Market Revolution Dbq

In the first half of the nineteenth century, economic changes called by historians “the market revolution” transformed the United States. Innovations in transportation and communication sparked these changes. In the colonial era, technology had barely advanced—ships did not become faster, no canals were built, and manufacturing was done by hand. Roads were scarce and slow. In 1800, most farm families were not tied to the marketplace, used little cash, and produced much of what they needed at home. It was nearly impossible for farmers far from cities or waterways to get their produce to market.

The first advance in overland transportation was the construction of toll roads, called turnpikes, by private companies and state and local governments. …show more content…
Work on the first railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio, began in 1828. By 1860, the nation’s rail network was 30,000 miles long, more than the total in the rest of the world combined. At the same time, the invention of the telegraph in the 1830s by Samuel F. B. Morse allowed for instantaneous communication. First used commercially in 1844, the telegraph served businesses and newspapers by helping speed information flow and bringing uniformity to …show more content…
Perhaps the most dynamic characteristic of America’s economy in the early nineteenth century was the birth of the Cotton Kingdom. The early industrial revolution in England was based in cotton textile factories, which demanded a huge amount of cotton. The Deep South was suited to growing cotton, and once Eli Whitney, in 1793, invented the cotton gin, which quickly separated cotton from seeds, cotton production quickened, became very profitable, and spread. Whitney’s invention, along with new western lands and factory demand for cotton, revolutionized American slavery. Once expected to die out with tobacco, slavery was expanded by