Essay - Was There A Transportation Revolution in the United States Between...

WAS THERE A TRANSPORTATION REVOLUTION IN THE UNITED STATES BETWEEN 1815 AND 1830?

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This paper argues that, even prior to the advent of ***** railroads, a transportation revolution had taken place in the United States in the early nineteenth century. It argues that two developments were most important: steamboat navigation and ***** construction of the great canals. In particular, the building of the Erie Canal constituted a revolution in its own right. ***** was on account of the ***** revolution of the 1815-30 period ***** the American economy was decisively transformed in a c*****pitalist direction.

Introduction

***** 1800, the United States did not lack a transport infrastructure, but it was a very poor one. W*****h ***** exception ***** cities ***** t*****s located on the Atlantic coastline or al*****g navigable waterways, there was literally no means of transporting agricultural produce and manufactured items to or from market centers other than country roads. These roads were unpaved, infrequently maintained and often impassable in wet weather (Taylor 15-16). A diary passage ***** 1817 gives some sense of their condition: 'I returned from Baltimore a few d*****ys earlier. Had wet ***** muddy Roads and my flour condemned' (qted. in Majewski 46). By 1860, however, America's ***** ***** so greatly improved that the country was ***** the throes of a major economic transformation. On the eve of the Civil War, writes Peter Way, ***** United *****, although still largely an agricultural nation, 'was competitive, market-driven *****d increasingly dominated by relatively large business organizations fueled by multitudes of unattached workers' (11).

But what was chiefly responsible for the improvement? The greatest part of the trans*****mation can undoubtedly be attributed ***** the *****, which were ***** built ***** the 1830s onwards. 'Virtually all accounts agree that the railroad was the dominant factor in the development ***** ***** *****-century ***** economy' (Roy 78). Yet it is ***** hard to see ***** even before the ***** American life was already in the process of being revolutionized by developments in ***** field of transportation. Even if the rail***** had never been built, or ***** not ***** built until much later in the century, there would ***** be grounds f***** thinking of the period *****tween 1815 and 1830 as one in ***** transportation was *****.

The turnpike roads

In this section, we briefly discuss the *****ll roads that appeared around the turn of the nineteenth century. So far, ***** have given a fairly negative impression of the state of the transportation structure in the Un*****ed States before *****. It is true that many more substantial toll roads called *****pikes were built from 1794 onwards (Taylor 17-18). Yet it ***** hard to accord these roads a significant role in transforming the American economy. 'To travelers, whe*****r by carriage or stagecoach, they ***** an unquesti*****d blessing,' explains Tayl***** (26). But they were much less useful for commerce. *****ile they offered advantages for local transportation, they ***** of very lim*****ed value for long freight hauls. That they failed to change ***** ***** to