An American Legacy (Outline) The Pre-dawning of an American Tragedy Economic, Social and Political Institutions The Eastern regions of the United States experienced tremendous economic and social growth during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Encouraged by waves of work-hungry immigrants, business-friendly laws, and the promises of a resource-rich land, businessmen invested mightily in their schemes and plans for settling the new country before them. The American economy enjoyed unprecedented growth for much of the 1800s. Capital, resources, land, and foreign labor were plentiful, and all these factors combined to engender fertile economic conditions for new generations of entrepreneurs and businessmen. Economic growth was also aided by the country's emerging legal system, which was fiercely protective of private property and determined to enforce contractual agreements. As the nineteenth century progressed, two distinct economic systems emerged in the North and South. In the North, the opening of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company in Massachusetts in 1823 marked the introduction of the English factory system to America. This triggered the rapid development of a manufacturing-based economy in the North, an economy that was further buoyed by improved transportation options and increased harvesting of raw materials. Fledgling labor organizations began to sprout up as well in the latter part of the 1830s. In the early 1800s, the nation's woeful road system quickly gave way to water transportation. The latter option was aided immeasurably by the construction of the Erie Canal (1817-1825), which linked the New York canal system to Lake Erie at Buffalo and opened the Great Lakes region to commerce, as well as the development of the St. Lawrence Sea way, a series of canals, dams, and locks along the U.S.-Canadian border which allowed travel from the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. Thousands of miles of c...
