A Nation Of Farmers

WI Jefferson's vision of America as primarily an agricultural nation had come to pass and the Industrial Revolution was delayed in America? Would 19th century America have been a "Breadbasket to the world" or would we be isolated from European trade?
 
WI Jefferson's vision of America as primarily an agricultural nation had come to pass and the Industrial Revolution was delayed in America? Would 19th century America have been a "Breadbasket to the world" or would we be isolated from European trade?

Well, for one, America was the breadbasket of the world in the 19th century. In the 1890's, the US' main export wasn't some industrial product, it was grain.

In many ways the industrializing policies of the Federalists, Whigs, and Republicans failed. While they allowed for the growth of limited industry in some areas that otherwise might not have appeared, industrial growth ultimately followed the curve you would expect it to: Taking off in the middle of the century only in areas with long settlement and lower wage rates, and only really picking up nation-wide at the end of the century and moving into the 20th. The protectionist and financial policies of the 'American System' people succeeded more in concentrating wealth in the hands of a few wealthy men, rather than in creating more of it.
 
By the way, I'm doing some preliminary brain-storming on a possible TL that follows some line similar to this question. So far I'm zoomed in on the Territorial Governance Act of 1784 and, specifically, its anti-Western slavery, free soil provision. Having Kentucky and Tennessee show up as free states would have enormous butterfly effects on the next half century of American federal politics.
 
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