Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-q6k6v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T11:21:38.508Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Who Financed the Transportation Revolution? Regional Divergence and Internal Improvements in Antebellum Pennsylvania and Virginia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

John Majewski
John Majewski
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor in the history department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Comparing investment in transportation companies in Albemarle county, Virginia, and Cumberland county, Pennsylvania, I analyze why nineteenth-century internal improvements revolutionized the northern economy, but only seemed to increase the South's dependence upon plantation agriculture. In both counties local investors and financed early improvements.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , December 1996 , pp. 763 - 788
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Albemarle County Legislative Petitions. Manuscripts. Virginia State Library and Archives, Richmond.Google Scholar
Albemarle County Personal Property Tax Lists, microfilm. Virginia State Library and Archives, Richmond.Google Scholar
Albemarle County Real Property Tax Lists, microfilm. Virginia State Library and Archives, Richmond.Google Scholar
Baer, Christopher T.Canals and Railroads of the Mid-Atlantic States, 1800–1860. Wilmington, DE: Regional Economic History Research Center, Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation, 1981.Google Scholar
Black, Robert C.The Railroads of the Confederacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952.Google Scholar
Blake, , Rev., John L.The Farmers Every-Day Book. Auburn, NY: Derby, Miller, and Co., 1850.Google Scholar
Bruce, Charles. Speech of Charles Bruce. Richmond: Hammersley and Co., 1858.Google Scholar
Carlisle Republican, 16 03 1837.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. JrThe Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Cocke, John Hartwell. Papers. Alderman Library. Special Collections. University of Virginia. Charlottesville, VA.Google Scholar
Coleman, Elizabeth Dabney. “Edmund Fontaine and the Virginia Central Railroad.” In America in the Middle Period: Essays in Honor of Bernard Mayo, edited by John, B. Boles, 238–55. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Coyner, M. Boyd Jr “John Hartwell Cocke of Bremo: Agriculture and Slavery in the Antebellum South.” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1961.Google Scholar
Cumberland County Tax Lists, microfilm. Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg.Google Scholar
Cumberland Valley Railroad. Papers. Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg.Google Scholar
Engerman, Stanley L. and Kenneth, L. Sokoloff. “Factor Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth Among New World Economies: A View from Economic Historians of the United States.” In How Latin America Fell Behind, edited by Haber, Stephen, 260–304. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Fishlow, Albert. American Railroads and the Transformation of the Antebellum Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert William. Railroads and American Economic Growth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert William. “Notes on the Social Saving Controversy.” this JOURNAL 39, no. 1 (1979): 1–54.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert William. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.Google Scholar
Ford, Lacy K. JrOrigins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800–1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Goldfield, Davi R.Urban Growth in the Age of Sectionalism: Virginia, 1847–1861. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, and Kenneth, Sokoloff. “Women, Children, and Industrialization in the Early Republic: Evidence from the Manufacturing Censuses.” this JOURNAL 42, no. 4 (1982): 741–774.Google Scholar
Goodrich, Carter. “Public Spirit and American Improvements.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 92 (1948): 305–09.Google Scholar
Goodrich, Carter. “The Virginia System of Mixed Enterprise: A Study of State Planning of Internal Improvements.” Political Science Quarterly 64 (1949): 355–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Thomas F.A Gazetteer of the State of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: T. Belknap, 1832.Google Scholar
Handlin, Oscar and Mary, Flug Handlin. “Origins of the American Business Corporation.” this JOURNAL 5, no. 1 (1945): 1–23.Google Scholar
Handlin, Oscar and Mary, Flug Handlin. Commonwealth: A Study in the Role of Government in the American Economy. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Harrisburg, Carlisle, and Chambersburg Turnpike. Ledgers. Pennsylvania State Archives.Google Scholar
Hartz, Louis. Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania, 1776–1860. Cambridge, MA, 1948; Reprint, Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, Milton Sydney. Constructive Liberalism: The Role of the State in Economic Development in Georgia to 1860. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heckelman, Jac. C. and John, Joseph Wallis. “Railroads and Property Taxes.” Explorations in Economic History, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Hunter, Robert F. “The Turnpike Movement in Virginia, 1816–1860.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1957.Google Scholar
Index to the 1810 Census of Pennsylvania. Compiled by Ohio Family Historians. Cleveland, Ohio: Bell & Howell Company, 1966.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Jane. Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life. New York: Random House, 1984.Google Scholar
Vern, Jackson Ronald and Teeples, Gary Ronald, eds. Pennsylvania 1820 Census Index. Bountiful, UT: Accelerated Indexing Systems, 1978.Google Scholar
Vern, Jackson Ronald, ed. Virginia 1830 Census Index. Bountiful, UT: Accelerated Indexing Systems, 1976.Google Scholar
