Reconstruction or Industrialisation?

 

Because it had a profound impact in changing lifestyles (for better or worse) and bringing about new inventions in all industrialising nations at the time, not just the US.

 

The same question could be asked of the Franco-Prussian war, did it have more of a major impact on German and French society or ...

 

The Industrialization was partially the cause of the American Civil War due to split consensus and polarization of two interest groups of vast political importance, the north had its industrialists who found no favor in slavery nor in following the Jeffersonian dream of an agrarian nation, they were factory owners, they saw the potential in industrializing, and in turn improving their financial lot as well. On the other hand the south had largely an agrarian mind set, the Jeffersonian model *excluding the slavery AFAIK* followed a simple national theory. Cities should be minuscule and few and far between, agrarianism should be dominant in the new young nation, the United States and its citizens should be agrarian based, the cities serve administrative functions. That is a typical  outlook of many in the pre-Industrialization age. He falsely foresaw that the agrarian based economy would be dominant, therefore, the United States should follow that route. In the south such a theory found acceptance, as the plantations and individual lots supported that theory, to them they saw themselves and their industry as the future, of course just like the Industrial barons of the north, the agrarian ones of the south looked to their own pockets. Such a drastic change would mean that the significance of their industry would reduce, with that of course their income as well; not to mention their political influence. The two camps defiantly lobbied. Both won in the lobby category as the Civil War sparked off, the agrarians in the end lost, and the United States is the Industrial power of the world today.

 

PS: I am not claiming that to be the main, or only reason, just one of the major reasons for the start of the Civil War.

 

 

 

 

This is a good topic, because the period you indicate made the US what it is.

 

There was not that much change from 1760 to about the 1830s.  Economic activity and interests revolved mostly around agriculture, and on the east coast, trade.  Major changes in society, and also in politics were centered in the expanding population and its movement west of the Allegheny mountains.  A large part of this movement was down the Ohio River to the new western territories, and away from New England and the commercial interests there, and from the landed interests of the South.  Most of the migrants west were freehold farmers, and concerned for their interests, not those of the "cocked hats" of the East.

 

In 1828, Andrew Jackson was the first westerner elected president, indicating a change was underway.

 

By the 1840s, the next major change was underway - the immigration of large numbers of Welsh, and especially Irish newcomers.  The potato blight in Ireland was a spur to immigration, and the developing iron founding industry in the northeast US needed labor, particularly miners.  this changed the character of the population in a couple of ways - Irish were overwhelmingly Catholic, and changed the size and the makeup of cities, and those cities were in the North to start.  Population growth was starting to leave the South behind.

 

The nature of the US Constitution allocates political power mostly according to population, but the number of new states also had an impact.  Were these states to be "slave" states, or free?  Opinion on that had changed overall to the point that the South saw its influence deteriorating.  Both economic and social factors were driving the North/West and the South apart.  compromise, which had worked for decades, failed in 1860, and the Civil War resulted.  That ended southern political power until recent times. 

 

I have always thought of the Civil War as the true American Revolution; the war for independence being a civil war among Englishmen to validate what already existed - that we had run our own affairs independent of the English Crown (3,000 mile and several months away) for 150 years.  I don't know what others think.

 

Anyway, the War industrialized the US of necessity, and the entire nature of America changed from 1865 to about 1880.  People who had never been 20 miles from home in an agricultural society became somewhat more mobile.  Some moved west; more came as immigrants and found work in the shops and factories and mines and on the railroads that were not there much before 1860. 

 

The industrialization of the 1860s was war-related.  In the 1870s and 1880s, not so.  But the basis was there.  The modern US had been born by about 1880, we just didn't know it til about 1900.

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

 

Congress prohibited the IMPORTATION of slaves in 1807.  Slavery still existed where it had before until 1865.  Economic realities did not encourage further prohibition until the exertions of the war made it inevitable politically.

 

I am not expert on economic history, but I recall that general trends in Southern agriculture around 1800 were making slave labor uneconomical...far too labor intensive (not wages, but too many people to feed).  Then, the development and distribution of the cotton gin had the effect of making the production of cotton fiber profitable enough to keep the economic, and social, model of the South as it had been.  (EDIT:  I mean the dominant social/political model, not the huge number of small freeholders in the South who did their own farming...you can't eat cotton) 

 

So, to a small degree industrial change (actually technological change) had an effect on RETARDING Southern development.  While in the mid-19th century, the North was beginning to develop industries like ferrous metals, mining and railroads, the South was developing only minimally.  Immigration fueled population growth, factories and capital were created in the North, and the South remained almost totally agrarian and underdeveloped.

 

I don't think the Act of 1807 had much impact on the "shaping" of America.  America started to shape with the movement away from the east coast of population (politics), and with the creeping industrialization (economy) that began to change the whole society up through the Civil War.  The more profound "shaping" was in the several decades after 1860.

 

About King Phillip's War, I have no idea.