The South and the North

By the mid 19^th century, each region in the USA preserved its distinct features – the South remained predominantly rural, with cotton plantations and farms, the West implemented manufactures and the North was characterized by growing industry, commerce and finance.

The economies of the North, South and West were becoming interdependent though the North and West were much closely linked through the system of canals and railroads. Later these links were solidified by telegraph. Westward expansion led to the development of widening market economy of the North and West (sometimes called just "the North" as an opposite to "the South") – the new and old states grew and changed.

Economically the South also grew, but it did not change. As many years before it was mainly populated by slaves, slaveholders and nonslaveholders, whose well-being depended on agriculture. Over time the South's ties to slavery and plantations only hardened; southerners moved from slavery as a necessary evil to a necessary evil to a positive good.

Southerners developed a society quite different from the North, where there were no slaves, and the main groups of population were workers, farmers, merchants, and later, manufactures. In the South there were planters, who had an aristocratic lifestyle, nonslaveholders (yeomen), who worked on their family farms, and slaves, who lived without freedom.

The largest population group was yeomen – white southern families, who owned no salves. They settled new territories, and formed an important part of southern society. There was a great social distance between yeomen and wealthy planters, who constituted the smallest part of the society. Most African-Americans in the South were slaves – there were only few blacks who got freedom from their progressive masters.

Slaves were the most abused group of southern population. They worked in the fields and as household workers; their living conditions were rudimentary to almost nonexistent. But it's a mistake to think that most slaves were brutally treated.

Slaves cost much – a strong male worker might cost $1,000 at a slave auction in 1860. Most slave-owners provided their slaves with food, clothing and housing enough for simple living. But the psychological impact of slavery was greater than the physical – slaves were to work hard and it was all for their lifetime.

Progressive thinkers in the North and in the South tried to bring down slavery, but southerners advanced all kind of theories to defend it. They argued that slaves, if well treated, were better off physically and economically than city workers in the North, who lived in terrible conditions. Many people asserted that slavery was not a good social system, but it must be continued because nothing better was available.

The antislavery and abolitionist movements tried different methods to oppose slavery – they sought to provide antislavery reforms, and helped slaves escape to safe refuges in the North. The system of helping black slaves to escape got the name "Underground Railroad". It involved "conductors" and "stations" (hiding places) and helped more than 50,000 slaves to escape to Canada. Besides, local antislavery societies spread over the South and North.

In the most famous novel about slavery Harriet Beecher Stowe described the evils and abuses of slavery. The book aroused so much antislavery feeling that later Abraham Lincoln said to the author: "You are the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war".

As Americans fought for or against slavery, other controversies emerged. Northerners came to believe that their liberties, political rights and economic interests were attacked by an aggressive South. Southerners began to feel that their safety, rights, and prosperity were threatened by an aggressive North.

The feeling that the North and South were too different to be within the same country rose. A northern ideology suggested that progress depended on the free labor, civil liberties, and economic change, while a southern ideology depicted northern society as unstable, lacking respect for the Constitution, and prone to interfere with slavery, which southerners saw as the foundation of white equality and republicanism. As neither side could give up, the conflict was inevitable.

Task 1. Fill in the table representing differences between the North and the South. Talk about these differences using the table.

	The North	The South
Territory
Economy
Population
Attitude to slavery