The United States in the 19th century facts for kids

American Flag

The United States was a country in the 19th century. During this time it grew from 17 states to 45 states. The year was from 1801 till 1900 in the Gregorian calendar. States like Utah, Illinois and Mississippi were added to the United States. There were 22 presidents. The Industrial Revolution was still going on. The first skyscraper was built and the White House became the home of the President of the United States. There was a war with Great Britain in 1812. In 1866 Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. The sport of Basketball was invented. In 1829, William Austin Burt patented a machine called the "Typographer" which many consider the first typewriter. The 19th century also saw the Great Chicago Fire. New York City was hit by the Great September Gale of 1815.

Presidents in the United States 19th century

Thomas Jefferson

The United States of America had 22 presidents in the 19th Century. Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States. He was the first elected president of the 19th century. The last one was William McKinley. McKinley started the presidency in 1897 and he left his presidency in 1901 which is just after the 19th century. All these presidents in the 19th century lived in the white house.

Thomas Jefferson

Abraham Lincoln

Thomas Jefferson was born on the 13th of April in 1743. His parents were Jane Randolph Jefferson and Peter Jefferson. His brothers were Peter and Randolph. His sisters were Jane, Mary, Elizabeth, Marta, Lucy and Anna. He was a member of the Democratic-Republican Party. He was president from 1801 till 1809. He died on July 5, 1826 and was buried at Monticello.

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born on 12 February 1809. This was while Thomas Jefferson was president. He was the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Lincoln. He was born in the state of Kentucky. Lincoln married Mary Todd. His children were Robert, Edward, Willie and Tad. Lincoln belonged to the Whig Party and later the Republican Party. He was assassinated while still in office.

Martin van Buren

Martin van Buren was born on December 5, 1782. He was born in Kinderhook, New York, US. His father was Abraham van Buren and his mother was Maria Hoes van Alen van Buren. His ancestor Cornelis van Buren had come to the United States in 1631 from the small city of Buren. Martin is the only president who has spoken English as a second language. His political party was called the Free Soil Party. Martin was president from 1837 till 1841. He died on July 24, 1862.

James Monroe

James Monroe was born on April 28,1758 in Virginia. His parents were Spence Monroe and Elizabeth. James Monroe married Elizabeth Kortright. Their children were Eliza, James and Maria. He died on July 4, 1831 in New York City. He was then 73 years old.

The Industrial Revolution

The transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy took more than a century in the United States, they lagged far behind their mother country, England. The Industrial Revolution started around 1750 in England, and fifty years later in the United States. This was because there was a lot of land to work on, but there was too less labour to do that. The industrial machines were expensive.

Samuel Slater

The start of the Industrial Revolution in America is caused by Samuel Slater, who built the first industrial mill in the United States around 1790. His cotton mill looked a lot like the British mill. But through this mill, the speed with which cotton thread could be spun into yarn was greatly increased.

Another cause of the rapidly changing economy were the new organizational strategies to increase the speed to make the products. This reformation was especially important for the shoe and boot industry. Were first the most products were made by hand.

Cotton Mill Industry

But the most important change was the “Factory System” where products were produced on a large scale and then one specific product, but they needed people to operate the machines. A group of businessman called the Boston Associates recruited thousands farm girls from New England to operate the machines in the new factories.

Lowell

One of the most known mill towns was Lowell, Massachusetts, which opened in 1823. The use of a female factory workers had advantages to both employer and employee. The Boston Associates preferred the young girls because they paid young girls less than men. These female factory workers were often called: Lowell Girls, named to the place Lowell.

Images for kids

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  This map shows the approximate location of the ice-free corridor and specific Paleoindian sites (Clovis theory).

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  The Cultural areas of pre-Columbian North America, according to Alfred Kroeber.

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  Leif Erikson discovers America by Christian Krohg, 1893

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  Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth, 1914, Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Massachusetts

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  Indians trade 90-lb packs of furs at a Hudson's Bay Company trading post in the 19th century.

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  Join, or Die: This 1756 political cartoon by Benjamin Franklin urged the colonies to join together during the French and Indian War.

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  Washington's surprise crossing of the Delaware River in December 1776 was a major comeback after the loss of New York City; his army defeated the British in two battles and recaptured New Jersey.

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  John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence (1819)

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  Economic growth in America per capita income. Index with 1700 set as 100.

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  George Washington legacy remains among the two or three greatest in American history, as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, hero of the Revolution, and the first President of the United States.

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  Slaves Waiting for Sale: Richmond, Virginia. Painted upon the sketch of 1853

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  Jefferson saw himself as a man of the frontier and a scientist; he was keenly interested in expanding and exploring the West.

