The Civil War was not only a conflict between blacks and whites, it was more of a political power struggle between the industrialized and modernized states of the North, and the agricultural states of the South. The South, carried on, remaining a region of small towns and large plantations during this time, refusing to become industrialized as its flourishing neighbors up north had done. The agricultural, “Great Cotton Empire” depended on slave labor to keep their cotton dominant society alive and prospering. Senator James Hammond speaks on this topic before the United States Senate, March 4, 1858, commenting, “Cotton is king” ( Document D, Paragraph 3). Hammond is claiming that the southern states could be extremely profitable and successful
The predominantly agrarian South had few forms of liquid wealth; slaves and land comprised the majority of southern capital. The cultivation of cotton and the profits made by its sales was paramount to the economy and so with the loss of northern buyers, the Confederate’s economic status was destined for failure.
On April 12, 1861, Abraham Lincoln declared to the South that, the only reason that separate the country is the idea of slavery, if people could solve that problem then there will be no war. Was that the main reason that started the Civil war? or it was just a small goal that hides the real big reason to start the war behind it. Yet, until this day, people are still debating whether slavery is the main reason of the Civil war. However, there are a lot of facts that help to state the fact that slavery was the main reason of the war. These evidences can relate to many things in history, but they all connect to the idea of slavery.
Slavery had a big impact on the market, but most of it was centered on the main slave crop, cotton. Primarily, the south regulated the cotton distribution because it was the main source of income in the south and conditions were nearly perfect for growing it. Cheap slave labor made it that much more profitable and it grew quickly as well. Since the development in textile industry in the north and in Britain, cotton became high in demand all over the world. The south at one point, was responsible for producing “eighty percent of the world’s cotton”. Even though the South had a “labor force of eighty-four percent working, it only produced nine percent of the nations manufactured goods”, (Davidson 246). This statistic shows that the South had an complete advantage in manpower since slavery wasn’t prohibited. In the rural South, it was easy for plantation owners to hire slaves to gather cotton be...
Cotton, once a very difficult and complicated crop to grow due to its many seeds stuck to its fibers, became a smooth, factory like performance with the aid of the cotton gin. Cotton was so important it made up two thirds of all 200 million dollars. The cotton gin, thanks to Eli Whitney helped remove the seeds faster, and not as painstakingly as before, this resulted in faster and greater production. A greater product wield means that the larger the workforce needed to grow in conjunction with the labor force, in this case reffered to as “King Cotton”. The greater workforce was slaves, and the invention of the cotton gin led to greatly expanding the amount of slavery in the South. The more slaves brought in to cultivate the cotton the more involucrate the Southern planters had become with agriculture, this strong attachment and dependency for cotton led to the South’s poor establishment of Industry. The total value of textiles from the South for example, made about 4.5 million dollars in the 1860’s, that may sound impressive but it is r...
Before civil war broke out, several parts of history foreshadowed the growing divide between the northern and southern areas of the United States. One being, differences in culture and lifestyle. The south’s economy predominately based itself off of agriculture; specifically the growing of tobacco, corn, and cotton. The big southern plantations, owned by several white elitist men, used slavery to operate, another major cause for civil war. The northern economy thrived off of manufacturing and big industrial business. Northern politicians and elite class members supported tariffs and the use of training large armies. As the divide grew, tempers and attitudes flared, as d...
The North and South were forming completely different economies, and therefore completely different geographies, from one another during the period of the Industrial Revolution and right before the Civil War. The North’s economy was based mainly upon industrialization from the formation of the American System, which was producing large quantities of goods in factories. The North was becoming much more urbanized due to factories being located in cities, near the major railroad systems for transportation of the goods, along with the movement of large groups of factory workers to the cities to be closer to their jobs. With the North’s increased rate of job opportunities, many different people of different ethnic groups and classes ended up working together. This ignited the demise of the North’s social order. The South was not as rapidly urbanizing as the North, and therefore social order was still in existence; the South’s economy was based upon the production of cotton after Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin. Large cotton plantations’ production made up the bulk of America’s...
Following the American Civil War, the whole nation was forever changed and was the result of many good and bad things. Although it was a very costly war and was So, the Civil War did define us and made us the good and the bad things we are and led to an extremely significant change because slavery was abolished once and for all and African American rights followed many years later, the Federal Government imposed more power over the states, our country was divided for a while, and it left the nation in debt due to the fact that we fought each other.
