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Lesson 7: The Print Revolution, 1790-1860
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AP U.S. History Lesson Plans...
Introduction
Richard D. Brown has called colonial society one of "information scarcity" and intensive reading. Antebellum America, by contrast, became a society based on "information abundance." Printed works were increasingly available in a variety of genres and formats -- books, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, and ephemera. A democratization of gentility accompanied the wider and specialized acquisition of information. Printed items became so plentiful that they could be entertainments rather than items of practical or moral instruction. Newspapers remained partisan instruments of party position, but with better distribution networks and telegraphic communication, they also became the instruments of a national cultural identity. The postal system subsidized such efforts by consciously reducing rates in the interest of an informed citizenry: the ideology of liberty was tied to the diffusion of knowledge. By 1820, 4,500 communities were linked nationwide through the official postal system. The postal system also had a hand in the retention of national unity despite the large-scale westward migration of the nineteenth century. The post office and the press allowed migrants to retain familiar ties even as they relocated across the continent; they eased the social and cultural consequence of geographical movement. But even as the nation was bound together, it was also being fragmented into various "speech communities" as aggressive and purposive print strategies were adopted by special interests.
Objectives
Objective 1: Technological Innovations
Objective 2: The Print Revolution in Context
Objective 3: Impact on Social and Political Development
Objectives
- To name the technological innovations -- including printing, paper-making, type-founding, and binding technologies -- that appeared between 1790 and 1860 in the production of books, newspapers, and other printed materials.
- To understand the interactions between printing technology and developments in transportation, communications, public policy in the post office, changing gender roles, and the shift to industrialization.
- To explore the social and political impact of the print revolution on American society, including abolition, growing regional tensions, and nineteenth-century "culture wars."
Objective 1: Technological Innovations
There was little fundamental change in printing technology from Gutenberg's time until the end of the eighteenth century. The rate and scope of change in the early nineteenth century was enormous. The key technological changes occurred in new press mechanisms, the application of steam (then electricity) to power the presses, stereo- and electrotyping (facilitating the emergence of the publisher as capitalist), as well as technological innovations in nearly every other aspect of production, including paper-making, inking, folding, stabbing, and binding. In 1860, only sewing the signatures together continued to be a hand operation. Concurrently, printing and publishing became industrialized.
For images of traditional printing technology such as those used by Benjamin Franklin, see Joseph Moxon's Mechanick Exercises, 1683. Online sites also provide a list of important patents in the field of communications. For a general introduction, see Philip Gaskell's overview of the printing trades in the machine age. For explanations of terminology, see the Melbourne Museum of Printing's useful Glossary of Printing and Typography.
 Benjamin Franklin's Printing Press
Joseph Moxon's Mechanick Exercises
Peter Mercer's History of Printing
Important Historical Inventions and Inventors
Overview of the Printing Trades in the Machine Age
Glossary of Printing and Typography
Printing Presses:
A site devoted to printing presses provides information on the basic principles of hand presses, bed and platen presses, cylinder presses, and rotary presses. The site has clear discussions of the fundamental mechanism and innovation of each press type, along with the major American manufacturers and exponents of each one. An invaluable feature is the table of production rate timelines for press.
Types of Printing Presses
Another site provides more detailed information and images of iron hand presses. A third site is devoted to wooden presses, the Stanhope iron hand press, and the jobbing platen press. Several images of nineteenth-century printing presses are available online.
Students might also look at the printing presses in the Graphic Arts Collections of the National Museum of American History.
Iron Hand Presses
Three Printing Presses
Images of Presses
Columbian Press
Stanhope Press
Graphic Arts Collections of the National Museum of American History
Paper-Making:
For a short history of paper machines, see a page on the subject at the American Museum of Papermaking. The Fourdrinier paper-making machine, the major development of the nineteenth century, and the cylinder machine are discussed at a Web site devoted to bookbinding and the preservation of books at Stanford University. You can also view the Fourdrinier machine in 3-D.
Short History of Paper Machines
Fourdrinier Paper-Making Machine and the Cylinder Machine
Fourdrinier Machine in 3-D
Inking Rollers:
Bingham ink-rollers are described at http://www.binghamrollers.com/Historical.html.
Bingham Rollers
Stereotyping:
The Museum of Printing Web site contains useful images of stereotype plates.
Stereotype Plates
Objective 2: The Print Revolution in Context
As a result of the early transportation revolution of roads and waterways, publishing in the United States was decentralized, with new operations popping up in scattered urban centers like Cincinnati and St. Louis. The ascendance of the railroad led to the centralization of publishing in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The distribution of printed materials, reinforced by geographical biases in literacy and readership, followed the new transportation networks. The effect was especially noticeable in the South and West, which consumed fewer printed materials. As the market revolution promoted a national economy and interdependence, American society and culture underwent "nationalization." Low postage rates encouraged the distribution of newspapers and the building of a national culture, and the nature of American community life changed from a local to a national print culture.
