Did Thomas Jefferson's or Alexander Hamilton's vision of the future of the American economy prevail in the early nineteenth century?
In the decades after the American Revolution, citizens debated whether the United States ought to remain a nation of small farms or develop its own industry. Thomas Jefferson, the nation's third president, urged Americans to avoid the crowding and poverty of English cities, where industrialization began in the 1700s. Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury, suggested instead that the U.S. would never be truly independent or prosperous unless it developed its own industries. Without industry, Hamilton warned, Americans would remain dependent on Europe for manufactured goods. In the decades that followed, Hamilton's vision triumphed, and Jefferson accepted the importance of industry before his death in 1826.
The U. S. began to industrialize in the early nineteenth century, when textile mills and shoemaking factories were created, especially in New England. These factories were powered by water (and so, had to be located along rivers), and later by steam power. This wave of industrialization is known as the first industrial revolution. By the time of the Civil War, the Northern states already possessed a large number of factories, while the South remained overwhelmingly rural and agricultural. Well before the Civil War, America was already on the road toward becoming an industrialized nation.