“These men rose to power in a region embedded in a capitalist country, and their social system emerged as part of a capitalist world.” However, that does not indicate that the South was capitalist. Genovese argues the opposite that the Antebellum South was rather pre-capitalist. “Their society, in its spirit and fundamental direction, represented the antithesis of capitalism”. Slavery inhibited the economic development of the South and endangered the social stability of the South due to their irrational tendencies. These irrational tendencies allowed them to maintain the master-slave relationship but allowed the South to fall behind the North. Genovese states that “the capital outlay is much greater and riskier for slave labor than for free” and “the sources of cheap labor usually dry up rather quickly, and beyond a certain point costs become excessively burdensome”. Why maintain a labor system that is unstable? With the increase of production and slaves results in a labor system that the South cannot sustain. The slaves’ production was also inefficient. However, Slaves were found to be efficient “in hemp, tobacco, iron, and cotton factories” and “received a wide variety of privileges and approached an elite status.” The South could have industrialized and expanded the economy with these factories but the master-slave relationship if disturbed can lead to a power shift in the South. If the blacks approached
During the many events and troubles that were occurring throughout the late 40s and 50s, tensions have increased between the North and South. South was on the edge of secession since they were threatening to get what they want, more land to continue the growth of slavery and expand their operations and sources of income. The North didn't want that to happen since more land given to the South would lead to even more political problems and it would leave the North at a disadvantage. The North and the world were dependent on access to cotton, said Hammond. The commodity that was processed by both northern and European manufactures. Worldwide industry would come to halt if not for the availability of cotton. Hammond then goes on to mention that if the South were to stop producing and selling cotton for 3 years, all places of civilization will start to collapse, and they would feel obligated to help the South and obtain their cotton again. Since the price of cotton increased in the South, it was cheaper to get cotton from Egypt and India and supply it to European
A lot of people say that the southern part of the united states is what started the war. Their stubborn ways force the north to take action which lead to the civil war. In all reality there was more that came into play when the civil war was in the making. States rights was one of the problem that lead to the civil war, the constitution did not define who had what powers and what authority over one what. Also slavery played a part because the slaves were raising up and fighting for their rights in which the south did not like and and the north tried to help only making the problem worse. The differences between the free states and the slave states was the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet
From it’s colonization, America had seemed to be a willingful advocate of slavery. As the 19th century began, it became apparent that Southern States, economically dependant on agricultural business and “King Cotton” continued to work enslaved Africans while the Northern States turned the other cheek. As time went on, Northern citizens and Southern citizens in a once-unified country came into conflict in several different ways. The three main causes (Infringement of civil liberties, infringement of states’ rights, and the economic and moral issues of slavery) made the conflict between the South and the North impossible to resolve, resulting in the inevitable Civil War.
The Civil War not only threatened slavery it also threatened the South and their way of life. They were plantation owners and they were cotton growers. Their very existence, and livelihood depended on the labor of African Americans. They had established a culture of the dominance of the White Man over the African Americans. Ever since the Southerners had first colonized the Americas they had been depending on the free labor and felt that they could not adequately function without it. (CITATION)
The North dominated the manufacturing industry and the South dominated the agricultural industry. The North contained half of the “manufacturing establishments in the country in 1860” and “produced more than two-thirds of the manufactured goods.” The South had “cotton production [booming] in the lower South” and “cotton constituted nearly two-thirds of the total export of trade in the United States.” The amount of labor required to keep up with southern agriculture would require a continuous workforce. The North had a continuous cheap workforce themselves: immigrants. About 2.5 million immigrants from Europe came to America in the 1850s. Because “few immigrants settled in the South,” the South didn’t have a continuous workforce. The South had to depend on slaves for their workforce.
Within the economy a great development had been achieved when the upper south handed its power to the lower south all due to the rise of an agricultural production. This expansion was led by the excessive growth of cotton in the southern areas. It spread rapidly throughout America and especially in the South. During these times it gave another reason to keep the slavery at its all time high. Many wealthy planters started a ‘business’ by having their slaves work the cotton plantations, which this was one of a few ways slavery was still in full effect. Not only were there wealthy planters, at this time even if you were a small slave-holder you were still making money. While all of this had been put into the works, Americans had approximately 410,000 slaves move from the upper south to the ‘cotton states’. This in turn created a sale of slaves in the economy to boom throughout the Southwest. If there is a question as to ‘why’, then lets break it d...
The Civil War has been viewed as the unavoidable eruption of a conflict that had been simmering for decades between the industrial North and the agricultural South. Roark et al. (p. 507) speak of the two regions’ respective “labor systems,” which in the eyes of both contemporaries were the most salient evidence of two irreconcilable worldviews. Yet the economies of the two regions were complementary to some extent, in terms of the exchange of goods and capital; the Civil War did not arise because of economic competition between the North and South over markets, for instance. The collision course that led to the Civil War did not have its basis in pure economics as much as in the perceptions of Northerners and Southerners of the economies of the respective regions in political and social terms. The first lens for this was what I call the nation’s ‘charter’—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the documents spelling out the nation’s core ideology. Despite their inconsistencies, they provided a standard against which the treatment and experience of any or all groups of people residing within the United States could be evaluated (Native Americans, however, did not count). Secondly, these documents had installed a form of government that to a significant degree promised representation of each individual citizen. It was understood that this only possible through aggregation, and so population would be a major source of political power in the United States. This is where economics intersected with politics: the economic system of the North encouraged (albeit for the purposes of exploitation) immigration, whereas that of the South did not. Another layer of the influence of economics in politics was that the prosperity of ...