Slavery, the South and the Causes of Secession, 1850-61 » North and South: The Economic Roots of Division

Two economies in one country

By 1850 the United States had grown very fast, but the North and the South had grown in different ways. The argument over slavery was not only about right and wrong. It was also about money, jobs and power. These economic differences helped to turn disagreement into a crisis.

Key terms:

• Free labour: work done by people who are paid wages and are free to leave a job, as opposed to enslaved labour.
• Plantation: a very large farm growing one crop to sell, such as cotton, worked in the South by enslaved people.
• Tariff: a tax on goods brought into a country from abroad.
• Cotton gin: a machine invented by Eli Whitney in 1793 that quickly separated cotton fibre from its seeds.

The industrial, free-labour North

In the North, money went into factories, railways and towns. New England had textile mills and other factories, and cities such as New York, Philadelphia and Boston grew quickly. Railways and canals linked farms, factories and ports. Northern farmers on the western prairies grew grain for sale, and many ran family farms.

Millions of immigrants, many from Ireland and Germany, arrived in the 1840s and 1850s. Most settled in the North, because that is where the factory and building jobs were. They were free workers on wages. Very few went to the South, where plantations used enslaved labour.

This produced a belief in free labour. Many Northerners thought that a man should be able to work, save and rise in the world. The new Republican Party campaigned in 1856 for free soil, free labour and free men. Many Northerners disliked slavery for moral reasons. Others disliked it because they thought it made it harder for free workers to find land and fair pay in the West.

The agricultural, enslaved-labour South

Cotton was the South's great money-maker. After the cotton gin made it easy to prepare the crop, planters spread cotton across the Deep South, from Georgia and the Carolinas to Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. By 1860 cotton made up over half of the value of everything the USA sold abroad. Much of it went to the textile mills of Britain, and some went to the mills of New England.

Cotton growing needed a great deal of hard labour, and planters relied on enslaved people to do it. In 1860 there were about four million enslaved people in the South. Only about a quarter of white Southern families owned any enslaved people, and many of the rest were small farmers. But slavery shaped the whole Southern economy, and enslaved people were the planters' most valuable property. In 1858 Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina summed up the Southern mood in a speech with the phrase "Cotton is King". Southerners believed the world needed their cotton, so no one could afford to attack their way of life.

The South made few goods itself. Planters bought manufactured goods from the North or from Britain, and Northern banks, merchants and shipping firms handled much of the cotton trade. Some Southerners resented this dependence on the North.

Tariffs: who paid, who gained?

A tariff made imported goods dearer. Northern manufacturers wanted high tariffs, so that people would buy American-made goods instead of cheaper British ones. Southerners sold cotton abroad and bought many goods from Britain. They said tariffs made their goods dearer and helped the North at their expense. They also feared that if Britain sold less to the USA, it might buy less cotton in return.

This quarrel was older than the 1850s. A high tariff in 1828 was nicknamed the "Tariff of Abominations" in the South, and in 1832 South Carolina declared it would not obey the tariff laws. A compromise ended that crisis. By the 1850s tariffs were lower, but the fight showed how a government policy could pull the states apart.

Why each side feared the other

Each side was afraid of losing out as the country grew. That made compromise harder.

Change and continuity

Slavery had been part of the American economy since colonial times, and that did not change. What changed was the gap between the regions. The cotton boom made slavery more important in the South just as the North was industrialising and becoming more firmly free-labour. As new land opened up, the economic question of which system would spread became a political one. The money at stake, the power in Congress and the argument over states' rights all fed the same quarrel.

Exam-style question

This is a Paper 2 Section B (b) question. You must explain TWO causes, and each must show how it led to the outcome. One cause alone scores at most half marks.

Explain TWO causes of the economic division between the North and the South by 1860. [8 marks]

Recap

• The North had factories, railways, cities and immigrants, and its workers were free and paid wages.
• The South grew cotton on plantations using about four million enslaved people, and had few factories.
• The North wanted tariffs to protect industry. The South opposed them, as in the 1828 tariff and South Carolina's reaction in 1832.
• The South feared losing power in Congress and the end of slavery. The North feared the "Slave Power" and slavery spreading west.