Most historians have it wrong.
While the factory system was evolving in the Northeast, the entire country experienced a market revolution that tied the expanding nation together with roads, canals, and railroads, and created modern capitalism. This commercial revolution revolved around an axis that ran from New York to Chicago. Take a map and draw a line from New York up to Boston and then south to Baltimore. Put your hand on the map and move it across the country, all the way to the southern tip of Lake Michigan. You're in Chicago.