Full of anticipationWhat was the wharf like when the steamboat arrived each day? Full of activityWhat was the wharf like after the steamboat left each day? Quiet and empty.In the reading, which of the following does Mark Twain describe in great detail?

1807

Though steamboats are still used today, they have been made ineffective by larger freight ships and bridges in this day and age. But steamboats are still used for crossing rivers and lakes, or taking commercial tours of Maine’s rivers and lakes.

The important packet boats carried crops and other goods up and down the rivers. In fact, many river towns developed near large southern plantations to make getting crops to packet boats easier. Packets also carried people. On many of the boats, wealthier passengers enjoyed the first class deck.

By making travel via river easier, steamboats were able to strengthen links between the West and the South, thus increasing the commerce and trade between the two.

Steamboats revolutionized the rapid transportation of goods on American rivers. Farmers grew crops along the river because it was easy to get them to markets, and small towns and cities appeared near river forks and rapids.

Compared to other types of craft used at the time, such as flatboats, keelboats, and barges, steamboats greatly reduced both the time and expense of shipping goods to distant markets. For this reason, they were enormously important in the growth and consolidation of the U.S. economy before the Civil War.

Steamboats positively effected the world because they made the transportation of goods more efficient and economical. Travel time was cut in half and were a compliment of the railroads, both for commercial and passenger transportation. Steamboats were independent on the wind speed and direction.

The name of Steamboat Springs is thought to have originated around the early 1800s when French trappers thought they heard the chugging sound of a steamboat’s steam engine. The sound turned out to be a natural mineral spring, to be named the Steamboat Spring.

Robert Fulton

Countless people attempted to improve steamboats so that they could carry passengers and cargo. By the 1830s, steamboats were the convention. They were used as methods of transportation in canals and other navigable waterways. They were used to promote trade.

20th century

Steamboats and Rivers The problem of traveling upstream was solved during the Industrial Revolution by the steam engine. In 1807, Robert Fulton built the first commercial steamboat. It used steam power to travel upstream. Steamboats were soon used to transport people and goods along rivers throughout the country.

Industrialized manufacturing began in New England, where wealthy merchants built water-powered textile mills (and mill towns to support them) along the rivers of the Northeast. In return for their labor, the workers, who at first were young women from rural New England farming families, received wages.

The North industrialized faster than the south because the North had access to waterways to power their factories and financial capital to start large businesses. Explanation; Many factories began producing textiles with the cotton grown in the south. The economy of the South was based on agriculture.

The North had five times the number of factories as the South, and over ten times the number of factory workers. In addition, 90% of the nation’s skilled workers were in the North. The labor forces in the South and North were fundamentally different, as well.

Bottom line: industrialization came to the North because the North’s climate, geography, etc. did not lend itself to large scale agriculture. Also, the North had an abundance of navigable streams which were absent in the South.

In the North, the economy was based on industry. They built factories and manufactured products to sell to other countries and to the southern states. They did not do a lot of farming because the soil was rocky and the colder climate made for a shorter growing season.

Rather, though inequality of wealth was somewhat more prevalent in the South than in the North, the Southern states were far wealthier on a per capita basis—on an order of two to one. The census wealth data shows the South to have a higher per capita wealth, even with the slave population counted, than the Northeast.

At the beginning of the Civil War, 22 million people lived in the North and 9 million people (nearly 4 million of whom were slaves) lived in the South. The North also had more money, more factories, more horses, more railroads, and more farmland.

The North had several advantages over the South at the outset of the Civil War. The North had a larger population, a greater industrial base, a greater amount of wealth, and an established government.