The Antebellum Period
This is also called the pre-civil war years and happened between 1820 and 1860. It is during this period that a lot of changes took place in the United States. There are numerous differences between the industrialized North and agricultural South during this period. This was before the civil war. These changes were cultural, social etcetera.
The North experienced a revolution from being agricultural based to an economic one, after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, this led to a manufacturing boom. There was a false belief that the North was fighting against slavery. It was a source of cheap labor for the agricultural South and Lincoln promised not to interfere. The North was a completely different ball game the system was dangerous and not practical. Garrison was among the Northerners who never wanted to fight slavery since he knew very well it would hurt the poor white Southerners.
The American society shifted to urbanization during this era. Most people started moving into cities, foreigners from Germany and Ireland flooded in to get jobs. This system gave birth to the wage system that became the foundation of the middle class. The middle class came up with a lot of reform movements that included alcohol consumption, prostitution elimination and ban slavery.
Southern side was dominated by people who believed that individuals should be final in the constitution interpretation. This is amongst the political struggles experienced during that period.
The Northerners saw the horror of slavery whereas for the Southerners it was a good source of labor for their cotton farms. Expansion of slavery was opposed as suggested by Southerners.
In the North women were free to move around and mingle with other women whereas in the South women couldn’t move around. The Northern woman only did housework nothing else unlike the Southern woman.
Most of the immigrants who moved into the country most preferred to settle in the North and not South since we had more opportunities there. The North had factories whereas South was more agricultural. This led to the South been left weak both politically and made North even more industrialized.
The economy is the only thing that united North and South one was a producer of raw materials whereas the other was a manufacturer. However these minor differences soon became irrevocable and led to split of North and South
References
Grimsley, Mark. The hard hand of war: Union military policy toward Southern
Civilians, 1861-1865. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Janda, Lance., Shutting the Gates of Mercy: The American Origins of Total War, 1860-1880.
The Journal of Military History 59, No. 1 (Society for Military History, 1995), pp. 7-26.
Retrieved, February 23, 2003, from,
http://cr.middlebury.edu/public/amorsman/Civil%20war%20readings/Week%207%20W
r%27s%20Hard%20Hand/jandaTotalWar.pdf
