Analyze primary sources to understand life in the North and South.
We assume life was good in the North and bad in the South. Is this true based on these documents?
Analyze this distribution map and answer these questions.
1. Where is the most industry located?
2. Why would more industry develop there?
3. Why does so little develop elsewhere?
1. Where is the most industry located?
2. Why would more industry develop there?
3. Why does so little develop elsewhere?
4. Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin. How does this change the economies of the North and South?
5. How are the rules at the factory and plantation similar?
6. How are the rules at the factory and plantation different?
Think about these aspects when answering questions 1 and 2.
7. Based only on these rules whose life was better and give evidence from the text.
6. How are the rules at the factory and plantation different?
Think about these aspects when answering questions 1 and 2.
- The way time is organized
- The system of rewards and punishments
- The terms, hours, and conditions of work
- The means of control and supervision
- Provisions for the care and welfare of the workforce
- The freedoms or restrictions placed on the workforce
- The kinds of behavior and values these rules seek to promote in the workforce
- The audience for each set of rules (who are the rules addressed to?)
7. Based only on these rules whose life was better and give evidence from the text.
8. Compare the physical set-up of factory and plantation using the following documents: How are they set up similarly?
- North:
- Merrimack Mill (Lowell, Mass.)
- Lowell, circa 1853
- Whitney's Gun Factory (New Haven, Conn.)
- South:
- Factory (North):1836 Song Lyrics Sung by Protesting Workers at Lowell:
Oh! isn't it a pity, such a pretty girl as I
Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die?
Oh! I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave,
For I'm so fond of liberty,
That I cannot be a slave.
Source: Liberty Rhetoric and Nineteenth Century Women, a link from the EDSITEment resource History Matters - Plantation (South):Go Down Moses (traditional spiritual):
- When Israel was in Egypt's Land:
Let my people go.
Oppress'd so hard they could not stand,
Let my people go - Refrain:
Go down Moses
'way down in Egypt's land
Tell ol' Pharaoh,
Let my peoples go. - Thus saith the Lord, bold Moses said:
Let my people go.
If not I'll smite your firstborn dead,
Let my people go.: - O let us all from bondage flee;
Let my people go.
And let us all in Christ be free!
Let my people go.
- When Israel was in Egypt's Land:
- North:
- Woman Weavers, available through a link from the EDSITEment resource History Matters
- Woman working at a Weaving Machine, available through a link from History Matters
- South:
- Cotton gin: Small image and background and larger image, available from the EDSITEment-reviewedAfricans in America
- Cotton press, available from Africans in America
- Slaves at Work on a Tobacco Plantation, available through a link from Documents of African-American Women
- Slaves from one Plantation, available from the EDSITEment-reviewed Africans in America. This photograph (albumen print), taken by Timothy O'Sullivan in 1862, shows perhaps the largest group of enslaved African Americans ever to be photographed at one time. O'Sullivan was a pre-eminent Civil War photographer who visited this region of the South from about November 1861 to March 1862. The people in the photograph were the property of James Joyner Smith.
11. Write a summary that discusses the similarities between the North and South for workers. Include evidence from a variety of sources. Your summary should be 7-9 sentences.
12. How might this treatment of workers push people to move west and unionize?
12. How might this treatment of workers push people to move west and unionize?
Amended from this site: http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/factory-vs-plantation-north-and-south#section-16686