• Impact of Technology on Gender Roles: Technological improvements such as kitchen utensils, heating stoves, and sewing machines transformed women's household work, changing both the content and structure of their daily tasks.

• Economic Shifts and Political History: The invention of the cotton gin and the rise of a market-based pre-industrial economy influenced political history by generating wealth and transitioning from an agrarian economy.

• Evangelism and Technological Influence: New transportation networks facilitated the spread of revival evangelism, impacting political history through the message of personal accountability and self-governance.

• Intersection of Technology and Politics: Technological advancements like steamships and the Pony Express intersected with political history, spurring economic, gender, and religious movements that transformed 19th century American politics.

Introduction

A market revolution, redefined gender roles, and revival evangelism were animated by technology improvements in the antebellum United States (1776-1861).  These technology improvements included the development of locomotives and steamboats, powering the movement of people and ideas, and the introduction of machinist-entrepreneurs that transformed work for men and domestic life for women, looking forward to an Industrial Age in American history that would emerge post-Civil War.  Cultural historical developments in economics, gender, and religion intersected with and inform the political history of 19th century antebellum America.   This paper will examine the through-line that these cultural developments exhibit and situate a 19th century political history therein, highlighted through several journal articles that highlight these themes and the theme of history of technology that also influenced, writ broadly, a new antebellum political history.

Argument

“Over the first half of the nineteenth century, as new technologies replaced older ones and new household needs dictated new labor priorities, both the content and the structure of women’s daily work was steadily transformed,” notes Jeanne Boydston in her exposition on women’s contributions to antebellum history, Home and Work (1990).  Updated content included kitchen utensils newly crafted by steel mill workers, and the structure of the household changed both physically with new materials and spaces, and in space as work patterns of middle-class white men were transformed into places such as factories. Boydston carefully documents an average cost of women’s labor, time, and materials per week ($4.70) to estimate the cost of their labor contributions as homemakers and mothers and traces the use of technology in the household.  This use was continuously evolving and extended outside the home.  Boydston points to the power spindle, canal boats, steamships, and railroads that contributed to and expanded the daily work life of women.  These brought new goods to increasingly centralized city markets, with central furnaces, heating stoves, pumps, iceboxes, oil lamps, cast iron cooking stoves, and sewing machines serving as examples of machine-wrought steel and iron, complex technology that accelerated this transformation in women’s household work.

In constructing a new political history for this period, economics and the contributions of men and women represent several dimensions of this multifaceted discipline.  We can add in the history of technology to help reinforce and explain the changing economic and labor situation for people. These additions also add cultural dimensions to antebellum political history, as economy and women’s material contributions modulated ideas and beliefs among nationals. For example, in The Market Revolution in America, economic and political culture historian John Lauritz Larson describes the antebellum pre-industrial economy that arose in the early 19th century. With the invention of the cotton gin at the turn of the 18th century, Americans’ political history expanded with wealth generation and the transition from an agrarian economy to a market-based pre-industrial economy.  “Bridging the gap between the walking world of the eighteenth century and the high-cost, high tech networks later represented by canals and railroads, private independent steamboats kept the dream alive for several million frontier settlers whose demands for even better facilities would stimulate a second major wave of internal improvement,” notes Larson.  Indeed, the reach of technology spanned the union, helping to accelerate adoption in the late 19th century post-civil war in the South and expansion west across the country.

Spiritually, American evangelism was a major contributor to the political history of antebellum America, and technology was a contributing factor to the early success of tent revivalism. Historian Paul E. Johnson explores the reasons for the revival's spectacular success in his book A Shopkeepers Millennium, suggesting important links between its moral accounting and the city's new industrial world.  New transportation networks allowed early evangelists to spread their message of personal accountability, impacting the political history of this era.  This message was interpreted and received by upper-middle class entrepreneurs and workers, and aided by technological innovations, expressed in changed lifeways that included more self-governance and the exclusion of those who consumed alcohol or otherwise were not members of the evangelical congregations.  Johnson explores the reasons for the revival's spectacular success…suggesting important links between its moral accounting and the city's new industrial world.  “There were few merchants and clerks among the converts, and even fewer day laborers and transport workers. Clearly, urban revivals in the 1820s and 1830s had something to do with the growth of manufacturers.” In this way, revivalism along with economic, gender, and technological history inform and add context to antebellum political history in the U.S.

Conclusion

There was an undercurrent of economic, religious, and family and gender role evolution that compelled politics in 19th century America.  There were technological improvements, including the development of the steamship, the Pony Express and the telegram, and improvements for the mobility of people and ideas, such as non-traditional (agrarian) industrial work for men and new household working arrangements and tools for women.  These intersected with period political history and were buttressed by a technological history that also acted as a catalyst to spur the economic, gender, and religious movements that transformed politics, community, and family in the 19th century U.S.  American political history, and political history in general, has been conceptualized as the history of power struggles.  Certainly, the ideas presented here were powerful and remain so today as modern partisans fiercely debate topics including national economics, technologic innovations, religion in the public sphere, and, especially relevant, women’s rights, a powerful group movement that highlights women’s voices acting as authors of a modern U.S. political history.

References

Boydston, Jeanne. Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic. New York. Oxford University Press. 1990.

Johnson, Paul E. A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, N.Y. 1815-1837. New York. Hill and Lang. 2004.

Larson, John Lauritz. The Market Revolution in America: Liberty, Ambition, and the Eclipse of the Common Good. Boston. Cambridge University Press. 2009.