-
Use Cases
-
Resources
-
Pricing
1790 - 1860
% complete
The burst of major inventions and economic expansion based on water and steam power and use of machine technology that transformed cotton textiles and iron. If the industrial Revolution had not happened, then the amount of production of cotton, iron, etc. would not have drastically increased, thus the outwork system may not have been created or a division of labor.
1790
% complete
Samuel Slater invented a machine for twisting worsted woolen yarn to give it an especially smooth surface. This made processes of manufacturing quicker.
1792
% complete
Americans wanted a quicker, easier way to ship newspapers, letters, bank loans, etc. to other people.
1793
% complete
Eli Whitney built a simple machine that separated the seeds in a cotton ball from the delicate fibers, work previously done by hand. Slavery grew in the south because of his invention. Cotton sales and demand increased dramatically causing slavery to also rise quickly.
1816 - 1828
% complete
Britain had more cheap labor than America. American entrepreneurs relied on help from the national government. Congress passes tariff bills that taxed imported cotton and woolen cloth.
1817 - 1819
% complete
The Erie Canal was a New York project that built a waterway connecting the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Due to the invention of the steamboat this sped up trade dramatically between the western markets and northeast and caused an economic court case. If the Erie Canal was not built then the west and northeast wouldn't have been linked, thus restricting effective trade between them.
1820 - 1830
% complete
A broad-ranging campaign of moral and institutional reforms inspired by evangelical Christian ideals and endorsed by upper-middle-class men and women in the 1820's and 1830's. If the Benevolent Empire was not established, then the government would not have been restored "by God", thus there would not have been debates over alcohol consumption and other vices that resulted in poverty.
1820 - 1830
% complete
Division of Labor was the newly introduced idea of splitting up work in the factory by having certain unskilled people make certain parts for items. If division of labor hadn't been introduced then factory production would not have been sped up, thus causing artisans to remain successful.
1820 - 1860
% complete
Eli Whitney introduced machines that made parts for other machines, making production more efficient and consistent. If machine tools were not made then production would have remained by hand crafting, thus slowing work and making it less consistent.
1820 - 1850
% complete
The dramatic increase between 1820 and 1850 in the exchange of goods and service in market transactions. The market revolution reflected the increased output of farms and factories, the entrepreneurial activities of traders and merchants, and the creation of a transportation network of roads, canals, and railroads. If it wasn't for the Market Revolution, then roads, canals, railroads, etc. would not have been created for transportation of goods, thus the way we transport and receive goods today could be very different.
1822 - 1834
% complete
A system of labor using young women recruited from farm families to work in factories in Lowell, Chicopee, and other sites in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The women lived in company boardinghouses with strict rules and curfews and were often required to attend church. If it wasn't for this system, then women may not have had the opportunity to become actively involved in farming, thus women's roles in the workforce could be dramatically different today.
1831 - 1846
% complete
An economy based on coal and metal that began to emerge in the 1830's, as manufacturers increasingly ran machinery fashioned from metal with coal-burning stationary steam engines rather than with water power. If the mineral based economy would not have been created, then assembly lines would not have emerged, thus British observers would not have been alarmed with fear that American manufacturers will become exporters not only to foreign countries, but also to England.
1832 - 1845
% complete
A society invigorated by evangelical Protestants in 1832 that set out to curb the consumption of alcoholic beverages. If the American Temperance Society would not have been established, then revivalist methods would not have been sparked, thus religion would not have been celebrated as the key to moral improvement that essentially bonded middle-class Americans and wage earning citizens.
1834 - 1920
% complete
Antiforeign sentiment in the U.S. that fueled anti-immigrant and immigration-restriction policies against the Irish and Germans in the 1840's and the 1850's and against other ethnic immigrants in subsequent decades. If there would not have been nativist movements, then newcomers ideas would have been spread throughout the U.S., thus cultural values would not have been so closely protected.
1842
% complete
This case was a case that proved labor unions to be completely legal and justified their existence. If this had not happened then unions would not exist, thus causing working conditions to remain poor and workers to have little to no working rights.
1810 - 1828
% complete
Expansion of the franchise (right to vote) dramatically symbolized the Democratic Revolution. By the 1830’s, most states allowed nearly all white men to vote. Nowhere else in the world did ordinary farmers and wage earners exercise such political influence. Political parties provided voters with the means to express their preferences. If this wouldn’t have happened, then the rise of democracy wouldn’t have happened which means that both political machines and the spoils system wouldn’t have been created.
