Western Europe and
the infant United States underwent an evolution in manufacturing methods during
the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, which was caused by a
wave of new technological developments.
During the first half of the nineteenth century “Americans imitated and
adopted British inventions and technology” in areas of manufacturing, and early
American capitalists from the northern states invested, imported and
manufactured those new industrial technologies which created an evolution in
American manufacturing and profiting. The
emerging technologies that developed from the industrial revolution increased manufacturing
production levels and lowered the requirements of manual labor in Ante Bellum
America, therefore reducing American slavery to an outdated mode of capitalist
production that deterred maximized profiting.
These technological developments for industry created an unresolvable
conflict between economic interests of northern American states and southern
American states, which contributed to a terribly splintered two political party
landscape in the domestic United States, and eventually led to the American Civil
War and bloodshed. The decades leading
into the American Civil War were characterized by a technological quickening in
the northern American states which served as an evolution stage for
manufacturing and capitalist production that would eventually clash with the
economic exploitation system of human slavery in the southern American states. Inventions during the Industrial Revolution such
as the cotton gin, the steam engine, the sewing machine, and the telegraph
literally changed the manufacturing process, natural resource and product shipping,
and business communication methods in the early United States.
Technology, Reduced Human Labor, Expanded Production
One of the best
examples to illustrate the correlation between a new technology and reduced
human labor requirements and increased supply and demand production is the
cotton gin. The cotton gin, a machine for removing seeds from cotton, was
invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney, and like all new technologies aimed at
extracting natural resources, product manufacturing or methods of shipping, the
technology of the cotton gin instantly reduced requirements for human labor and
decreased the time required to efficiently remove cotton seeds. Many historians have blamed the cotton gin on
the increase of American slavery, but the two are not directly correlated. The increase in American slavery was a
reactionary trend due to the rising capitalist demand for cotton, which the new
cotton gin machine could produce at much higher levels for manufacturing or
consumption from purchasers. After the
creation of the “cotton gin, the yield of raw cotton doubled each decade after
1800” and the growing demand for cotton was quickly met through technologies
such as “machines to spin and weave it and the steamboat to transport it”. In previous textile manufacturing prior to
the mass manufacturing of factory sewing machine, “the machines that were used
were small and generally either hand-powered or powered by the wind or running
water”, and this form of manufacturing was revolutionized by new technologies
of the Industrial Revolution such as the steam engine.
The rapidly
transitioning manufacturing capabilities through new industrial technologies in
the north soon began to conflict with traditional southern economic
interests. An example for illustrating
the developing differences in economic interests between the industrializing
northern Free states and the agricultural southern slave states can be seen in
the fact that by the middle of the eighteenth century, the United States,
mostly from the southern slave states, produced seventy-five percent of the
world’s cotton while 72% of the manufacturing capabilities and technologies in
the United States were consolidated in the northern states. Northern states had begun the process of industrialization
in the decades leading into the American Civil War as “British technology was
copied in countless areas”. While
southern states remained reliant on agriculture and slavery, the northern “free
states took the lead in population growth, manufacturing, property values,
agriculture, railroads, canals, and commerce” due to the reproduction and
dissemination of new industrialized technology.
One specific development of industrialized technology during the
Industrial Revolution that strengthened industrial manufacturing and shipping
capabilities of northern states was the process for converting pig iron into
steel developed by Henry Bessemer.
Deterioration Factors between the American North and South
With
the economic interests of southern states dependent on agricultural extraction
and exportation supported by the institution of slavery and the industrializing
north growing stronger in manufacturing, the political two party system within
the young United States began to polarize between north and south lines with
the pro-industrialization Whig party representing the northern states and the agricultural
pro-slavery Democrat party representing the southern states. In addition to conflicting economic interests
between north and south, the promotion of the manifest destiny ideology and the
western territory acquired from Polk’s Mexican War ignited a regional political
rupture as pro-industrial and pro-slavery forces clashed in Congress and at
territorial election polls to determine whether future states developing from
new territories would be introduced into Congress as slave states or free
states, which in turn would impact the political power structure in Congress
and jeopardize the economic interests and future plans of northern or southern states. As economic interests between the north and
south continued to deepen, domestic political events, such as the Dred Scott
decision and the fragmenting of the democratic party prior to the election of
1860, occurred which granted national momentum toward northern industrialism,
abolition and the eventual splintering of the nation. Prior to and after Lincoln’s election, the
pro-industrial ideology of free labor was a major component of the Republican
Party and the Lincoln political platform.