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  Territorial expansion; Louisiana Purchase in white.

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  Oliver Hazard Perry's message to William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie began with what would become one of the most famous sentences in American military history: "We have met the enemy and they are ours". This 1865 painting by William H. Powell shows Perry transferring to a different ship during the battle.

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  A drawing of a Protestant camp meeting, 1829.

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  Era of Good Feelings

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  Settlers crossing the Plains of Nebraska.

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  The Indian Removal Act resulted in the transplantation of several Native American tribes and the Trail of Tears.

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  Henry Clay

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  Horace Greeley's New York Tribune—the leading Whig paper—endorsed Clay for President and Fillmore for Governor, 1844.

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  Officers and men of the Irish-Catholic 69th New York Volunteer Regiment attend Catholic services in 1861.

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  The California Gold Rush news of gold brought some 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad.

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  The American occupation of Mexico City in 1848

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  The United States, immediately before the Civil War. All of the lands east of, or bordering, the Mississippi River were organized as states in the Union, but the West was still largely unsettled.

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  Lincoln with Allan Pinkerton and Major General John Alexander McClernand at the Battle of Antietam.

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  Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867.

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  Atlanta's railyard and roundhouse in ruins shortly after the end of the Civil War

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  The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad (1869) at First Transcontinental Railroad, by Andrew J. Russell

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  Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry.

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  Mulberry Street, along which Manhattan's Little Italy is centered. Lower East Side, circa 1900. Almost 97% of residents of the 10 largest American cities of 1900 were non-Hispanic whites.

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  This cartoon reflects the view of Judge magazine regarding America's imperial ambitions following a quick victory in the Spanish–American War of 1898. The American flag flies from the Philippines and Hawaii in the Pacific to Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean.

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  American children of many ethnic backgrounds celebrate noisily in a 1902 Puck cartoon.

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  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (pictured) wrote these articles about feminism for the Atlanta Constitution, published on December 10, 1916.

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  American Cemetery at Romagne-sous-Montfaucon

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  Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol in Chicago, 1921.

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  Money supply decreased a lot between Black Tuesday and the Bank Holiday in March 1933 when there were massive bank runs across the United States.

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  Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depicts destitute pea pickers in California, centering on Florence Owens Thompson, a mother of seven, age 32, in Nipomo, California, March 1936.

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  General Douglas MacArthur meeting Navajo, Pima, Pawnee and other Native American troops. Navajo served as code talkers for the military in the Pacific. The code they made, although cryptologically very simple, was never cracked by the Japanese.

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  Cuban Missile Crisis a U-2 reconnaissance photograph of Cuba, showing Soviet nuclear missiles, their transports and tents for fueling and maintenance.

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  President Kennedy's Civil Rights Address, June 11, 1963.

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  American soldiers during the Vietnam War, 1967

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  Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (right), with President Lyndon B. Johnson in the background (left)

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  Anti-Vietnam War demonstration, 1967

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  United States Navy F-4 Phantom II shadows a Soviet Tu-95 Bear D aircraft in the early 1970s

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  Richard Nixon departs

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  Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate challenges Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall in 1987, shortly before the end of the Cold War.

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  Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty

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  Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat during the Oslo Accords on September 13, 1993.

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  George W. Bush addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 12, 2002 to outline the complaints of the United States government against the Iraqi government.

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  Headquarters of the Lehman Brothers, who filed for bankruptcy in September 2008 at the height of the U.S. financial crisis.

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  Congressional leadership meeting with then-President Obama in 2011.

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  A naval officer checks on a patient connected to a ventilator at Baton Rouge General Medical Center – Mid-City

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  "What happened to 'All Lives Matter'?", a sign at a protest against Donald Trump

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  Squanto known for having been an early liaison between the native populations in Southern New England and the Mayflower settlers, who made their settlement at the site of Squanto's former summer village.

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  An 1846 painting of the 1773 Boston Tea Party.

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  The population density in the American Colonies in 1775.

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  Grave Creek Mound, located in Moundsville, West Virginia, is one of the largest conical mounds in the United States. It was built by the Adena culture.

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  Monks Mound of Cahokia (UNESCO World Heritage Site) in summer. The concrete staircase follows the approximate course of the ancient wooden stairs.

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  An artistic recreation of The Kincaid Site from the prehistoric Mississippian culture as it may have looked at its peak 1050–1400 CE.

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  Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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  Women suffragists demonstrating for the right to vote in 1913.

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  Women's suffragists parade in New York City in 1917, carrying placards with signatures of more than a million women.

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  Women surrounded by posters in English and Yiddish supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert H. Lehman, and the American Labor Party teach other women how to vote, 1936.

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  Mikuma shortly before sinking