Thomas F. Adams's 1854 manual, Typographia, or The Printer's Instructor, is a detailed guide to the operations and practices of a midcentury American printing house. It has sections on types (including a discussion of stereotyping on pages 32-33), composing, correctors, the overseer's department, inking apparatus, improved presses (the Adams, Columbian, Machine, Philadelphia, Taylor's Cylinder, Washington, and Wells; see page 227), and the warehouse department.
Typographia, or The Printer's Instructor
Jacob Abbott's 1855 work, The Harper Establishment, or How the Story Books are Made, is an illustrated guide to the operations and technology used by the nation's leading nineteenth-century publishing house. Its many engravings portray the newly capitalized and industrialized nature of midcentury publishing. Following a disastrous 1853 fire that destroyed the old headquarters, Harper & Brothers erected two new buildings that separately housed its publishing and manufacturing operations. The new publishing building housed management, inventory, and wholesaling operations. The illustration on page 42 shows the "Sectional view of the Cliff Street building," the site of manufacturing operations. Each task or operation -- from type founding to composing to stereotyping to printing, drying, folding, sewing, and binding -- occupied a separate floor in the six-story building; successive chapters take the reader through the process floor by floor. The basement held the boilers and storage for raw materials. The first floor was the great press room with steam presses manned by young women, while male managers monitored both machines and workers from perches at the end of the room. On the next level boys hung the sheets to dry before being folded, sewed, and stitched on the fourth floor. Workers on the next floor finished the books by fitting them with covers, pasting flyleaves down, and trimming the edges. The top floor housed the compositors and electrotypists, the most skilled and elite workers. The Harper Establishment provides clear descriptions of the technologies and procedures at each step of manufacturing; it is an invaluable guide to industrialized publishing operations at midcentury. The gendered and industrialized nature of work in printing Abbott reveals here deserves special note.
The Harper Establishment, or How the Story Books are Made
The print revolution interacted with other technological and economic changes that transformed antebellum society. Contemporaries recognized this synergy, symbolized in the 1876 print, The Progress of the Century: The Lightning Steam Press. The Electric Telegraph. The Locomotive. The Steamboat.
The Progress of the Century
You might ask students to first explain how each of those components contributed to the economic, social, and political changes that transformed American society; second, how did these separate developments come together in different, sometimes conflicting, ways to shape antebellum history?
Some of these changes can be studied using the data available through the United States Historical Census Data Browser Web site. Although every census collected demographic data and several reported data on schools and literacy, the 1840 census is noteworthy for data relating to printing and publishing, including the number of printing offices, binderies, daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, semi- and triweekly newspapers, and periodicals; men employed in newspaper production; capital invested in printing and binding; and total capital invested in manufacturing. Students can compile tables by state or by county for any or all of these categories, as well as with other economic, social, and demographic data. Furthermore, the Browser will graph these data at the state or county level by a single variable. Both the national distribution of newspapers and printing offices and the concentration of capitalization in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia can be graphically demonstrated. In the colonial period, by contrast, the production and sale of newspapers, periodicals, and books was a small-scale enterprise largely dependent on imports, and it never employed more than 100 people at any one time. Even in 1810, Albert Gallatin's report to Congress on "American Manufactures" (Annals of Congress, Eleventh Congress, second session, col. 2231) suggested that printing was "carried on to an extent commensurate with the demand."
Historical Census Data Browser Web Site
Albert Gallatin's report to Congress on "American Manufactures"
The Census Browser should be used in conjunction with William J. Gilmore's excellent site on Communications History: The United States, 1585-1880. The section on newspapers has maps that show the geographical distribution of newspapers in 1775, 1820, and 1840, along with a table describing the growth of newspaper publication between 1840 and 1860. (Gilmore also maintains a bibliography of books and online exhibits called United States Communications History through 1880.)
Communications History: The United States, 1585-1880
Bibliography of Books and Online Exhibits
Postal rates were often debated but infrequently changed, with important adjustments occurring in 1825, 1836, 1845, 1851, and 1863. An important issue was the rate charged for newspapers, which remained virtually subsidized until three classes of mail were set up in the 1863 act. The acts that governed postal rates and regulations may be followed in the Statutes at Large. You can search the indexes under "postal rates"; see especially iv:102-14; v:80-07, 732-40; ix:188-02; and xii:707-08. Searching the Nineteenth Century in Print Web site for "post office" yields lists of post offices in 1859 and 1870.