1816 - 1840
% complete
In the midst of the tariff crisis, Jackson faced a major challenge from politicians who supported the Second Bank of the United States. The bank was privately managed and operated under a twenty year charter from the federal government. The role of the bank was to stabilize the nation’s money supply, which consisted mainly of notes and bills of credit- in effect, paper money, issued by state chartered banks. Those banks promised to redeem notes on demand with hard money (gold or silver coins minted by U.S. or foreign governments) but there were few coins in circulation. By collecting those notes and regularly demanding specie, the Second Bank kept the state banks from issuing too much paper money and depreciating its value. If this wouldn’t have happened, then Jackson wouldn’t have vetoed the rechartering bill, the bank wouldn’t have been destroyed, and Jackson wouldn’t have won major support.
1816 - 1836
% complete
National bank with multiple branches chartered in 1816 for twenty years. Intended to help regulate the economy, the bank became a major issue in Andrew Jackson's reelection campaign in 1832. If the Second Bank had not been established, then the nations money supply would not have been stabilized, thus banks did not issue too much paper money which kept money from depreciating its value.
1816 - 1828
% complete
The factions siding with John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson battled to gain voting favor among the states by creating new tariffs to protect farmers and manufacturers from an economic overtake of British goods, such as the Tariff of 1816 by the Adams administration and the Tariff of 1828 supported by the Jacksonians of the north. If the Tariff Battle hadn’t happened then John Quincy Adams wouldn’t have lost favor of the south, thus increasing chance of being reelected in 1828.
1824 - 1824
% complete
Election in 1824 that involved 5 "republican" candidates that campaigned from presidency. If the election had not happened, then Adams would've never became president, thus Adams would've never endorsed Henry Clay's American System of national economic development.
1824 - 1828
% complete
Adams called for bold national action. He called for the establishment of a national university in Washington, scientific explorations in the far west, and a uniform standard of weights and measures. Adams endorsed Henry Clay’s American System which included protective tariffs to stimulate manufacturing, federally subsidized roads and canals to facilitate commerce, and a national bank to control credit and provide a uniform currency. If he wouldn’t have been president, then people in America wouldn’t have been angry. The Tariff of Abominations wouldn’t have been created and Van Buren wouldn’t have spoken about his opposition of a consolidated government.
1828
% complete
In this election, the Jacksonian campaign and Tariff of Abominations lifted Andrew Jackson to be the favorite among voters and achieve presidency. If the election of 1828 hadn’t happened then Jackson would not be president, thus removing the democratic party from presidency.
1828 - 1832
% complete
A tariff enacted in 1828 that raised duties significantly on raw materials, textiles, and iron goods. New York senator Van Buren hoped to win the support of farmers in NY, OH, and KY with the tariff protection and resented the higher cost of imported dutied goods. If the tariff had never been established, then SC would not have boldly adopted the Ordinance of Nullification, thus giving the right to states to determine if a congressional law was unconstitutional and declare it null and void within the state's borders.
1830 - 1832
% complete
Act that directed the mandatory relocation of eastern tribes to territory west of the Mississippi. Jackson insisted that his goal was to save the Indians and their culture. Indians resisted the controversial act, but in the end most were forced to comply. If the Indian Removal Act had not taken place, then Chief Black Hawk would not have refused to leave the rich, well-watered farmland, thus the Bad Axe Massacre would not have happened, which resulted in 850 of Chief Black Hawks warriors being killed.
1832 - 1833
% complete
This Ordinance of Nullification was an act placed by a state convention called by South Carolinians that declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 to be null and void and threatened secession if the federal government tried to impose the tariff anyway, If this ordinance hadn’t happened then the tariff would have remained in place, thus causing the federal government to have power over state legislation.
1833
% complete
Andrew Jackson opposed national banking and succeeded in destroying the Second Bank of America by taking out all of their gold and silver and distributing among state banks. If Jackson had not destroyed the bank then it wouldn’t have taken away national banking in his presidency, thus preventing the controversial actions he took to act independently from Congress and possibly illegally.
1836 - 1836
% complete
Election in which the Whig party faced Martin Van Buren. If this election had not happened, then Van Buren would not have tallied more votes than the Whigs, thus it would not have been obvious that the party's message of economic and moral improvement appealed not only to middle-class Americans but also to farmers and workers with little or no poverty.
