The North and South in Antebellum United States Essay
The North’s societal construction was really different from that of the South. Industrialization played an of import function in organizing Northern society. In the North. society was comprised of working category Whites and a comparatively little figure of free inkinesss. Because of industrialisation. a lifting figure of immigrants were traveling into the Northern metropoliss looking for work in the mills. Another consequence of industrialisation on Northern society was the rise of a affluent factory-owning group. There was besides a group of people fighting in poorness.
Between these two categories was a in-between category that consisted largely of workers and enterprisers. This in-between category came to rule society in the North. It was the members of the in-between category that tended to go forth household owned farms in favour of mill work in the metropoliss. In contrast. households in the South still worked independently on farms and plantations. Comparable to the North’s affluent category of mill proprietors. in the South there was a little. affluent category of plantation proprietors.
Unlike the North. it was the affluent category that dominated Southern society. instead than the in-between category. The plantation proprietors used their wealth to command facets of Southern political and societal life. Besides in the South. there was a really hapless category referred to as the “clay eaters” . because they sometimes resorted to eating clay. The bulk of the Southerners called themselves the “plain common people. ” Although most “plain folk” practiced subsistence agriculture and had merely household members for labour. a few of them owned slaves. but normally no more than one or two.
Plantation proprietors. nevertheless. sometimes owned a great figure of slaves. There was a little population of free inkinesss in the South excessively. Because the societal make-up of the two parts was so different. their cultural features of course followed the same form. The developing civilizations of the North and the South besides stood in blunt contrast to each other. Northerners were recommending alteration while Southerners were contending to continue traditional ideals. For illustration. Northerners were going involved with and promoting industrialisation.
At the same clip. Southerners were concentrating on staying agricultural and bettering farming techniques. Besides. the changing civilization in the North promoted reform such as the abolishment and feminism motions. and even helped to break the instruction motion. Although these motions were present in the South. they were non rather as strong or widely supported as they were in the North ; this was because the North’s altering environment was much less hostile to reform than the South’s stiff sense of tradition.
Abolitionists in the North such as William Garrison and Fredrick Douglass pushed for the emancipation of bondage while women’s rightists like the Grimke sisters pushed for women’s rights and Horace Mann. an advocator of instruction. acted to heighten the instruction system. By contrast. Southerners wanted to stay traditional and continue their “cavalier” image ; they wished to keep their sophisticated. facile image and looked down upon the industrialisation in the North as dirty and petroleum.
The factor that led to both the cultural and the societal differences in the North and the South was the dissimilar economic systems of the two parts. The economic systems of the North and the South were about complete antonyms. The North had grown off from farming and had become focused on industry and the production of manufactured goods. Factories in the North attracted former subsistence husbandmans because it was more efficient to purchase nutrient instead than to turn it. Systems like the Lowell System employed immature adult females. provided them with room and board. and paid the adult females for their work in the mill.
With the rise of legion new American innovations. machines became more efficient and the United States had shortly developed one of the best industrial economic systems in the universe. Because of the demand for effectual transit to administer goods. new signifiers of transit such as luxuriant railway and canal systems emerged. The South. on the other manus. clung to the slave-based plantation system. The economic system was based mostly on the production of natural stuffs. chiefly cotton. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin allowed the cultivation of short staple cotton to convey Southern plantation owners great success.
Because the cotton industry was so moneymaking. Southerners had no ground to go industrialised. However. the industrial economic system of the North and the agricultural economic system of the South led to a colonial relationship between the two. significance that the South sold natural stuffs to the North in exchange for manufactured goods. The system put the South in an inferior place to the North. which evidently disquieted Southerners and led to greater tenseness between the two parts. In the old ages prior to the Civil War. the Northern and Southern parts of the U. S. began floating farther and farther apart.
Along with this separation came tenseness and provincialism. First. the two parts were different socially. Northerners typically worked as labourers in mills. while Southerners worked on either plantations with slaves or on little farms. Second. the cultural differences between the altering. overhauling North and the traditional South caused tenseness. Finally. the contrasting economic chases of the two parts added to the tenseness. In antebellum United States. the mounting tensenesss between the two subdivisions of the state would finally take to the eruption of the Civil War.