This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people.

Up next, another installment of our series about us, the Story of America series,

with Professor Bill McLeigh, author of the terrific book, Land of Hope, and a professor

at Hillsdale College.

By the time 1820 rolled around, America was a nation on the move, trains, canals, and steamboats,

all moving westward and New York becoming our largest city.

Our way of life was changing, but our original sin remained.

Slavery.

Let's get into this story.

Take it away, Bill.

Music story. Take it away, Bill. It was not just canals being built. The first railways were being built in the 1820s,

and they would turn western towns like Chicago into commerce powerhouses. There was

Samuel Slater,

whose factory innovations and systems changed textile manufacturer.

Eli Whitney's cotton gin,

which made short staple cotton into a commercially viable product and would make Cotton King in the South.

John Fitch and Robert Fulton's innovation since steam technology and other inventions like

that would usher in an era of economic growth unrivaled in American history.

But there were still important unresolved problems, one of them a huge

...