Modernization

Charting Modernization

A. Changes in the Economy

--- McPherson Chapter 1 describes 3 great transformations:
  1. Transportation Revolution
  2. Increased Food Production
  3. American System of Manufacturing

B. Causes

--- reasons for a "capital-intensive" economy in the North:
  1. labor shortage
  2. abundance of resources
  3. education
  4. openness to change

C. Ethos

--- The values of hard work, thrift, sobriety, reliability, self-discipline, self-reliance, deferral of gratification, were strongest in New England.
  1. Protestant ethic
  2. Evangelical ethic

D. Reform

--- There were many sources for the reform impulse, including the Burned-Over District
  1. Temperance
  2. Education
  3. Women's "separate sphere"
  4. Abolitionism

E. Ethnocentral Tensions

--- Not all groups participated equally in the modernizing process.
  1. South
  2. Irish-Catholics
  3. Butternuts
  4. wage-earning workers

F. Political Parties

--- The Second Party System emerged 1825-1840
  1. Democratic
  2. Whig

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revised 2/1/06 | Civil War