Antebellum America · Economics

Economics in Antebellum America

The engines and crises of a growing economy. Cotton and the plantation South, the first American factories, the bank wars and the financial panics that rocked the decades before the Civil War.

The Antebellum Economy

Four threads of a changing economy

From the cotton field and the factory floor to the bank and the financial crash.

engraving — the reaper

Land & Labor

Agriculture

Cotton, the plantation South and the farms that fed a growing nation.

print — the Lowell mills

Mills & Factories

Industry

The Lowell mills and the first stirrings of American industry.

cartoon — the Panic of 1837

Boom & Bust

Financial Crisis

The speculative booms and the panics — especially 1837 — that shook the economy.

photograph — the Second Bank

Money & Power

Second Bank of the United States

The bank at the center of Jackson's great economic war.

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