Construction of canals continued in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic states until
they were supplanted by railroads in the 1840s and 1850s.
The railroads marked the apex of the national period's
transportation revolution and full throttle acceleration of regional and
national markets by the 1850s.
>> The market economy took its first significant industrial turn
in the 1810s and 1820s, with the growth of textile factories in the north.
The largest of which was at Lowell, on Massachusetts' Merrimack River,
west of Boston.
Here young women operated river powered looms to
transform Southern cotton into yarn and clothing.
By the 1830s, the North was mass producing shoes and textiles.
In the 1840s and 50s the railroads and the related industries would
catalyze a full scale industrial revolution in the North.