The first half of the nineteenth century was an important era for American society. It has many political, social, and economic challenges, yet it was also instrumental in determining the future of the United States. This paper will focus on ascertaining the differences in economic interconnectedness, ethnic composition, and political cohesion between 1790s and 1840s as the three most significant changes experienced by American society.
The first profound change experienced by Americans was the growing interconnectedness of states. Chapter 8 of The American Yawp specifies how challenging journeys between states were in 1810. The absence of adequate road infrastructure meant that it could take up to six weeks to cover five hundred miles. Meanwhile, the country had low population density, with 5 million people being “spread out across over 860,000 square miles of territory” in 1800. The transportation revolution has led to the development of a network of roads and canals, which connected states and allowed the trade to flourish. Chapter 12 of The American Yawp points out that the appearance of roads and canals boosted migration and settlement in the 1820s and 1830s. As a result, American society in 1840s was characterized by increased mobility enabled by newly build infrastructure compared to the 1790s.
The second important change was the increasing complexity of ethnic composition of the United States. In 1790, the US territory encompassed the eastern regions of the North America, with thirteen states. As Chapter 11 of The American Yawp notes, most of the Americans lived in rural areas, especially in the South. The expansion into the west has added more ethnic variety to American society. By 1840’s, more Mexicans as well as native Americans lived in the US, while the urbanization led to the growth of the population. As a result, not only did more people live in cities in 1840s than in 1790s, but there were also greater ethnic variety because of the territorial expansion.
The third profound change was the development of political unity of states. In the 1790s, Americans viewed states as “semi-sovereign entities” with weak conception of American nationhood. As it is noted in Chapter 6 of The American Yawp, states often lacked cohesion. As the next decades witnessed the expansion of the US into the West, ideas of manifest destiny promoted the ideological coherence of the states. By 1840s, foreign policy became a unifying factor, with the adoption of The Monroe Doctrine signifying the evolution of political unity of the US. Whereas in 1790s, Americans did not feel themselves part of a larger nation, in the 1840s, the concept of American nationhood was more pronounced.
In conclusion, economic interdependence, greater ethnic composition, and political ideology marked the most important changes in American society between 1790s and 1840s. Americans living at the end of the eighteenth century did not see the unified nation. Meanwhile, the 1840s showcased the states as a unified entity with a common purpose, interconnected economy and diverse ethnic population. The development of infrastructure and the expansion into the West were the driving factors behinds these changes.
Bibliography
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Gosse, Van. “Patchwork Nation: Racial Orders and Disorder in the United States, 1790–1860.” Journal of the Early Republic 40, no. 1 (2020): 45-81.
The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook, Vol. 1: To 1877. United States: Stanford University Press, 2022. Web.