Urbanization
A major result of industrialization in the United States was the transformation of the rural, agricultural nation to an urban one. At the time of the American Revolution (1775–83), when the American colonists fought England to win their independence, 95 percent of the U.S. population lived in rural areas, and most Americans were farmers. This was slowly changing by the time of the American Civil War (1861–65; a war between the Union [the North], who were opposed to slavery, and the Confederacy [the South], who were in favor of slavery), when about 20 percent of the American population, or 6.2 million people, lived in urban communities, or towns with populations of 2,500 or more. Despite this there were still fewer than four hundred communities with populations of 2,500 or more in the entire nation, and in 1850 only seven cities had populations over 100,000. After the Civil War, the population of the country as a whole increased very rapidly, doubling by the turn of the century. By 1900 the population in urban areas comprised about 40 percent of the population, or about 30 million people. At that time there were 1,737 communities with populations of 2,500 or In the post-Civil War years, the rise of big industries, the expansion of railroads, and a tremendous inflow of immigrants led to the rapid growth of cities.
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