1837 - 1843
% complete
Second major crisis of the U.S., which led to hard times from 1837 to 1843.If the Panic of 1837 had not happened, then American planters, merchants, and canal corporations would not have to withdrew gold from domestic banks to pay foreign debts, thus prices of goods such as cotton would not have plummeted.
1838 - 1846
% complete
Forced westward journey of Cherokee's from their lands in Georgia to present-day Oklahoma in 1838. Nearly a quarter of the Cherokees died en route. If the Trail of Tears had not happened, then other tribes would not have moved west of the Mississippi as well, thus citizenship in Indian acquired land would not have been "racially defined" as the U.S. was a "white man's territory".
1840 - 1845
% complete
Whigs exploited Van Buren’s weakness. In 1840, they organized their first national convention and nominated William Henry Harrison of Ohio for president and John Tyler of Virginia for vice president. Whig leaders Henry Clay and Daniel Webster wanted a president who would rubber stamp their program for protective tariffs and a national bank. The depression stacked the political cards against Van Buren, but the election turned as much on style as on substance. The Log Cabin Campaign was the first time two well organized parties competed for votes through a new style of campaigning. If this wouldn’t have happened, then more men wouldn’t have voted and Harrison wouldn’t have been voted into the White House.
1770
% complete
Mother Ann believed that she was an incarnation of Christ and began the Shakers group and attempted to form a utopian society. If Mother Ann had not had her “vision” then the Shakers would not have been founded, thus removing the group from history.
1805 - 1844
% complete
Provoked more animosity, known as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were utopians with a much more conservative social agenda-continuing the traditional patriarchal family. If Joseph Smith had not founded the Mormon Church , then the idea would not have spread to Nauvoo, IL, thus creating the largest utopian community in the U.S. with 30,000 inhabitants.
1811 - 1886
% complete
The Oneida community, founded by John Humphrey Noyes, believed that all residents were married to each other, they were a free- love community and believed in Millenarianism. If this community had not been established, then humans would not have felt that they were obligated to follow the moral rules of the past, thus sparking new ideas about what love was and how it was associated with adultery.
1826 - 1850
% complete
The Lyceum Movement was sparked by Ralph Waldo Emerson who believed in a single God and caused transcendentalist beliefs, which was an intellectual movement in New England. If the lyceum movement hadn’t happened then people would not have written influential books, thus preventing the intellectual movement.
1830 - 1845
% complete
Minstrelsy was the making of plays that practiced racism and social mockery. If minstrelsy hadn’t happened then racism would not have been encouraged, thus reducing the harassment of immigrants and blacks.
1831 - 1832
% complete
As Walker threatened violence in Boston, Nat Turner, a slave in Southampton County, Virginia, staged a bloody revolt- a chronological coincidence that had far reaching consequences. As a child, Turner had taught himself to read and had hoped for emancipation, but one new master forced him into the fields, and another separated him from his wife. Later on, Turner and a handful of relatives and friends rose in rebellion and killed at least 55 women, men, and children. If this wouldn’t have happened, then whites wouldn’t have made slave laws stricter and they wouldn’t be frightened of blacks. This wouldn’t have inspired William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists to create the American Anti-Slavery Society.
1832 - 1855
% complete
Ralph Waldo Emerson celebrated the liberation of the individual. Emerson’s vision influenced thousands of ordinary Americans and a generation of important artists, who, in the American Renaissance, a mid-nineteenth century flourishing of literature and philosophy, wrote a remarkable number of first class novels, poems, and essays. Emerson was the leading voice of transcendentalism, an intellectual movement rooted in the religious soil of New England. Its first advocates were Unitarian ministers from well-to-do New England families who questioned the constraints of their Puritan heritage. For inspiration, they turned to European romanticism, a new conception of self and society. If this wouldn’t have happened, then many inspiring and powerful books wouldn’t have been written. Life in the Woods, The American Scholar, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Leaves of Grass, and The Scarlet Letter are some of them.
1833 - 1855
% complete
William Lloyd Garrison was the most determined abolitionist. A Massachusetts born printer, Garrison had worked during the 1820s in Baltimore on an antislavery newspaper, the Genius of Universal Emancipation. In 1830, Garrison went to jail, convicted of libeling a New England merchant engaged in the domestic slave trade. In 1831, Garrison moved to Boston, where he immediately started his own weekly, The Liberator and founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society. He demanded immediate abolition without compensation to slave owners. The society won financial support from Arthur and Lewis Tappan, wealthy silk merchants in New York City. Later on, abolitionists urged to aid fugitive slaves. They provided lodging and jobs for escaped blacks in free states and created the Underground Railroad, an informal network of whites and free blacks in Richmond, Charleston, and other southern towns that assisted fugitives. If this didn’t happen, than close to zero blacks would have been saved. Blacks might have been slaves much longer.
