Index  Art & Architecture Business and the Economy  Books and Literature  Migration & Immigration  Education  News and Events  Music and Theater  Pastimes  Science and Technology Social Movements  Presidents: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison | Population: 5,308,483 | Statehood: Ohio

About the 19th Century Decades Pages  In 1800 everyday life had changed little since the year 1000. By 1900 the Industrial Revolution had transformed the world's economy. To see the whole picture, we encourage users to browse all the way through these decades. Then visit the suggested links for more information.   As librarians, we must point out that the best way to immerse oneself in a topic is to use both Internet and library. ENJOY! The 1800-1810s  It's difficult to imagine that in 1800 American independence was only 25 years old | The capital was moved from Philadelphia to Washington | Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in the famous duel | Robert Fulton tested steamboat on the Hudson.| West Point established  |  Louisiana purchased  |  Money from many countries circulated throughout America  |  80% of Americans worked on a farm  |  Boarding houses and tenements were popular in the cities and one room log cabins in the country |  Travel from Charleston to Philadelphia took 15 days by stage | The importation of slaves to the United States was banned | Johnny Appleseed arrived in the Ohio Valley with seeds from Philadelphia | Robert Fulton's paddle steamer navigated the Hudson River.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844), American architect, worked in the Federal style. Born in Boston and educated at Harvard University, Bulfinch was influenced by British architect Christopher Wren. Bulfinch's most important design was The Massachusetts State House. Benjamin Latrobe, a British architect who migrated to the US, designed the Bank of Pennsylvania, the first Greek revival style. This style became very important from 1820 to 1860. Pierre Charles L'Enfant worked with Thomas Jefferson in the planning of the city of Washington, D.C. Classical and Federal styles dominated the early republic. Architects of this period were generally amateurs.

Early 19th century American furniture  included Sheraton and Directoire styles, classical yet simple. Duncan Phyfe of NYC turned out fine examples of furniture. The broad name for American furniture of these styles was Federal (keyword Federal).   This furniture is extremely valuable today. During this decade Paul Revere continued to create silver and, in 1804, he created a coppermill - and crafted his beautiful church bells!

American artists would have come to a sad end if it had not been for the commissions of the wealthy. There was widespread demand for portraiture .Gilbert Stuart was one of the most successful and prolific of the portrait artists. Stuart studied under another important period artist, Benjamin West, who also painted historical and religious subjects. Generally considered the finest painter of colonial America, John Singleton Copley painted portraits and historical subjects. Joshua Johnson was the first known African American portrait painter in the United States. The Society of Fine Arts in New York was the first major American art academy, established in 1802. Charles Willson Peale (the patriarch of a large family of artists) founded the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1805.

• Art of the 19th Century
• Architecture of the 19th Century
• Antiques Council - 19th Century Furniture

BUSINESS AND THE ECONOMY

At the beginning of the century, America was overwhelmingly rural, importing many needed items from Europe. After the American Revolution, American merchants went from exporting 75 percent of goods to England and her colonies to exporting only 10 percent of American goods to those same markets. Congress had initially not been given power to impose taxes.  In 1787, a Congressional meeting in Philadelphia gave Congress the sole power to tax imports, regulate international trade and trade between the states, and forbade the states from repudiating debts, voiding contracts, coining money or issuing paper money, giving the federal government power to make commercial policy for the entire country. When the British and French continued to threaten American commerce, President Jefferson and Secretary of State Madison, responded with the Embargo of 1807 banning American trade with foreign nations.  This embargo was a failure, but it did have one important result. Americans were forced to begin manufacturing goods they could not import. Woonsocket, Rhode Island and Lowell, Massachusetts were early  settings for factories and the resulting industrialization was the start of major U.S. economic development.

In 1800 a movement to reduce the influence of the Bank of the United States (which had opened in 1791) resulted in the creation of state banks throughout the country.  There were 29 of these state chartered banks at the beginning of the century. In April of 1801, Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin submitted a report to Congress, calling for the federal government to build better roads and canals. Gallatin succeeded in establishing a standing committee on finance for the federal government.  This eventually became the House Ways and Means Committee. In1802, Eluethère Irénée du Pont started a powder mill on Brandywine Creek in southern Pennsylvania; within ten years it became the largest industrial business in the nation. The Intercourse Act of 1802 was established to try to regulate the trade of whiskey for furs and land from Native Americans. The government instituted trading posts which were supposed to fairly regulate the trade and act as outposts for civilization but failed to meet these goals.