Statutes at Large
Post Offices in 1859 and 1870
Students can compare these against the data and distribution maps of newspapers.
With the spread of newspaper publishing through the interior and the emergence of regional publishing centers like Cincinnati, the national reach of print media was seen by many to violate sectional autonomy, especially around the issue of abolition. Although the American Anti-Slavery Society had distributed only 122,000 pieces of literature in 1834, the following year, the abolition movement began flooding the mails with nearly a million pamphlets, along with newspapers, kerchiefs, medals, emblems, and blue chocolate wrappers. A contemporary political cartoon depicts the outrage and response of a mob that attacked the post office in Charleston, South Carolina, in July 1835. Postmaster General Amos Kendall's 1835 Report proscribed the use of the mails for "incendiary publications." The debates in the Twenty-fourth Congress about this issue are covered in the Congressional Globe; search the indexes for "incendiary publications."
Political Cartoon of Mob
Amos Kendall's 1835 Report
Congressional Globe
Ask students whether the positions taken in the debates show a sectional bias. Did the print revolution here promote national unity or sectional fragmentation? Apart from this new strategy of manipulating postal regulations to disseminate abolitionist propaganda, did the effective subsidization of newspapers in the mails benefit the United States between 1790 and 1860? Did it promote the civic virtue and political involvement necessary for a vigorous republic? Did it help prevent "freedom's sons in chains"?
Objective 3: Impact on Social and Political Development
The thread that runs through these activities is the contemporary awareness of the powerful force of the new technologies of printing and publishing. Cheap postal rates for newspapers were instrumental in forging a national culture, but abolitionists manipulated the regulations and thereby set off antiabolition riots bent on destroying presses. Evangelical groups harnessed the cheap press costs achievable with stereotyping in order to flood the market with tracts and Bibles and counter the popularity of novels. The new print technologies also enabled publishers to meet strong demand for large runs of singularities like Uncle Tom's Cabin.
A. Antiabolition: The Press As the Enemy of Regional Autonomy
In the 1836 proslavery, antiabolition riots in Cincinnati and Alton, contemporary accounts recorded that mob action was focused on abolitionist printers and the presses used to print "incendiary" materials. In Cincinnati, antiabolition rioters sought to destroy James Birney's press and suppress his abolitionist publication, The Philanthropist. Students might read either Narrative of the Late Riotous Proceedings Against the Liberty of the Press by the Executive Committee of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society; chapter 15, "The Mob Spirit in Cincinnati," from Levi Coffin's Reminiscences; or chapter 4, "The Slavery Riots in Cincinnati, " from Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe Compiled from Her Letters and Journals.
The Pro-Slavery Riot in Cincinnati
The Alton riots and the murder of Elijah Lovejoy are covered in the Alton Trials, as well as by Edward Beecher in his Narrative of Riots at Alton.
Alton Riots
Narrative of Riots at Alton
What do these accounts reveal about the press as an agent of change? How did abolitionist newspapers produced in regional centers like Cincinnati and Alton pose a threat to local communities? Did they threaten economic and social relations with Southern states? Was there a geographical bias? What was the reaction of the antiabolition movement against the Society's centralized publishing operations in New York?
B. Uncle Tom's Cabin and Printing and Publishing Innovations
The Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture Web site brings together multiple perspectives on the century's most spectacular publishing event. It looks at precursor texts, the editions and illustrations of UTC, contemporary responses (reviews, articles, and African-American and proslavery reactions), as well as the book's appearance in children's literature, decorative objects, games and puzzles, advertising, songs and poems, the stage, and movies. The primary materials linked to the site include texts, images, 3-D objects, songs, and film clips. In addition, the site provides an interactive timeline, lesson plans, and suggestions.
Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multimedia Archive
Charles Briggs's 1853 review in Putnam's Monthly of the publishing phenomenon of UTC reveals the contemporary understanding of its relationship with new printing technologies and publishing practices, especially stereotyping. Their new technological capabilities allowed publishers to meet the unprecedented demand for UTC, and the scope and power of print forged new attitudes toward publishing, toward slavery, and toward the United States -- which Briggs dubbed "Uncle Tomitudes." They would henceforth be a new tool in shaping culture and attitudes.
Charles Briggs's 1853 Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin
What attitudes and assumptions does Briggs's essay have in common with The Progress of the Century print? Why did Briggs call UTC the "first real success in bookmaking"? Whom was Briggs answering when he said, "Who does not" read an American book? Given the proslavery sentiments that underlay the Cincinnati and Alton riots in the North, what accounts for the enormous demand for UTC? Did Briggs set a proper standard for judging the success of a book -- one million copies -- as he foresaw a time when "the telegraphic wires will be printing it simultaneously" across the world? Had the publisher not had improved steam-driven presses, would significant limitations have been placed on press runs? At one point Briggs noted that UTC was also unprecedented in the number of works "written expressly to counteract" it, which was "something entirely new in literature." Was the proslavery counterattack also a product of the print revolution?
