters of interpreting the Constitution. Inspired by the old Democratic-Republicans, John C. Calhoun argued in his “South Carolina Exposition and Protest” essay that the states had the right to nullify laws that they deemed unconstitutional because the states themselves had created the Constitution. Others, such as President Andrew Jackson and Chief Justice John Marshall, believed that the federal government had authority over the states. The debate came to a head in the Nullification Crisis of 1832–1833, which nearly touched off a civil war.