In 1803 the Louisiana Territory was purchased from France for $15 million dollars. The price works out to three cents per acre for the 512 million acres.  American growers supplied 45 percent of exported cotton sent to England. Congress passed legislation ending the importation of slaves in 1807. By the time of the Civil War, most slaves were native-born. The law took effect in 1808.  In 1808 John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company created the first American monopoly on fur trade in the U.S. territories. In March of 1809, The Non-Intercourse Act replaced the Embargo Act and opened American shipping to all nations except France and England.

BOOKS AND LITERATURE

The Library of Congress was established in 1800 with a $50,000 appropriation to purchase 900 books and maps that arrived from London in eleven trunks. The novel was just beginning to be popular. William Hill Brown (The Powers of Sympathy) published the first American novel in 1789 and between that time and 1800, there were 350 novels published. Women particularly loved reading. This process improved women's literacy and encouraged them to think for themselves. The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster, had become the first best-selling novel - just before 1800. Historical writing became popular during this period as well. David Ramsay published The History of a Revolution of South-Carolina and a biography of George Washington. Another biography by Mason Locke Weems which included the famous cherry tree "I can not tell a lie" story glorifying Washington was so popular that it went through 40 editions in 25 years. Many periodicals were published during this period. Authors included William Emerson, father of poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, born 1803 and Washington Irving. What did children read during this time? Well, Noah Webster published the American Spelling Book around 1800.

It is surely not high literature, but this poem was dropped on the doorstep of Aaron Burr on the morning of July 11, 1804, after he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel:

Oh Burr, oh Burr, what has thou done, Thou hast shooted dead great Hamilton! You hid behind a bunch of thistle, You shooted him dead with a great boss pistol!

Great Collection of 19th Century Literature

Migration & Immigration

In 1800 the young nation's population still clung mainly to the eastern seaboard.  In that year Congress created the Indiana Territory from the western half of the Northwest Territory.  The population of the United States had increased more than 30% since the 1790 census, and these people were pushing into new areas in search of land.  In order to accommodate the new settlers,  the Harrison Land Act established for the first time land offices near the sale lands  in the Northwest Territory.  The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 added nearly a million square miles to the United States, and the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery traversed this new acquisition from 1804 to 1806.  Farmers continued to move into the area between the settled coast and the Mississippi River, displacing the native peoples living there.  For example, the state of Georgia distributed land inhabited by the Creek and Cherokee Indians in seven different land lotteries. The 1832 lottery led to the infamous "Trail of Tears" as the lotteries continued to distribute land in western Georgia occupied by the Cherokees.  In the north Tecumseh and his younger brother, Tenskwatawa, tried to unify the different Indian tribes in the region in order to stop the expansion of the white settlers into western Ohio and Indiana.  In the Battle of the Thames In 1813 Tecumseh was killed, and this battle was the last serious threat to white settlement east of the Mississippi River. The number of immigrants arriving in U. S. ports prior to 1819 is not recorded, but the historian, William J. Bromwell, estimated that from the early 1780's until 1819 250,000 immigrants came to the United States.  The largest group of people to arrive was the Scotch Irish.  A lot  of them came as indentured servants, but this method of paying for passage was brought to a halt by the British Passenger Act of 1803.   Hard times in Europe, however, continued to lure people to the new country.  In the years 1801 and 1802 there may have been as many as 20,000 Irish and Germans who came to the U.S.  The Naturalization Act of 1802 set the requirements for citizenship that are essentially still in effect today.  The Napoleonic Wars in Europe slowed the influx of immigrants after 1803 as the disruption of trade made it extremely difficult to attempt the transatlantic voyage to America.

