History of the United States I / Unit 9 USH1 1235 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
What Transport Changed
The idea
The transportation revolution made it easier and less expensive to ship agricultural products from the West to feed people in eastern cities, and to send manufactured goods from the East to people in the West. That exchange is what turned a collection of local economies into a national one. Regions could now specialise, because a region that specialises must be able to buy what it no longer makes, and until the canals and railroads that had not been possible at any price a farmer could pay.
In practice
Western grain feeding eastern factory workers who made the goods sold back to western farmers.
Where people slip
Specialisation is the hinge. Once the North could buy its food and the South could buy its manufactures, each could commit entirely to what it did best, and their economies diverged rather than converging. The transportation revolution did not knit the sections together. It let them become different enough to fight.
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