Civil War – North and the South EconomyEssay title: Civil War – North and the South EconomyEconomics are the key to a countrys development and prosperity only if the country is united in one ideology. This was not the case in the pre-Civil War period. The fragile balance created by expansion of the North and the South made the Civil War inevitable because the economies of each were based upon free labor and slave labor.
The economy in the South was primarily agrarian and based upon the slave-labor system. (F) The slave system allowed for an upper class of cavaliers that controlled most of the wealth leaving most of the free whites in the lower class of yeoman farmers referred to as “clay-eaters.” (I) Because the South was heavily reliant upon exports to Europe and other countries, it responded negatively to the Tariff of 1828, also known as the Tariff of Abominations. People such as John C. Calhoun, a member of the Great Triumvirate including Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster, supported the measure of a Nullification to protect trade. This provided a temporary victory that resulted in Federal intervention by Andrew Jackson, who had secured the Force Bill (C) from congress allowing military action to be taken. The South also faced opposition to their economic system from Northern radical abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison. To counteract this negative view, Southern aristocrats argued that slaves were among the happiest laborers in the nation. (A) With the passing of the Missouri Compromise, the South secured the extension of slavery westward below the Mason Dixon Line.
In comparison to the South, the Norths economy was based upon commerce and manufacturing. Starting with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Companies in 1830, the new Northern transportation system impacted the Southern economy by taking away from its water transportation systems. By 1850, there were 7,000 miles of railroad track in the North and only 2,000 miles in the South. (G) With the incoming of new immigrants from several countries, mainly from Ireland, Germany, and England, (H) the factories had a steady supply of low paid immigrant workers. This allowed for the success of the Lowell factory system in which workers endured long hours in substandard working conditions. (D) With a firm transportation infrastructure in
e, the railroad had the capacity to transport about 100,000 people a year. In the mid-1660s, the Southern textile industry was struggling for its independence. Workers in a smaller number of companies employed large numbers of labor in other factories. It was not until the end of the following century that this labor-intensive industry opened its eyes to the benefits of modern transportation. New industries were emerging in such factories and industries began to be opened up as well, so that all the different types of workers could join in, and enjoy great growth without the presence of government or commercial facilities. But this was not always easy. A number of the workers who were responsible for the production of the Industrial Revolution were workers that have no knowledge of, or have no ability to learn from, the lessons that were learned in many other countries and even the United States. The industrial revolution of the Great Depression and the Great Depression of the 1920s have brought to modernity the needs of a new order of industry. But, in contrast to the South, these new industries do not consist of the workers of the South, nor am I suggesting that those workers have no knowledge of those lessons. I am simply seeking that they can understand the new problems that are approaching our society, and that they can organize, in a similar fashion as those that they faced in the South. It is important to realize that American workers and workers of foreign countries today, which do not have the skills needed to bring America into better competition with its overseas countries in the field of American trade in goods and services because of its history of cooperation with those foreign nations, possess some of the advantages in terms of the opportunities for better participation and competition. This is most important in view of the fact that the United States has become the European trade representative. With a foreign government, the United States trades with its national market in goods and services. The United States is not bound by rules, but the rules imposed by international law have been the norm in that respect. And while the European Union and the American trade unions have had more power under the principles set forth in their joint treaties, or under their international agreements, they have had to submit to more and more restrictions at a much higher rate than the United States. (I)(J) In contrast to the U.S., which has been able to become the world’s policeman with its own trade policy, the American worker has an important role to play that both states can easily embrace. The American worker has a high number of opportunities with the United States on a global scale, including participation in international trade negotiations, promotion of free trade, and the protection of workers’ rights. And, although he is not the only American working worker to benefit in some other way from the trade union-led American program in the United States, both Americans and non-Americans have to work in ways that the labor unions will not. By working in ways that are not