The
North: Division of Labor and Free Labor
As
industrialized capitalists of the north accumulated efficient technological
means of increased manufacturing, reducing the previous required amounts of
human labor to achieve the same levels of capital profit, the concept of division
of labor became more and more prevalent in the north. Division of labor originated as a way for the
capitalist to utilize “skilled, managerial workers who supervised an
increasingly mechanized factory based on increasing subdivision of tasks that
utilized relatively unskilled labor”.
The manufacturing technique of division of labor is a process first
analyzed in-depth by Adam Smith in his book A Wealth of Nations where the process is
described as “a number of simpler tasks, each one of which is undertaken by a
different individual who typically (but not necessarily) specializes in one
task”. With new Industrial Revolution
technologies, which provided northern capitalists with the ability to mass
manufacture, the division of labor method of capitalist manufacturing reduced
American slavery to an outdated mode of capitalist exploitation in the eyes of
northern capitalists, while the southern states, remaining predominantly
agricultural and reliant on human slavery for agricultural exportation, saw a
great threat in the 1860 Republican presidential candidate out of Illinois and
the Republican platform of free labor.
Northern
Republicans “placed much emphasis on economic growth” and industrialization and
the southern states feared government regulation and the prophetic forced
abolition of slavery should Republicans take control of Congress or Lincoln win
the presidency. The Republican endorsed Free
labor ideology, similar to competing capital in today’s free market competition
while free labor centered on the competing worker, was advertised as an
opportunity for wage earning workers to rise in the economic caste structure of
an American north “strictly divided into two main groups, those who worked and
those who profited from the work of others”.
In reality, free labor would also allow capitalists to hire skilled and
non-skilled workers at the lowest wages, overwork workers under unhealthy
factory conditions, and exploit children in the capitalist manufacturing process
until later labor laws would be passed to address these issues. The northern capitalist industrialist understood
maximizing capitalist profits under mass industrial manufacturing. A slave being forced to work without pay under
forced bondage would never produce the same manufacturing results, work as hard
without being consistently forced, or stay consistently engaged in labor over a
long duration as an hourly wage-earner, who could be terminated at any time,
that held the responsibility of placing nightly beans and bread on his family
table compared to a slave whose only reward was watching a master live off his
labor. In addition, slave owners were
required to feed and clothe their slaves, and deal with lost labor due to
runaways, injuries and sicknesses which caused “considerable financial losses
to their owners”. Free labor and the
division of that free labor would satisfy “the desire of the capitalist
merchant to force higher output from his workers” compared to southern slave
system, especially with the new system of free labor creating circumstances
which promoted “intensive work in factory settings, individuals performing
fragmented tasks, and the transformation of skilled work to unskilled”.
Under
the presidency of Lincoln, the Union also passed legislation that would
structure the capitalist free labor market through the Legal Tender Act of
1862. The usage of gold and silver for commodity
exchanges and pay rates ended with this legislation, as “The Legal Tender Act
authorized the federal government to print and use paper money” for payment to
the expendable free labor force which would be completely implemented after the
conclusion of the Civil War regardless of what might befall masses of freed
slaves with no starting capital. Prior
to the Legal Tender Act, “the first U.S. income tax was imposed in July 1861,
at 3 percent of all incomes over $800 up to 10 percent for incomes over
$100,000”.
The
South: Agriculture and Slavery
As
southern succession and the Civil War approached, “the population of the South
had reached four million, with over one-third of that number enslaved” and the
economic foundations of southern white society was reliant on the exports of
cotton, sugar and rice by the enslavement free labor of American black slaves. The political resistance in the south towards
northern free labor and the possible abolition of slavery was led by the
largest landowners, who “held the most political power, dominating public
office” in the south, and supported by poor landless whites who feared
competing with a population of freed slaves, many of whom possessed trades and
apprenticeships, for a limited amount of jobs within society. Possessing “only 13 percent of the nation's
banks” prior to the Civil War, the south quickly fell behind the north in
manufacturing and the accumulation of industrial technologies with the north
manufacturing “17 times more cotton and woolen textiles than the South, 30
times more leather goods, 20 times more pig iron, and 32 times more firearms”,
and this concentration of industrialized manufacturing would eventually guarantee
a Union victory over the Confederacy in the Civil War, and ensure the victory
of northern free wage labor and the abolition of American slavery.
Conclusion
The
Civil War and the Abolition of American slavery were not events that occurred
as a result of moral sentiments in the United States. These historical events within the United
States were direct results of technological developments in capitalist
manufacturing, an improved system of capitalist labor exploitation, and the
conflicting economic interests of northern industrialists and agricultural
southern slave owners. The young United
States had always followed the interests of capital, whether in the form of
breaking with British rule, land acquisition and natural resources in the
Mexican War, or the abolition of slavery to introduce a new system of free wage
labor which could regenerate higher levels of capital profit through higher
levels of manufacturing and production.
