Civil War North Vs South Essay

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From the dawn of the United States, there were clear sectional differences in the county. The South had slaves and the North did not. The North had mercantilism and the South had agriculture. The founding fathers had the chance to vastly change these differences by abolishing slavery in the Constitution, but they feared the Constitution not being ratified by the Southern states. These differences, while at the time, may have seemed small, gave our country two unique economies. And these economies almost split our country in two. The varying economies between the North and South caused tension in the United States, which caused the Civil War and then for North to win. The South’s economy was based on agriculture. This meant the South focused on farms and plantations and had very few factories. The South grew many crops such as tobacco, rice, and indigo. But the one crop that was in almost all plantations in the South was cotton. At the time cotton was a cash crop, or a crop that can be sold for a high profit. Cotton was the most sought after crop around the world, which made it gain this status. …show more content…

One of the advantages was the amount of pig iron. Pig iron is the transitional product from when you smelt iron and was used in the manufacturing of the wide variety of modern military good like buckle straps, wagon wheel rims, horseshoes, railroad rails and several other rolling stock parts. The North had 951,000 tons of pig iron with 580,049 tons of it in Pennsylvania alone. The South only had a measly 36,790 tons of it. The reasoning behind this was that almost all of the iron smelting was done in the North and was centralized in Pennsylvania. So whatever amount of iron the South had, was from the North or was made in the few factories the South had. Since the South didn’t have as ready access to the material, the manufacturing of useful military product was so hard it was down right