Johnson, Arthur M. and Barry, E. Supple. Boston Capitalists and Western Railroads: A Study in the Nineteenth-Century Railroad Investment Process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Angus James II. Virginia Railroads in the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Klein, Daniel B. “The Voluntary Provision of Public Goods? The Turnpike Companies of Early America.” Economic Inquiry 28 (1990): 788–812.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Daniel B. and John, Majewski. “Economy, Community, and Law: The Turnpike Movement in New York, 1797–1845.” Law and Society Review 26 (1992): 469–512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Maury. The Great Richmond Terminal: A Study of Businessmen and Business Strategy. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1970.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi R. “Banks, Kinship, and Economic Development: The New England Case.” this JOURNAL 46, no. 3 (1986): 647–67.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi R.. Insider Lending: Banks, Personal Connections and Economic Development in Industrial New England. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larson, John Lauritz. Bonds of Enterprise: John Murray Forbes and Western Development in America's Railway Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Lindstrom, Diane. Economic Development in the Philadelphia Region, 1810–1850. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Lively, Robert A. “The American System: A Review Article.” Business History Review 29 (1955): 81–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livingston, James Weston. The Philadelphia-Baltimore Trade Rivalry, 1780–1860. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1947.Google Scholar
Majewski, John D. “Commerce and Community: Internal Improvements in Pennsylvania and Virginia.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1994.Google Scholar
Majewski, John, Christopher, Baer, and Daniel, B. Klein. “Responding to Relative Decline: The Plank Road Boom of Antebellum.” New York. this JOURNAL 53, no. 1 (1993): 106–22.Google Scholar
Gertrude, MacKinney, ed. Pennsylvania Archives. 9th ser. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania State Library, 1931.Google Scholar
McPherson, James M.Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. A History of Transportation of the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1908; Reprint, Octagon Books, 1968.Google Scholar
Poor, Henry Varnum. History of the Railroads and Canals of the United States of America. New York: John H. Schultz, 1860.Google Scholar
Randolph, Thomas Jefferson. Papers. Alderman Library. Special Collections. University of Virginia. Charlottesville, VA.Google Scholar
Robert, Joseph Clarke. The Tobacco Kingdom: Plantation, Market, and Factory in Virginia and North Carolina 1800–1860. Durham: Duke University Press, 1938.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, Winifred. From Market-Places to a Market Economy: The Transformation of Rural Massachusetts 1750–1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Rupp, I. Daniel. The History and Topography of Dauphin, Cumberland, Franklin, Adams, and Perry Counties. Lanacaster City, PA: Gilbert Hills, 1846.Google Scholar
Schotter, H. W.The Growth and Development of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Philadelphia: Allen, Lane and Scott, 1927.Google Scholar
Segar, Joseph, Esq. “Speech of Joseph Segar, Esq. of Elizabeth City County on the Covington and Ohio Railroad.” In Proceedings of the Internal Improvement Convention Held at the White Sulphur Springs, 1–28. Richmond: The Dispatch, 1855.Google Scholar
Sellers, Charles. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Siegel, Frederick F.The Roots of Southern Distinctiveness: Tobacco and Society in Danville Virginia, 1780–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Shaw, Charles B. Papers. Alderman Libray. Special Collections. University of Virginia. Charlottesville, VA.Google Scholar
Snyder, Charles McCool. The Jacksonian Heritage: Pennsylvania Politics, 1833–1848. Harrisburg, PA: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1958.Google Scholar
Sokoloff, Kenneth L. “Was the Transition from the Artisanal Shop to the Non-Mechanized Factory Associated with Gains in Efficiency? Evidence from the U.S. Manufacturing Censuses of 1820 and 1850.” Explorations in Economic History 21 (1984): 351–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sokoloff, Kenneth L. “Inventive Activity in Early Industrial America: Evidence from Patent Records, 1790–1846.” this JOURNAL 48, no. 4 (1988): 813–18.Google Scholar
Sokoloff, Kenneth L. and Georgia, C. Villaflor. “The Market for Manufacturing Workers During Early Industrialization: The American Northeast, 1820 to 1860.” In Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American History, edited by Goldin, Claudia and Rockoff, Hugh, 29–65. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Stewart, Peter C. “Railroads and Urban Rivalries in Antebellum Eastern Virginia.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 81 (1973): 3–22.Google Scholar
Stover, John F.The Railroads of the South, 1865–1900: A Study of Finance and Control. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955.Google Scholar
Taylor, George Rogers. The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860. Rev. ed. New York: Rinehart & Co., 1958.Google Scholar
Tchakerian, Viken. “Productivity, Extent of Markets, and Manufacturing in the Late Antebellum South and Midwest.” this JOURNAL 42, no. 3 (1994): 497–525.Google Scholar
Trelease, llen W.The North Carolina Railroad, 1849–1871, and the Modernization of North Carolina. Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
United States Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970. Bicentennial Edition. Washington, DC: GPO, 1976.Google Scholar
United States Bureau of the Census. Manuscript returns of the Seventh Census of the United States. Washington, DC, 1853.Google Scholar
Virginia Board of Public Works. Annual Reports of the Board of Public Works, microfilm. Various Years. Virginia State Library and Archives, Richmond.Google Scholar
Virginia Board of Public Works. Archives of the Board of Public Works (ABPW). Virginia State Library and Archives, Richmond.Google Scholar
Watson, Harry L. “Squire Oldway and His Friends: Opposition to Internal Improvements in Antebellum North Carolina.” North Carolina Historical Review 54 (1977): 106–19.Google Scholar
Watson, Harry L.. Liberty and Power. The Politics of Jacksonian America. New York: Noonday Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Watson, Harry L.. “Slavery and Development in a Dual Economy: The South and the Market Revolution.” In The Market Revolution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, 1800–1880, edited by Stokes, Melvyn and Conway, Stephen, 43–73. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Weiman, David F. “Farmers and the Market in Antebellum America: A View from the Georgia Upcountry.” this JOURNAL 42, no. 3 (1987): 627–47.Google Scholar
Westhaeffer, Paul J.History of the Cumberland Valley Railroad, 1835–1919. Washington, DC: Washington, DC Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, 1979.Google Scholar
Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin. Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War. New York: Basic Books, 1986.Google Scholar