The North before the Civil War

The Location

• Geography: great ports, Erie Canal

• Unsteady growing season climate forced people to focus on things other than farming.

• Dense forests for lumber.

The Inventors

• Elias Howe: Sewing machine

• Isaac Singer: Mass produced the sewing machine, made it available for common person

• Workers could now make hundreds of time more textiles in a factory

Inventors

• John Deere: invented a lightweight steel plow. Earlier plows were made from iron and had to be pulled by ox.

• Cyrus McCormick: opened a huge factory that produced mechanical reapers. Horse-drawn-could do the work of 5 men

• Result: thousands of farmers left farms to work in cities

Home Connection

The Industrial Revolution

• A long, slow process in the early 1800s that completely changed the way goods were produced

• Before 1800s most goods were produced by hand

• The economy shifted from farming to manufacturing

• Barter to money, less sustenance farming

The Power

• Steamboats revolutionized transportation in the early 1800s.

• Steamboats ferried passengers up Atlantic Coast, and gave farmers and merchants a cheap means of moving goods

The Results

• The Northern economy expands

• Machines begin to use steam power instead of water power. Cheap and easy to run.

• More goods produced, at a lower cost

• Families left farms and moved to cities.

The Man

• In the 1790s’ the factory system brought workers and machinery together in one place

• The Revolution stared in Britain. Britain wanted to keep factory designs secret

• Samuel Slater smuggled designs for a spinning mill to the USA

Inventors

• Samuel Morse: developed a way to send electronic messages through wire-The Telegraph-think Morse Code

• John Griffiths: Invented the Yankee Clipper: The fastest sail boats in the world for a short time. Helped increase world-wide trade