What effect might these factors have had on industrialization in the south compared to the north?

The American Civil War is well-known for the primary reason that it started– the institution of slavery. The bloody and costly war that raged for four tumultuous years affected the lives of all people in the North and South. Over 600,000 people were killed over the course of the war, about 500 people per day. The violent conclusion of the Civil War, however, was decades in the making. All-encompassing sectional differences on the issue of slavery, such as outright support/opposition of slavery, economic practices, religious practices, education, cultural differences, and political differences kept the North and South at near constant opposition to one another on the issue of slavery. Gradually, throughout the beginning of the nineteenth century, the North and South followed different paths, and developed into two distinct and very different parts of the United States.

The North: A Titan of Industry

The antebellum Northern United States was recognized by its tight-knit immigrant communities and industrial might. In the North, the soil and climate favored smaller farmsteads rather than large plantations, which did not need slavery to operate them. Industry and manufacturing might flourished, which was fueled by European immigrant labor. Natural resources such as iron and copper were more abundant in the North than in the South. Many large cities were established such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York City, Boston, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Detroit to better transport these natural resources around the country and manufacture them into goods. New York City was the largest city with more than 800,000 inhabitants. By 1860, one quarter of all Northerners lived in urban areas. Between 1800 and 1860, the percentage of laborers working in agricultural pursuits dropped drastically from 70% to only 40%, and conversely increased in manufacturing. The institution of slavery had virtually died out in the North. Slave labor was replaced in the cities and factories by immigrant labor from Europe. An overwhelming majority of immigrants, seven out of every eight, settled in the North rather than the South because of better job opportunities in manufacturing. Transportation was easier in the North, which boasted more than two-thirds of the railroad tracks in the country, as well as a labyrinth of waterways that connected the entire Northern region.

Far more Northerners than Southerners belonged to the Whig/Republican political party, and they were far more likely to have careers in business, medicine, or education. In fact, an engineer was six times as likely to be from the North than from the South. Northern children were slightly more prone to attend school than Southern children. Religion in the North was different than the South. The North used religion as a means to denounce slavery and call it a moral evil and teamed up politically with abolitionists and politicians to bring an end to slavery.

The South: An Agricultural Aggregate

The antebellum Southern United States is noted for its vast farmland, aristocratic-like social structure, and the use of chattel slavery to yield high agricultural profits. The fertile soil and warm climate of the South made it ideal for large-scale farms to grow crops like tobacco and cotton. Because agriculture was so profitable, few Southerners saw a need for industrial development. Eighty percent of the labor force worked on a farm or plantation. Although two-thirds of Southerners owned no slaves at all, by 1860, the South's "peculiar institution" was inextricably tied to the region's economy and culture. In fact, there were almost as many blacks, both enslaved and free, in the South as there were whites (4 million blacks and 5.5 million whites). Virginians owned the most slaves out of any state, with a total of 490,865 slaves. There were no large-scale industrial cities in the South as there were in the North. The only cities that could compare to the smallest Northern cities were New Orleans, Richmond, Charleston, Atlanta, and Mobile. Most of the cities that were located on rivers and coastlines acted as shipping ports to send agricultural produce to European or Northern markets.

Only one-tenth of Southerners lived in urban areas. The most populated city in the South was New Orleans, Louisiana with a population of 168,675. Transportation between cities and across the South was extremely difficult, except by water.  Only 35% of the nation's train tracks were located in the South. Waterways proved useful to Southern port and river cities, but an overwhelming amount of inland transportation was underdeveloped in the South.

A slightly smaller percentage of white Southerners were literate than their Northern counterparts, and Southern children tended to spend less time in school. This was due to the cultural tie to the farms, and children were needed by the family to help on farms or around the home. As adults, Southern men tended to ally with the Democratic political party and gravitated toward military careers as well as agriculture. Religiously, the South used religion to support the institution of slavery, citing various Bible verses to further their ideology.

What Led to Disunion?

 Ultimately, what led to the American Civil War were the differences in the North and South's views toward the institution of slavery. There were other aspects within the institution of slavery that led to division in the United States. Economic practices, religious practices, education, cultural differences, and political differences all furthered the division between the North and South about the institution of slavery. These decade-long divisions all culminated in the bloody conflict of the Civil War, which permanently ended the division and abolished slavery permanently.

• Student Discovery Set - free ebook on iBooks External

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  Lippitt Mill, 825 Main Street, West Warwick, Kent County, RI
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  The Workers' anvil
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  First Telegraphic Message---24 May 1844
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  "93, 402,151 Now Live on Uncle Sam’s Land," The Bemidji daily pioneer
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  Child Labor in the Canning Industry of Maryland
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  Resolution on Enlarging the Locks of the Erie Canal
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  New Map of the Union Pacific Railway...
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  "GROUND FLOOR, SOUTHWEST TURBINE - Slater Mill, Pawtucket, Providence County, RI."
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  Anti-trust cartoons: Nursery Rhymes for Infant Industries
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  Something New Starts Every Day
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  Solvay Process Co.'s Works, Syracuse
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  Labor and Capital
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  Breaker boys, Woodward Coal Mines, Kingston, Pa
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  Excavating for a New York foundation
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  Taping Coils: Westinghouse Works
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  Mrs. Langdon Stewardson requests funds for National Child Labor Committee
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  [Assembly]
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  With Drops of Blood: The History of the Industrial Workers of the World Has Been Written.

The resources in this primary source set are intended for classroom use. If your use will be beyond a single classroom, please review the copyright and fair use guidelines.

