Difference Between North And Southern States

In 1861, eleven southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America, thus marking the start of the American Civil War. The war was not ended until 1865, and it became one of the most destructive war in the American history. On the other hand, it also shows how the northern states and the southern states were already diverging from one another in just less than a hundred years after the founding of the United States. From the period between 1740 and 1865, the divergence of northern states and southern states from one another was mostly contributed by the dispute over the issue of slavery as a result of how the culture in the north and the south were drastically different, with focus on the difference in roles …show more content…
The north took on the industrial approach, focusing on producing manufactured goods with the use of labor forces. In the diary of Martha Ballard, a Hallowell midwife, we can see that in the late 18th century, the economy was characterized by family production. She “employed her daughters” and “her nieces” for textile production, and at the same time, letting them to “[weave] for other families in town” in exchange for the help from those families, eventually, they ended up producing “hundreds of skeins of cotton, wool, linen, and tow thread” (Ulrich 75, 79). Martha Ballard’s diary shows that the idea of employing others for producing goods have already existed in the north during the late 18th century, which displayed the emerging of industrialization in the north. And as expected, with the federal and state government’s action to stimulate economic expansion, such as reducing liability and supporting enforcement of contracts, many businesses were established. More businesses means more people are going to work in the factories for wages, as a result, the so-called free labor system was formed in the …show more content…
In the south, slaves worked in bad conditions, were often beaten by their masters, and their families were often mercilessly separated. Such maltreatment is illustrated in the story of Pauli Murray’s great-grandmother Harriet. Being a slave in the Smith family, Harriet had no choice but to follow the orders of the family members, and because of this, she was victimized by Sidney Smith. Even though Harriet was married to Reuben Day, a free black, for two years, Sidney could still force Reuben to leave her or that he will be “whipped and thrown in jail”, and after that, Sidney would always “beat [Harriet] into submission” and rape her (Murray 42-43). After the American Revolution, northerners have already begun to rethink about their attitude towards slavery. They believe that if they themselves were able to be free from the English King’s control, then the slaves should be able to become free from their masters. With more and more cases similar to Pauli Murray’s great-grandmother’s story that happened within the slave system in the south, it only showed more about how inhumane that the practice of slavery in the south was. As a result, the northern states’ anti-slavery sentiment was slowly increasing over time, and with the belief of upward mobility due to the north’s industrialization, it