1835 - 1850
% complete
An informal network of whites and free blacks in the South that assisted fugitive slaves to reach freedom in the North. If the Underground Railroad had ever been created, then one thousand of African Americans would not have found freedom in the North each year, thus abolitionists may not have held a political campaign where they went to congress with a petition that demanded the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, an end to the interstate slave trade and a ban on admission of new slave states.
1835
% complete
Word coined by Alexis de Tocqueville to describe Americans as people no longer bounded by social attachments to class, castes, associations, and families. If the idea of individualism had not come about, then Emerson would not have celebrated the liberation of the individual, thus the American Renaissance would not have happened along with transcendentalism.
1836 - 1844
% complete
Racial fears and hatreds led to violent mob actions. White workers in northern towns laid waste to taverns and brothels where blacks and whites mixed, and they vandalized respectable African American churches, temperance halls, and orphanages. By pressing for emancipation and equality, the abolitionists had revealed the extent of racial prejudice and had heightened race consciousness, as both whites and blacks identified across class lines with members of their own race. Politicians joined the fray. President Andrew Jackson asked Congress in 1835 to restrict the use of the mails by abolitionist groups. Congress refused, but in 1836, the House of Representatives adopted the so-called gag rule. Under this informal agreement, which remained enforced until 1844, the House automatically tabled antislavery petitions, keeping the explosive issue of slavery off the congressional stage. If this wouldn’t have happened, then blacks could have been free sooner. Also, women wouldn’t have been recognized earlier.
1839 - 1860
% complete
Laws in NY and other states that permitted married women to own, inherit, and bequeath property. If these laws had not been est., then women activists in NY may not have won a comprehensive statue that became the model of 14 other states, thus giving women full legal control over the property they brought to a marriage.
1840 - 1849
% complete
The fourierists believed that socialism would create a utopian society, led by Albert Brisbane. If fouriesm didn’t exist then Brisbane would not have been influential, and thus he would not have written his book.
1841
% complete
Dorthea Dix was a woman who was emotionally abused as a child, that grew into a compassionate young woman with a strong sense of moral purpose. If she has not persuaded lawmakers to enlarge the state hospitals to house indigent mental patients, then she would not have been able to establish state asylums for the mentally ill, thus many states would not have began to improve their prisons and public hospitals.
1846
% complete
Brigham Young led thousands of Mormons westward in this trek to Salt Lake City. If this trek hadn’t happened then Mormons would have remained under harassment of opposition, thus causing them to become disheartened and abandon their faith.
1848 - 1848
% complete
The first women's rights convention in the United States. Held in Seneca Falls, NY, in 1848. If the convention had not happened, then there may not have been a manifesto extending to women the egalitarian republican ideology, thus there would not have been a change in the Declaration of Independence for women's rights.
1776 - 1840
% complete
The Old South gentry that built impressive mansions, adopted the manners and values of the English landed gentry, and feared federal government interference with their slave poverty. If affluent planters had never came up with this aristocracy, then the middle-class society may not have developed in the Northeast and Midwest, thus the system would not have been affective.
1800 - 1850
% complete
This was the trading of slaves between owners within the United States borders. The federal government played a key role in this by welcoming slave states like Alabama and Mississippi. If the slave states hadn’t been welcomed then there would be less slavery, thus less opposition towards abolition.
1800 - 1860
% complete
Planters seeking labor looked to the Chesapeake region, home in 1800 to nearly half of the nation’s black population. There, the African American population was growing rapidly from natural increase- an average of 27 percent a decade by 1810, thus creating a surplus of enslaved workers on many plantations. Domestic slave trade was a result also. By 1816, the mania for buying negroes from the upper south had resulted in a massive transplantation of more than one million slaves. A majority of African Americans now lived and worked in the deep south, the lands that stretched from Georgia to Texas. This African American migration took two forms- transfer and sale. The domestic market brought wealth to American traders between 1800 and 1860. If this wouldn’t have happened, than there wouldn’t have been many slaves which means southerners would not be near as wealthy. Blacks could have better lives.
