Duties And Differences Between The North And The South After The Civil War

Prior to the Civil War, the North and the South had many differences in their economies and how their day to day lives operated. The North was heavily industrialized and utilized cheap labor from European immigrants in the factories. The South on the other hand, was reliant on agriculture. They had large plantations that used slave labor to process cash crops like cotton and indigo. The South’s use of slaves in their plantations sparked heavy debate on whether the practice was moral and brought up the issue of state’s rights. To add on, Compromises such as the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850 escalated tensions and only solved some issues temporarily. The debate over slavery and state’s rights between the Northern and Southern

The Compromise of 1850 in particular established the Fugitive Slave Act. This allowed for plantation owners to hire people to capture escaped slaves from the North and bring back to the South. Those who aided with the capture of any escaped slaves would be rewarded as well. Since the North was mostly anti-slavery, many people did not help in capturing escaped slaves. As stated in the document, “There has been found at the North… a disclination to perform fully their constitutional duties in regard to the return of persons bound to service who have escaped into the free states,” (Doc 3b). This demonstrates how northerners were protecting slaves who escaped from their plantations through things like the Underground Railroad. Northern reluctance to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act would only create more issues since escaped slaves weren’t being returned fast enough to the South and those protecting escapees would face penalties for their actions. The Missouri Compromise was passed before the Compromise of 1850 in 1820, where it says that states above the 36° 30’ line are free and those below that line are slave. The Dred Scott case however, permanently changed the meaning of that compromise and the 36° 30’ line no longer applied. As stated by the document, “It is the opinion of the court that the

Both the North and The South had different ways of life and different viewpoints on each other as well as certain issues such as slavery. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was a series of short stories that depicted what life was like as a slave. These stories revealed that a slave’s life was cruel and inhumane and showed what was really going on in the plantations. As the text states, “‘An’t I yer master? Didn’t I pay down twelve hundred dollars, cash, for all there is inside yer old cussed black shell? An’t yer mine now body and soul?’ he said, giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy boot,” (Doc 4). The scenes in this excerpt disprove the myth of the happy slave, which stated that slaves were happy to work on the plantations and were treated fairly by their masters. Tom’s master is seen as acting very violent towards him as he kicks him in the face, and speaks to him as if he was not a person, but an object. Uncle Tom’s Cabin created more of a divide between the North and South since it gave the Northerners justification for wanting to abolish slavery, and angered Southerners since it exposed the cruel treatment inflicted on slaves. Another example of sectionalism between the Northern and Southern states was how they viewed one another. Southerners were disgusted with Northern society and