of what the new nation was to become. Thomas Jefferson championed the view that America's future "was in the hands of the small independent farmer" while Alexander Hamilton saw it "as belonging to the banker, merchant, and manufacturer" and wished to transform the nation into an "industrial-urban society" (Pierson 30). After the War of 1812 Jefferson realistically conceded that American independence might well depend on developing an independent manufacturing base for the economy. But Jefferson's realism also convinced him "that the 'depravity of morals . . . dependence and corruption' which had visited the manufacturing cities abroad would also accompany the introduction of the factory" in America (Pierson 31).
Jefferson also foresaw a widening gap between manufacturer and factory workers that threatened the unity of purpose on which the republic depended. And, as factories were gradually established, those who grew richer in the first half of the nineteenth century were self-consciously wondering how "growing class distinctions and divisions [could] be kept from destroying the ideal of social unity" (Baigell 55). In response to this concern the "bare handful of paintings of factory scenes," by artists such as Bass Otis, took the owners' view of optimum conditions and showed these fascinating new places as embodying "the ideal of cooperation and public responsibility . . . rather than the more truthful one of aggressive individualism" (Baigell 55).
For the most part, however, artists ignored this new phenomenon and painted the American scene in two ways in the years prior to the Civil war. They depicted what
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