From a school assignment- unlike the other ones in this book, this was done for my Social Studies class. We had an independent study going on and at the end we had to make a slideshow or something else to show we knew the material. I made a rap song and performed it in front of the class. It was so successful I then recited it in front of my Language Arts class.

Now once upon a time there was a guy named Slater
Who went to the Americas despite all the haters
He used a fake name and came to America
The alias he used was not Erica

He built the first text-mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island
It left all the other investors sittin' on their porches cryin'
Cause men, women, and kids came to cities instead of farms
But unbeknownst to them they might come to harm

There once a place with Lowell Mills
It is the place where this one guy chills
His name is Francis Cabot Lowell
When the economy went down the workers lives became hell

They were all young girls with no husbands or children
The company-owned boarding houses were where they all lived in
They worked twelve hour shifts in deafening noise
And the strict old women kept them from all the boys

The U.S. contacted a man named Eli Whitney
An inventor who went out to see what he could see
He assembled a musket in seconds and everyone agreed
Factories with interchangeable parts were the places to be

Along came Robert Fulton with a boat thing
And everyone thought it was a stupid minor thing
But then the man fixed it and made it better
This machine called a steamboat was a real go-getter

Sam-u-el Morse invented Morse code
It got information out much faster than by road
It brought America closer together as a nation
And word got around from station to station

Do you remember Eli Whitney from a couple lines back?
Bring our boy up front, cuttin' him a little slack
Next we'll be talking about the cotton gin
Which made the natives and slaves sad; but the plantation owners grin

A slave cleaning cotton could make a pound a day
Eli Whitney thought of this and he found a better way
A crank turned the invention and it got out all the seeds
It made it a lot easier and life changed to suit the needs

First came the natives chillin' on their land
Slave owners threw them out, claiming they didn't have a stand
They needed space to grow more cotton and expanded the farm boundaries
And so the people met the trading budget with ease

THIS INCREASED THE NEED FOR SLAVERY!!!!

Word! Take it back.

A new notion was sweeping the nation
It was called sectionalism and was a problem we were facing
Each part of America was different and new
And big statewide differences made everything askew

It's pretty much liking one thing over the other
Like a favorite tie or a favorite brother
People were putting their state ahead of the country
And that just wasn't gonna work.
Yo!

You know, America didn't like Spain at this time
We hated each other as bitter as a lime
Slaves from the South ran away to Florida
And we couldn't reclaim them when they crossed over the borida

The Adams-Onis treaty took care of this
We got all of the Florida territory which Spain didn't really miss
Gears were shifting everywhere in the name of Manifest Destiny
Big changes were coming up for us, you see

Missouri wanted statehood and they also wanted slaves
This bothered Northern America to the rest of their days
A balance of power was already had
And both sides complained to their mommy's and dads

Thank god we had an entity that was watching over us
Maine also wanted statehood minus the fuss
We accepted two states that time one north and one south
But hatred between the two was spread from mouth to mouth

We drew up a simple line around the rest of the U.S.
And anyone up north who owned slaves would've been in  mess
But tensions were still high between the two voices
And time was running out before we had to make some choices

The Monroe Doctrine was signed into order by President Monroe
It said you can't claim the America's and set your seeds to sow
America will protect the whole Western Hemisphere
So see ya French, Germans, Dutch, England, or any Europeaner