1810 - 1860
% complete
The black population that was free nearly tripled in a 50 year span. This was due to abolitionist movements and black culture maintained, such as Black Protestantism where blacks were declared equal to whites. If these people hadn’t been freed then slavery would have continued to grow, thus continuing the mistreatment of blacks.
1812 - 1855
% complete
The domestic slave trade with routes along the Atlantic coast that sent thousands of slaves to sugar plantations in Louisiana and cotton plantations in the Mississippi Valley. If this trade system did not exist, then young men would not have been working in sugar fields, thus lowering the production rate of sugar overall.
1817 - 1850
% complete
A system of transporting freed blacks to Africa. If this system had never been created, then there would not have been an increased demand for slaves, thus Africa and the Chesapeake region would have been able to support planters in their demand for workers.
1819
% complete
Granted all white men suffrage. If this constitution did not exist, then white men would not have gotten the right to vote, thus the secret ballot would not have been created.
1820 - 1860
% complete
For African American families, the domestic slave trade was a personal disaster that underlined their status and vulnerability as chattel slaves. In law, they were the movable personal property of the whites who owned them. Slave property underpinned the entire southern economic system. As a slave owner, Henry Clay knew that property rights were key to slave discipline. Thousands of slaves suffered from that fate, which destroyed about one in every four slave marriages. If this wouldn’t have happened, than more slaves would have ran away or took more action against slavery.
1820 - 1880
% complete
Cotton was a demanding crop because of its long growing season. Slaves plowed the land in March, dropped seeds in early April, and once the plants began to grow, continually chopped away the surrounding grasses. In between these tasks, they planted the corn and peas that would provide food for them and the plantation’s hogs and chickens. When the cotton bolls ripened in late August, the long four-month picking season began. Slaves in the cotton south worked much harder and more unremittingly than those in the tobacco regions. Moreover, fewer of them acquired craft skills than in tobacco, sugar and rice areas, where slave coopers and engineers made casks, processed sugar, and built irrigation systems. To increase output, profit-seeking cotton planters began, in the 1820s, to use the gang-labor system. Previously, many planters had supervised their workers sporadically or assigned them specific tasks to complete at their own pace. Now, masters with twenty or more slaves organized disciplined teams or gangs supervised by black drivers or white overseers. They instructed the supervisors to work the gangs at a steady pace, clearing and plowing land or hoeing and picking cotton. If this wouldn’t have happened, then profits wouldn’t have enhanced for slave owners. Productivity wouldn’t have increased.
1821 - 1835
% complete
The Americans and Mexicans had disputes over Mexico, and had many different views on how the issue should be solved. There was Sam Houston’s war party and Stephen Austin’s peace party. If this hadn’t happened then disputes wouldn’t have taken place over Texas, thus preventing the rift between Americans and Mexicans.
1830 - 1850
% complete
The slave system in the interior of the country that fed slaves to the Cotton South. If this system had not been created, then white planters would not have been able to utilize interstate trade, thus not having the opportunity to provide young workers for the expanding plantations of the cotton belt.
1836
% complete
Led by Santa Anna, his army wiped out the Texan garrison defending the Alamo in San Antonio. They then captured Goliad and executed hundreds of prisoners of war. If this battle had not happened, then Americans would not have turned against the Mexicans, thus Santa Anna would not have lost his "overconfident" army against the Texans in the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836.
1840 - 1850
% complete
Africans carried their traditional religious practices to the United States. Some practiced Islam, but the majority relied on African gods and spirits. Other Protestant crusaders came from the ranks of pious black men and women who had become Christians in the Chesapeake. Swept to the cotton south by the domestic slave trade, they carried with them the evangelical message of emotional conversion, ritual baptism, and communal spirituality. Equally important, these crusaders adapted Protestant doctrines to black needs. Enslaved Christians pointed out that blacks as well as whites were children of God and should be treated accordingly. Black Protestantism generally ignored the doctrines or original sin and predestination, and preachers didn’t use biblical passages that encouraged unthinking obedience to authority. If this wouldn’t have happened, than slaves wouldn’t have realized that the Bible says everyone is a child of God. Culture wouldn’t have spread among African Americans.
1850
% complete
Slave owners in the New South faced much less hypocrisy although their treatment of slaves was much worse. If there would not have been slave owning entrepreneurs, then plantation owners would not have developed the gang-labor system, thus there would not have been organized teams or 'gangs' that was overseen by black drivers and white overseers. It also would not have given slaves the opportunity to get work done quicker and produce impressive profits and becoming even more prevalent.