1.) Society was undergoing tremendous change at the beginning of the 19th century.?

Question

Briefly explain how society was changing and why.

Answer 1

Movement of economy from dominance of agriculture and rural activity to urban society, caused by the industrial revolution. Migration of people to specifically industrial cities such as New York and Pittsburgh in the US and Manchester and Middlesbrough in the UK. Consequentially, beginning of the change from the extended family to the nuclear family as the primary social unit.
End of the long era in which ownership of land was the primary source of wealth to the era in which ownership of business (directly, or indirectly through stock exchanges) was the primary source of wealth. Consequentially, the beginning of the end of the social class structure in which power and influence as well as wealth were highly concentrated among the top 2-5% of a country's people. The beginning of its evolution into a structure in which the middle class became financially, and eventually also numerically, dominant. Dynamic rather than static inter-class relationships. Emergence therefore of "middle class" values into prominence, such as temperance, savings, prudence, 'family values', hope/optimism (clearly expressed for example in the surge of support for Unitarian Christianity c1800), and the rest of the "Victorian values" package.

Urbanisation in the 19th century was more total in Britain than in the US. Even now, connection to the land is not strange in the US - of the 20-30 Americans I know well enough to know what they do for a living (and widely scattered, from Maine to Alabama to Oregon), two are ranchers. In Britain, for the vast majority of people life on the land has passed beyond trace of living memory. In most families, not even the oldest living relative today will remember that when young they knew some older relative who worked on the land.