Teacher’s Guide

To help your students analyze these primary sources, get a graphic organizer and guides: Analysis Tool and Guides

The Industrial Revolution took place over more than a century, as production of goods moved from home businesses, where products were generally crafted by hand, to machine-aided production in factories. This revolution, which involved major changes in transportation, manufacturing, and communications, transformed the daily lives of Americans as much as— and arguably more than—any single event in U.S. history.

Background

An early landmark moment in the Industrial Revolution came near the end of the eighteenth century, when Samuel Slater brought new manufacturing technologies from Britain to the United States and founded the first U.S. cotton mill in Beverly, Massachusetts. Slater’s Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, like many of the mills and factories that sprang up in the next few decades, was powered by water, which confined industrial development to the northeast at first. The concentration of industry in the Northeast also facilitated the development of transportation systems such as railroads and canals, which encouraged commerce and trade.

The technological innovation that would come to mark the United States in the nineteenth century began to show itself with Robert Fulton’s establishment of steamboat service on the Hudson River, Samuel F. B. Morse’s invention of the telegraph, and Elias Howe’s invention of the sewing machine, all before the Civil War. Following the Civil War, industrialization in the United States increased at a breakneck pace. This period, encompassing most of the second half of the nineteenth century, has been called the Second Industrial Revolution or the American Industrial Revolution. Over the first half of the century, the country expanded greatly, and the new territory was rich in natural resources. Completing the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 was a major milestone, making it easier to transport people, raw materials, and products. The United States also had vast human resources: between 1860 and 1900, fourteen million immigrants came to the country, providing workers for an array of industries.

The American industrialists overseeing this expansion were ready to take risks to make their businesses successful. Andrew Carnegie established the first steel mills in the U.S. to use the British “Bessemer process” for mass producing steel, becoming a titan of the steel industry in the process. He acquired business interests in the mines that produced the raw material for steel, the mills and ovens that created the final product and the railroads and shipping lines that transported the goods, thus controlling every aspect f the steelmaking process.

Other industrialists, including John D. Rockefeller, merged the operations of many large companies to form a trust. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust came to monopolize 90% of the industry, severely limiting competition. These monopolies were often accused of intimidating smaller businesses and competitors in order to maintain high prices and profits. Economic influence gave these industrial magnates significant political clout as well. The U.S. government adopted policies that supported industrial development such as providing land for the construction of railroads and maintaining high tariffs to protect American industry from foreign competition.

American inventors like Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison created a long list of new technologies that improved communication, transportation, and industrial production. Edison made improvements to existing technologies, including the telegraph while also creating revolutionary new technologies such as the light bulb, the phonograph, the kinetograph, and the electric dynamo. Bell, meanwhile, explored new speaking and hearing technologies, and became known as the inventor of the telephone.

For millions of working Americans, the industrial revolution changed the very nature of their daily work. Previously, they might have worked for themselves at home, in a small shop, or outdoors, crafting raw materials into products, or growing a crop from seed to table. When they took factory jobs, they were working for a large company. The repetitive work often involved only one small step in the manufacturing process, so the worker did not see or appreciate what was being made; the work was often dangerous and performed in unsanitary conditions. Some women entered the work force, as did many children. Child labor became a major issue. Dangerous working conditions, long hours, and concern over wages and child labor contributed to the growth of labor unions. In the decades after the Civil War, workers organized strikes and work stoppages that helped to publicize their problems. One especially significant labor upheaval was the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Wage cuts in the railroad industry led to the strike, which began in West Virginia and spread to three additional states over a period of 45 days before being violently ended by a combination of vigilantes, National Guardsmen, and federal troops. Similar episodes occurred more frequently in the following decades as workers organized and asserted themselves against perceived injustices.

The new jobs for the working class were in the cities. Thus, the Industrial Revolution began the transition of the United States from a rural to an urban society. Young people raised on farms saw greater opportunities in the cities and moved there, as did millions of immigrants from Europe. Providing housing for all the new residents of cities was a problem, and many workers found themselves living in urban slums; open sewers ran alongside the streets, and the water supply was often tainted, causing disease. These deplorable urban conditions gave rise to the Progressive Movement in the early twentieth century; the result would be many new laws to protect and support people, eventually changing the relationship between government and the people.

The Industrial Revolution is a complex set of economic, technological, and social changes that occurred over a substantial period of time. Teachers should consider the documents in this collection as tools for stimulating student thinking about aspects of the Industrial Revolution.

Suggestions for Teachers

• After providing a definition of the Industrial Revolution and explaining the time span across which it took place, teachers might supply small groups of students with a set of the documents in this primary source set. Students can categorize the documents by whether they provide information about what happened, why it happened, or its effects. Some documents may fit into more than one category. When small groups have completed their work, the teacher can facilitate creating a class list of events of the Industrial Revolution, causes (or supporting factors), and effects. Students may search the Library’s online collections to find additional evidence to support the causes and effects on the class chart.
• Using the documents in this primary source set, students can create a timeline of important events in the Industrial Revolution. The last document in the set is dated 1919. Was the Industrial Revolution over by 1919? Challenge students to find evidence in the Library of Congress digital collections to support their answer (there are documents that suggest industrialization in the South was still taking place into the 1930s).
• Understanding a historical event as it was experienced by those who lived through it is an important skill of historical thinking—and one that can be difficult to develop. Teachers may challenge students to study documents in the collection to identify varied perspectives on the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution, as experienced by people of the day. Would students classify the responses as mainly positive, mainly negative, or about equally divided? How did people respond to what they perceived as negative effects of the Industrial Revolution?
• In 1893, Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition, which highlighted achievements of the United States and other nations in a variety of fields, including manufacturing and technology. An entire building was devoted to electricity. Using the primary source set as a starting point, ask students to design an exhibit about the development of American industry for the World’s Columbian Exposition.

Additional Resources