The process of horizontal integration refers to the joining together of similar companies in order to eliminate competition, drive up prices, and create an effective monopoly. It differs from vertical integration in the following way: vertical integration is the process of gaining control of every facet of the business of a product. It involves controlling the means of manufacturing and the process of distribution. 

Alexander Hamilton is the politician who is most associated with the construction of the Federal Bank of the United States. Hamilton had spent much of his early political career studying the banking institutions of Britain and felt that a national bank was necessary to the economic development of the United States. He was opposed by a large proportion of the representatives and it was only due to Hamilton gaining the support of President Washington that the bank was created. 

The first steamboat was invented by the American engineer and inventor Robert Fulton. Fulton lived and worked in France, England and the United States and is also credited with inventing some of the earliest submersibles and torpedoes. The invention of the steamboat was crucial for the development of the United States economy in the middle of the nineteenth century. It dramatically reduced the time and costs involved in shipping goods, and it created new communities of wealth along the majority of America’s big rivers. The steamboat was particularly useful in the development of cities along the Mississippi River, like Natchez and Vicksburg, as well as opening up new areas of the South to trade and settlement. 

The mechanical reaper was first invented by Cyrus McCormick’s father in the late 1820s; however, Cyrus is generally credited by historians as having perfected the device. The invention of the mechanical reaper dramatically changed the nature of society in the United States. It allowed a far greater number of crops to be harvested by a much smaller number of individuals. This led to a surplus of food and, equally importantly, freed up a much larger percentage of the population to work in other industries. 

Slavery was the defining feature of life in the antebellum South. The first slaves arrived in the early-seventeenth century, and by the end of the eighteenth-century large plantations dominated the southern economy, principally growing non-food crops like cotton. Until Reconstruction, and even beyond, the South remained dominated by agriculture, and was extremely slow to become industrialized.

The Panic of 1857 is considered by many historians to be the first world-wide economic crisis in human history, due to the interconnectedness of the global economy. The Panic began in Britain after the British government failed to back currency with gold and silver reserves. This caused a massive decline in the international economy at exactly the wrong time for the United States. American businesses had taken great risks and over-expanded during the prosperous years prior to the Panic and were unable to cope with the decline of the international market. The influx of Gold from California exacerbated matters as the rapid growth in gold supply led to immediate inflation. The economy would not recover until after the Civil War. 

The Supreme Court case of Johnson v. M’Intosh was a landmark case of the Marshall Court. The Supreme Court ruled that a private citizen could not purchase land from Native Americans, as those Natives did not wholly own the land. Rather, a citizen should petition the United States government for a grant to that land. It has remained a quotable and applicable legal precedent throughout the last two-hundred years of American history, although its application and interpretation has changed with subsequent legal battles and the changing perspective of American society over time. 

The Clermont, also called the North River Steamboat, was the first successfully built passenger steamship in the United States. The Clermont was the product of the work of James Fuller on steam engines and demonstrated conclusively, for the first time, the viability of steam powered travel on water. It operated successfully between Albany and New York and ushered in an era of economic growth propelled by steam power.