Civil War

How did it happen that the North won the Civil War, notwithstanding the fact that the South had its own powerful advantages? This paper explores that question using chapters 11, 12, 13 and 14 for reference sources.

Background on the Southern economy and politics

The South greatly expanded its agricultural industry (the plantation system) between 1800 and 1860, and in doing so became "increasingly unlike the North," the author explains in Chapter 11. The "lower South" relied on cotton (short staple cotton) and the market for all that cotton in New England and in Great Britain made many plantation owners wealthy. Because of the skyrocketing cotton industry, more and more slaves were needed to tend those crops, and some 410,000 slaves were moved from the upper South to the lower South. And yet the South depended economically on the North (which had a booming industrial growth period) and...
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