NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Fall 2005-06
Joseph P. Ferrie
Economics 323-1
Economic History of the U.S. to 1865
323-1 Home Page
Most of the documents available here (apart from the "Basic
Information" just below) are in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. If your
version of Netscape or Internet Explorer does not display them, you
will need to obtain and install a free copy of the Adobe Acrobat PDF
reader. Click here
Basic information:
Overheads from lectures:
Posted by 11PM on the night preceding each lecture
- Thursday,
September 22
- Tuesday,
September 27
- Tuesday,
Oct 4 & Thursday, Oct 6
- Thursday,
Oct 6 and Tuesday, Oct 11
- Tuesday, Oct 20th part
1 and part
2
- Tuesday, Oct 27th part
1 and part
2 and part
3
- Tuesday, Nov 8 and Thursday, Nov 10 part
1 part
2 part
3
- Tuesday, Nov 15 and Thursday, Nov 17 part
1 part
2 part
3
Information for Final Papers
some paper topics from prior years:
- "Railroad Competition in New England, 1850"
- "Urbanization and Region Average Heights in Colonial America"
- "The Effect of the Religious Affiliation of Irish Immigrants
on Their Economic Success, 1850-70"
- "Wealth Inequality and the 'Antebellum Paradox'"
- "Emancipation and the Economic Well-Being of Blacks"
- "Slavery on Small Farms"
- "Law and Market Development in Early Salem"
some sources of data
- Historical Statistics of the U.S.: copies are
available in the NU Library; I've got a CD-ROM as well
- individual-level data from the U.S. Census of Population
from IPUMS.
Check the list of variables (click on "IPUMS Variables"). Data are in
Excel spreadsheets and contain approximately 12,000 observations in
each
year (they're in Excel files in self-extracting ZIP files: click to
save
to your computer, then double click on it to open it): 1850,
1860,
1870.
- state-level and county-level data from the U.S. Census,
1790-1870: these are self-extracting ZIP files (click to save to your
computer, then double click on it to open it). For a list of the
variables available for each year, click here.
For the data files (Excel spreadsheets), click on the year you want: 1790,
1800,
1810,
1820,
1830,
1840,
1850
county & state, 1850
state only, 1860
county & state, 1860
state only, 1870
county & state. Note: for 1790-1840, all variables are measured
at the state and county levels (in the Excel files, "Type" is equal to
1 for counties and 2 for states); for 1850-60 some additional variables
are measured only at the state level and appear in the "state only"
file
for that year. For 1850 and 1860, the county & state level files
contain
two worksheets. These variables are also available from State and County Level
Census Data from the U.S. Census: Historical Demographic, Economic and
Social Data of the U.S., 1790-1970 from the University of Virginia.
- individual-level data on households linked across censuses:
click here>
- farm-level
data from the agricultural schedules of the 1860 U.S. Census: click here.
- firm-level data from the manufacturing schedules of the
1850-70 U.S. census: click here
for the documentation (a PDF file), and here for the 1850
and 1860
data (in Excel spreadsheet files in self-extracting ZIP files: click
to save to your computer, then double click on it to open it)
- individual-level data from the U.S. Census for specific
communities: click here for the
USGenWeb Project and here
for additional links
Sample Exam Questions:
posted here
Exam Grades:
Will be posted here after the exams.
Final Grades:
Will be posted here at the end of term.