ABSTRACT
Settlement moved west at a remarkable pace, but this was not the only frontier to transform the young nation. The first decades of the new republic and its increasingly democratic politics were accompanied by industrialization and the rise of market capitalism. While the southern states continued to eat up land with cotton plantations, producing raw staples for an economy inextricably tied to European trade and industry, the free-farm settlements of the northern areas were key producers in a growing domestic economy. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the nation was crisscrossed by new transportation networks of roads, canals, and, by the 1840s, railroads. Southern transporters carried cotton to the ports and returned with manufactured imports, but, in the north, industrial products made in the cities were shipped to the hinterlands which, in turn, shipped foodstuffs back to towns no longer able to feed themselves. As the northern frontier continued to move, cities arose on transportation lines, initially as market centers accommodating the new settlement, but soon as industrial producers. The development of farm machinery nurtured the growth of commercial agriculture, and the demand for this technology created particular industries sensibly located in the west and further expanding urban development.