C. The Rise of the Novel and the Tract Societies' Efforts to Quash It
Charles Briggs also noted that because the public had been "inundated and surfeited with antislavery sentiment in all possible forms, " the prospects for UTC were "a thousand to one against the success of the book. " Briggs asserted that the book's success was due to its excellence. Nevertheless, the novel had become an important part of American reading, so much so that there was a backlash against the new practice and popularity of novel reading in nineteenth-century America. To its critics, the novel raised a number of issues and posed threats to the moral and physical well-being of readers, which are represented here in essays from nineteenth-century magazines for adults and children.
Novels, Novelists, & Readers; or, Text & Temptation in 19th-century America
What arguments did these essays advance against novels? What dangers did fiction pose to the moral instruction of Americans? What connections did the essays make between the print revolution and the reading of sentimental literature?
The explosion of secular publication -- especially newspapers, novels, and political tracts -- was viewed by many religious leaders as subversive to morality and authority. In the hands also of religious radicals and populists, traditional religious groups faced a two-pronged assault by secularism and religious radicalism. In response, conservative religious leaders became important innovators of popular publication in the 1820s as they undertook the mass production and distribution of religious messages.
Rather than allowing demand to shape publication runs, the religious societies "proposed to supply reading material to everyone, regardless of demand, regardless of location, regardless of ability to pay. " Books and tracts were often distributed by traveling agents; an extensive network of magazines used the mails. Traveling agents distributed huge runs of cut-rate tracts to compete directly with secular, sentimental literature. This distribution strategy was a response to the unfavorable status of nonnewspaper formats in the mails. Postage rates favored newspapers over magazines and pamphlets, as well as private letters. In 1815, however, Postmaster General Return J. Meigs made an exemption for periodicals published by "the several Bible societies." Books, however, were still transported by means other than the mails.
The religious societies quickly perceived how new printing technologies could be used. The first stereotyped American book was published by the Philadelphia Bible Society in 1812; the country's Bible societies federated in 1816 in part because of the capital requirements of stereotyping. The Bible Society was also the first important customer for the Fourdrinier paper-making machine, and in 1826 the Tract Society installed New York's first steam-powered bed-and-platen press.
How successful were the tract societies in employing advances in printing and publishing? How did they compare to Harper & Brothers? If students have access to microfilm editions of the New York Weekly Tribune, ask them to read the April 2, 1853, issue, which describes the American Bible Society's publishing operations at Bible House. The organization of manufacturing operations is strikingly similar to those described in The Harper Establishment.
The Library of Congress's American Memory Web site has a section devoted to full texts called Sunday School Books: Shaping the Values of Youth in Nineteenth-Century America. These include as well A Brief History of the American Tract Society, 1857, which outlines the reasons for the society's founding and its objectives in common with other evangelical Christian groups. Ask students to read chapter 8, "Motives for Home Evangelization," pages 137-157, of the American Tract Society's 1850 Home Evangelization: A View of the Wants and Prospects of Our Country. This essay lays out the Society's perceptions of the advantages of the new print technologies and the manufacturing and distribution strategies built upon them: "If steam has facilitated the process by which half the continent has become border land, and created an almost interminable frontier, it has also made a highway by its thousands of miles of railroads, and other means of rapid intercommunication, for missionaries, colporteurs, books, and Bibles." The steamboat and the rail-car, and the telegraph, and cheap printing, and cheap postage, enable good men and good institutions to more than double their efficiency, and to concentrate the labors and the influence of a century into a brief generation."
Sunday School Books: Shaping the Values of Youth in Nineteenth-Century America
A Brief History of the American Tract Society
Motives for Home Evangelization
What new technologies were presented as the keys to the Society's success? Ask your students to compare the efforts by the tract societies to promote Christian literature and quash novel-reading as nineteenth-century with today's "culture wars." Is this an effective analogy? How do the two compare?
Another essay, similarly titled Home Evangelization, 1855, both extols the industry of the tract societies and advocates giving equally vigorous attention to ministers, new colleges, and revivals, especially in the West.
Home Evangelization
Why were the objectives of the Society for the Collegiate and Theological Education in the West less well served by the publishing and distribution strategies of the tract societies? What factors accounted for the need to adopt different evangelical strategies?
AP U.S. History Lesson Plans...
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