The Beginnings of the Sectional Crisis :: American America History

The Beginnings of the Sectional CrisisDuring the antebellum period, the mating and the due south were complete opposites. This conduct to each side viewing itself as superior and viewing the separate as backward. Each side believed itself to be superior, in entirely aspects, to the early(a). The reasons for these opinions apprize be found in the different economic, fond, and cultural systems found in these two regions. The Southern economy was primarily agricultural. This economy, like military many other agricultural economies, did not allow for a great deal of kind mobility. The South also lacked factories, or much industry. However, this was not the main disparity between the North and the South. Most troubling to Northerners was that the South used slaves as its main source of labor. Obviously, Northerners would be appalled by the barbarism associated with slaveholding, the beatings, the insularism of families but they were not. Most appalling to Northerners was that slavery did not encourage social mobility, education, or industrial expansion in a familiarity. This was in draw a bead on conflict with northern views. The North had always been an industrious society. Ever since the tape drive Revolution of the early 19th century, the North progressed man the South stagnated. The North produced steel and iron while the Souths mainly produced cotton. This is not to say that the South was not an economically prosperous region, but it was just not built in the Norths image of industrious. The South did not seem to have a problem with the system of slavery. After all, why should they? it had been successful for over two hundred years. Instead, they saw the North as a cruel society integral of the treacheries caused by capitalism. They saw factory work as wage slavery while they viewed Southern slavery as paternalistic and benevolent. Slavery, they contended, helped eliminate all class distinctions in Southern society. In the North, they saw, fa ctory owners became rich while their employees lived in a state of poverty. Slavery was the great unifier of Southern society. low Southerners also supported the peculiar institution, because it ensured that even the poorest white man was higher than a black man was. This was why Southerners said it bear on social order. Slavery, essentially, gave poor whites someone to look down upon and mock. To an agrarian society the preservation of a rigid class system is of primary concern, unfortunately, this was the tho way the South could preserve it was through slavery.