In closing, the American Civil War was a result of many combined
political and social elements, but the original root of those various elements
was the Industrial Revolution and the new manufacturing technologies which
emerged during that time period to revolutionize capitalist production.
Notes
[1] Library of Congress. “John Bull and Uncle Sam: Four Centuries of
British-American Relations” United
States Library of Congress Website. Accessed
on February 21, 2014. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/british/brit-5.html
[2] U.S. National Archives. 2014.
“Teaching With Documents: Eli Whitney's Patent for the Cotton Gin” Accessed February 20, 2014. http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent/
[3] U.S. National Archives. 2014.
“Teaching With Documents: Eli Whitney's Patent for the Cotton Gin” Accessed February 20, 2014. http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent/
[4] Patricia Ryaby Backer. “The Cause of the Industrial Revolution” San Jose State University. Accessed on February 22, 2014. http://www.engr.sjsu.edu/~pabacker/causeIR.htm
[5] U.S.
National Archives. 2014. “Teaching With Documents: Eli Whitney's
Patent for the Cotton Gin” Accessed
February 20, 2014. http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent/
[6] Library of Congress. “John Bull and Uncle Sam: Four Centuries of
British-American Relations” United
States Library of Congress Website. Accessed
on February 21, 2014. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/british/brit-5.html
[7] Antonia Etheart. “Lincoln, Labor and Liberation” Birmingham
University Department of History.
Accessed on February 21, 2014. http://www2.binghamton.edu/history/resources/journal-of-history/lincoln.html
[8] Library of Congress. “John Bull and Uncle Sam: Four Centuries of
British-American Relations” United
States Library of Congress Website.
Accessed on February 21, 2014. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/british/brit-5.html
[9] Sukko Kim.
2006. “Division of Labor and the
Rise of Cities: Evidence from U.S. Industrialization, 1850-1880.” National Bureau of Economic Research. Accessed on February 20, 2014. http://www.nber.org/papers/w12246.pdf?new_window=1
[10] Auburn University. 2005.
A Glossary of Political Economy Terms: Division of Labor. Accessed on February 21, 2014. http://www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/division_of_labor
[11] Antonia Etheart. “Lincoln, Labor and Liberation” Birmingham
University Department of History.
Accessed on February 21, 2014. http://www2.binghamton.edu/history/resources/journal-of-history/lincoln.html
[12] Antonia Etheart. “Lincoln, Labor and Liberation” Birmingham
University Department of History.
Accessed on February 21, 2014. http://www2.binghamton.edu/history/resources/journal-of-history/lincoln.html
[13] Leah Glaser.
“United States Expansion, 1800-1860”
University of Virginia Miller Center of Public Affairs. Accessed on February 21, 2014. http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/solguide/VUS06/essay06c.html
[14] Patricia Ryaby Backer. “The Cause of the Industrial Revolution” San Jose State University. Accessed on February 22, 2014. http://www.engr.sjsu.edu/~pabacker/causeIR.htm
[15] Patricia Ryaby Backer. “The Cause of the Industrial Revolution” San Jose State University. Accessed on February 22, 2014. http://www.engr.sjsu.edu/~pabacker/causeIR.htm
[16] Benjamin
Arrington. “Industry and Economy during
the Civil War” National Park
Service. Accessed on February 22, 2014. http://www.nps.gov/resources/story.htm?id=251
[17] Benjamin
Arrington. “Industry and Economy during
the Civil War” National Park
Service. Accessed on February 22, 2014. http://www.nps.gov/resources/story.htm?id=251
[18] Leah Glaser.
“United States Expansion, 1800-1860”
University of Virginia Miller Center of Public Affairs. Accessed on February 21, 2014. http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/solguide/VUS06/essay06c.html
[19] Leah Glaser.
“United States Expansion, 1800-1860”
University of Virginia Miller Center of Public Affairs. Accessed on February 21, 2014. http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/solguide/VUS06/essay06c.html
[20] Leah Glaser.
“United States Expansion, 1800-1860”
University of Virginia Miller Center of Public Affairs. Accessed on February 21, 2014. http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/solguide/VUS06/essay06c.html
[21] Benjamin
Arrington. “Industry and Economy during
the Civil War” National Park
Service. Accessed on February 22, 2014. http://www.nps.gov/resources/story.htm?id=251
[22] Benjamin
Arrington. “Industry and Economy during
the Civil War” National Park
Service. Accessed on February 22, 2014. http://www.nps.gov/resources/story.htm?id=251
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