At the time of the American Revolution (1775–83; the American colonists' fight for independence from England) the earliest elements of another revolution—the Industrial Revolution—were taking root in the farms, workshops, businesses, and towns of the new nation. These elements included the development and use of labor-saving machines, the production of goods on a large scale, the employment of many laborers in one large operation, new management systems, and the efficient transportation of raw materials and manufactured goods. Industrialism was to have a profound effect on the way people lived in the United States, dramatically changing the nation's economy and way of life and transforming the United States from a rural (country) farming society into an urban (city) industrial society. Most historians agree that the Industrial Revolution took place over more than a century of U.S. history. The early roots that developed between the American Revolution and the American Civil War (1861–65; a war between the Union [the North], who opposed slavery, and the Confederacy [the South], who were in favor of slavery) unfolded slowly and only in certain sections of the country, but they set the stage for a powerful and rapid industrial expansion that, over the next half century, would make the United States the wealthiest and most powerful industrial nation in the world.
