what was the difference in the economy of the north and south after the civil war?

Answer 1

The Industrial Revolution began in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and it quickly spread to the United States. By 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president, 16 percent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas, and a third of the nation's income came from manufacturing. Urbanized industry was limited primarily to the Northeast; cotton cloth production was the leading industry, with the manufacture of shoes, woolen clothing, and machinery also expanding. Many new workers were immigrants. Between 1845 and 1855, some 300,000 European immigrants arrived annually. Most were poor and remained in eastern cities, often at ports of arrival.

The South, on the other hand, remained rural and dependent on the North for capital and manufactured goods. Southern economic interests, including slavery, could be protected by political power only as long as the South controlled the federal government. The Republican Party, organized in 1856, represented the industrialized North. In 1860, Republicans and their presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln were speaking hesitantly on slavery, but they were much clearer on economic policy. In 1861, they successfully pushed adoption of a protective tariff. In 1862, the first Pacific railroad was chartered. In 1863 and 1864, a national bank code was drafted.

Northern victory in the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), however, sealed the destiny of the nation and its economic system. The slave-labor system was abolished, making the large southern cotton plantations much less profitable. Northern industry, which had expanded rapidly because of the demands of the war, surged ahead. Industrialists came to dominate many aspects of the nation's life, including social and political affairs. The planter aristocracy of the South, portrayed sentimentally 70 years later in the film classic Gone with the Wind, disappeared.

*****

The northern soil and climate favored smaller farmsteads rather than large plantations. Industry flourished, fueled by more abundant natural resources than in the South, and many and many large cities were established (New York 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%. Slavery had died out, replaced in the cities and factories by immigrant labor from Europe. In fact an overwhelming majority of immigrants, seven out f every eight, settled in the North rather than the South. Transportation was easier in the North, which boasted more than two-thirds of the railroad tracks in the country and the economy was on an upswing.

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 as from the South. Northern children were slightly more prone to attend school than Southern children.

The fertile soil and warm climate of the South made it ideal for large-scale farms and 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 the farm. 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 - but slaves and free - in the South as there were whites (4 million blacks and 5.5 million whites). There were no large cities aside from New Orleans, and most of the ones that did exist were located on rivers and coasts as shipping ports to send agricultural produce to European or Northern destinations.

Only -one-tenth of Southerners lived in urban areas and transportation between cities was difficult, except by water - only 35% of the nation's train tracks were located in the South. Also, in 1860, the South's agricultural economy was beginning to stall while the Northern manufacturers were experiencing a boom.

A slightly smaller percentage of white Southerners were literate than their Northern counterparts, and Southern children tended to spend less time in school. As adults, Southern men tended to belong to the Democratic political party and gravitated toward military careers as well as agriculture.

*****

After the Civil War, the South was largely devastated in terms of its population, infrastructure and economy. The republic also found itself under Reconstruction, with military troops in direct political control of the South. Many white Southerners who had actively supported the Confederacy lost many of the basic rights of citizenship (such as the ability to vote) while with the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (which outlawed slavery), the 14th Amendment (which granted full U.S. citizenship to African Americans) and the 15th amendment (which extended the right to vote to black males), African Americans in the South began to enjoy more rights than they had ever had in the region.

By the 1890s, though, a political backlash against these rights had developed in the South. Organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan—a clandestine organization sworn to perpetuate white supremacy—used lynchings and other forms of violence and intimidation to keep African Americans from exercising their political rights (the well-known cross burnings did not become a Klan ritual until the emergence of the Second Ku Klux Klan in the 1930s), while the Jim Crow laws were created to legally do the same thing. It would not be until the late 1960s that these changes would be undone by the American Civil Rights Movement.

****


The economic devastation and dislocations of the Civil War made it impossible to restore the economy of the South to what it was in 1860. There was precious little capital in the region. Land owners needed money to buy seed and tools, to pay laborers, and to live on until they could harvest a crop and sell it. Farm workers, black and white, needed employment and they were the vast majority of Southerners. Farm owners could mortgage their future crop (the crop lien system) in order to plant, till, and eat. The money loaned very often came, ultimately, from other parts of the nation, funneled through local banks or general stores. To enhance the possibility of being repaid, lenders usually insisted that the farmers plant cash crops. Cotton and tobacco were the usual cash crops. If a local general store loaned the money, often extending a line of credit to the farmer, it insisted that the farmer buy everything through the store even when the item might be cheaper elsewhere. Bad harvests or low prices or both meant the farmer fell further and further into debt. Sharecropping grew as farmers hired workers by letting them either share in the harvest or giving them access to some of the farmer's land. The sharecropper also thus got the right to buy on credit at the local store. Sharecropping increased in the South beyond the rest of the 19th century. It was a kind of economic slavery and affected whites and blacks alike.

The North in 1865 was an extremely prosperous region. Its economy had boomed during the war, bringing economic growth to both the factories and the farms. Since the war had been fought almost entirely on Southern soil, the North did not have to face the task of rebuilding.

Despite its relative prosperity, the war had been costly for the North. Three methods had been employed to raise funds:

1. Taxation: Protective tariffs, excise taxes on luxury goods, and an income tax were all employed during the war
2. Printing paper money: The Union government printed more than $450 million in “greenbacks” during the war - these notes were not redeemable in gold and their value fluctuated widely during the conflict. Consequently, a great greenback controversy developed
3. Selling bond (borrowing): Union securities were marketed to investors both in the North and in Europe.

Northern attitudes reflected much bitterness toward the South, but few calls for outright revenge. Few Confederate leaders were imprisoned and only the commander of the infamous Andersonville prison camp was executed following the war.

The South, however, had sustained immense damage. Entire cities lay in ruins. Thousands of people lacked the means to provide food, clothing, or shelter for themselves or their dependents. The Federal government did little to assist the needy. The creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau was one of the few efforts to do so.

The South harbored deep feelings of hatred toward the North, but lacked an effective forum for venting those feelings. Tensions were heightened by the actions of the “scalawags and carpetbaggers.” Efforts to regulate relationships between the newly freed slaves and their former masters were made in the black codes.

The Confederacy had printed more than $800 million in paper money during the course of the war. Massive inflation had resulted. The currency and other government securities were worthless, destroying the savings of thousands.

Answer 2

www.wikipedia.com...you should find your answer there.