Civil War How Did It Happen That Essay

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Civil War

How did it happen that the North won the Civil War, notwithstanding the fact that the South had its own powerful advantages? This paper explores that question using chapters 11, 12, 13 and 14 for reference sources.

Background on the Southern economy and politics

The South greatly expanded its agricultural industry (the plantation system) between 1800 and 1860, and in doing so became "increasingly unlike the North," the author explains in Chapter 11. The "lower South" relied on cotton (short staple cotton) and the market for all that cotton in New England and in Great Britain made many plantation owners wealthy. Because of the skyrocketing cotton industry, more and more slaves were needed to tend those crops, and some 410,000 slaves were moved from the upper South to the lower South. And yet the South depended economically on the North (which had a booming industrial growth period) and the South did not establish many industries besides cotton to beef up its economy (p. 302). Those landowners with hundreds of slaves and huge cotton plantations controlled the politics; hence, a great deal of political power was in the hands of a few wealthy men. Hence, the lack of industrial strength was a Southern weakness, and the existence of a commercial-industrial culture in the North was its strength.

Slavery was a business, not just a social system in the South.

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Slavery was the foundation of the agricultural economy, and this was to become one of the major schisms that caused tensions between the North and the South.

Reasons why the North was stronger

A focus on providing public education (to increase literacy) and the growth of reform organizations in the North had a powerful influence on the Northern society. Also, the feminist movement as part of the reform movements (women's rights, women's suffrage) also pushed the crusade against slavery. Abolitionists formed a growing sentiment in the North and helped prepare the North for the need to go to war with the South. In Chapter 13, the authors point to the tensions between the "free soil ideology" in the North and the "slave power conspiracy" in the South; continuing agitation against slavery in the North irritated the pro-slavery South. Moreover, "a vigorous sense of nationalism" was experienced in both the South and North as positions on slavery "hardened" (371).

Northern Advantages: When the Civil War started, "…only one thing was clear: all the important material advantages lay with the north" (377). The North had a population nearly twice that of the South (and when slaves weren't counted in, the North had "nearly four times" as many people as the South) (377). As for manpower to provide an army and to provide workers to fuel its industry, the North had.....

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