Battle Cry of Freedom

I just started reading the "Battle Cry of Freedom." I am facinated by the economic thinking of the time. I was not aware that the idea of having "banks" was so unfriendly. We accept banking as apart of our everyday lives. The percentage of citizens who owned most of the wealth in this country was very low. I would like to know how it would compare to todays percentages. The modernization and technical advances of the period changed the whole face of America. Our craftsmen were slowly disappearing. I lived in Ohio for several years and always wondered why they called Ohio the buckeye state. Now I know that is was named after those who settled in the area who ran farms that developed into a corn-hog-whiskey economy. I also found it interesting that most people did not like working for the business owners. They felt like they had lost some of their freedoms by having to be subject to low wages, and long hours. A lot of change happened as a result of the Industrial Revolution. With the bad also came the idea that a man with an education could become more than he was. The shift of manufacturing from household to shop or factory altered the function of many families from units of production to units of consumption. This economic transition took both men and women out of the home. It started the notion of separate "spheres" for men and women. This might have started some of the male "chauvinist" ideas. There was also break down of the two party system in the 1850's that led to the Republican party are we know it today. I am finding out that there were many factors that contributed to the thinking and some of the problems in the 1850's that slowly brought about the Civil War. Claudia Olson