BOOKS:

• American Immigration  JV6450.J6
• The Immigrant in American History   EBook
• Immigration As a Factor in American History  E184.A1 H23
• American Expansion: a Book of Maps

VIDEOS:  

• Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery  F529.B87 L49 1997

LINKS:

• United States Population Growth Areas, 1800
• The American Immigration 
• Yankee Migration

EDUCATION

NEWS AND EVENTS

MUSIC AND THEATER

In this country founded on freedom of religion, most printed music in the early 1800s was religious in nature, including Amazing Grace and Coronation. Episcopalian Harmony Evangelical Harmony, and Plain Psalmody were typical of the first books printed.  Americans also enjoyed singing old English ballads like Greensleeves and Scottisk folk tunes such as Froggy Went A-Courtin'.  Most country folk used tuneless word books and sang the words to known tunes.  In 1801, in an attempt to make hymn singing easier for Americans, Little & Smith wrote The Easy Instructor, using shape notation.  .  Musical groups such as the Dartmouth Handel Society were formed to sing sacred music. The Harvard College Orchestra, the first orchestra in the United States, began in 1809.  People in the cities and towns could also find amusement in the theater.  Such European classics as Shakespeare and the more popular  melodramas and pantomimes would be performed in cities October - June.  In the summers, the theater companies would tour from town to town.  The first hit was "The Stranger" by Kotzebue, in the John Street Theater in New York City.  Country people, 95% of the population, enjoyed visiting, dancing, music, walking, checkers, chess, horse racing, cock fighting, barn raisings and husking bees.  Settlers, black and white, from up to 100 miles away would gather together for camp meetings, non-denominational religious revivals, for group singing and prayer.  At Cane Ridge, KY in 1801, over 10,000 people gathered to sing hymns and pray from Thursday to Tuesday.  Francis Asbury, the first Methodist circuit rider, stated, "The music was beautiful at 100 yards.  At a mile, it was magnificent."  Pierre Cruzatte, a boatman and translator for the Lewis & Clark Expedition, was an esteemed fiddle player, providing entertainment for the explorers and the Indians they met along the way.  Native Americans considered music magical.  Because their music was not written down until the late 19th century, most of it  is lost.  The slaves brought west African music to America.  Their percussion come from drums, a xylophone called balafo, or often as not, from slapping, clapping or stomping. A stringed instrument called a banza, later known as a banjo, was formed from a calabash or gourd.  Singing included shout songs and call and response, often with the words fabricated on the spot.

PASTIMES - FADS, FOOD, FASHION AND SPORTS

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

In 1800 to 1809, Napolean commissioned Robert Fulton, an American artist who was then living in France, to build a submarine.  Using Bushnell's design, Fulton built and successfully tested the submarine, but interest waned as the French decided that such a sneaky attack was ungentlemanly.  Fulton's interest turned to steamboats.   Others had developed steamboats but they moved at barely 4 miles per hour.  The first commercially successful model was Robert Fulton's Clermont.  On August 17 - 18, 1807, it ran from New York City through Clermont to Albany, New York, a distance of 150 miles, in just 32 hours.  No other form of transportation was as fast at the time.

Meanwhile, in July 1806, Zebulon Pike started exploration of northern New Spain and the Great Plains.  He described the Great Plains as a desert unsuitable for agriculture, slowing development of that region.  Many of his observations were made as a prisoner of the Spanish.

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Late in the eighteenth century and early in the nineteeth century, the Second Great Awakening began. The first great awakening consisted of religious revivals that had occured during colonial settlements. Similar camp meetings helped promote the Second Great Awakening. The first of these camp meetings took place in July, 1800 at Gasper River Church in Southwestern Kentucky.  More than 10,000 people gathered at the Cane Ridge Camp meeting in Kentucky, 1801, making it the largest and one of the most remarkable of these meetings. These meetings of the second revival movement helped "spread the idea that human beings were free to renounce their sins and achieve salvation."  From saving oneself, it was only a short step to the belief that one could and must save one's neighbors".

Nathaniel Taylor and Lyman Beecher, two evangelical Calvinists believed in a Christian's free will to choose salvation.  Beecher organized revivals with other Protestant leaders, and together they helped organize voluntary associations to promote Christian behavior. In 1798 and 1799, Connecticut and Massachusetts began missionary societies devoted to sending orthodox pastors to frontier areas.  Beecher and other leaders soon found that many of his recruits were women and teachers.  This interesting development allowed wives and daughters to take leadership roles previously denied them.  This began a shift in gender relations.  "Women's participation in the 'benevolent empire' suggested that the legacy of the Revolution applied to them, too" (see the Encyclopedia of American Social History REF HN57.E58).