This picture is from 1937 sharecropper. The boy is 13 years old.

The Embargo Act of 1807 was a plan by Thomas Jefferson in order to hurt both France and England, but it really only hurt the USA because it was very dependent on foreign imports. Lesson: We need to provide for ourselves.

After the war people realized we needed economic independence as well as more basic things such as better transportation.

Competition between private businesses with no interference by the government.

A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, allowing for much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.

It took a slave an entire day to separate seeds from cotton at a rate of 1 pound.

The cotton gin increased that!

Robert Fulton (November 14, 1765 – February 24, 1815) was a colonial American engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the first commercially successful steamboat. In 1800, he was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to design the "Nautilus", which was the first practical submarine in history.[1] He is also credited with inventing some of the world's earliest naval torpedoes for use by the British Royal Navy.[2]

Completion of a Pacific railroad was the culmination of a decades-long movement to build such a line beginning as early as 1832 when Dr. Hartwell Carver published an article in the New York Courier & Enquirer advocating the building of a transcontinental railroad from Lake Michigan to Oregon, and in 1847 he submitted a Memorial to Congress entitled "Proposal for a Charter to Build a Railroad from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean" seeking a charter to build such a road. In 1856 the Select Committee on the Pacific Railroad and Telegraph of the US House of Representatives began its Report recommending the adoption of a proposed Pacific railroad bill by stating that: "The necessity that now exists for constructing lines of railroad and telegraphic communication between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of this continent is no longer a question for argument; it is conceded by every one. In order to maintain our present position on the Pacific, we must have some more speedy and direct means of intercourse than is at present afforded by the route through the possessions of a foreign power."[7]

In the US, Eli Whitney saw the potential benefit of developing "interchangeable parts" for the firearms of the United States military. In July 1801 he built ten guns, all containing the same exact parts and mechanisms, then disassembled them before the United States Congress. He placed the parts in a mixed pile and, with help, reassembled all of the firearms right in front of Congress, much like Blanc had done some years before.[6]