was always more advanced commercially, and was also expanding industrially.” The Columbia Encyclopedia explains the broadening economic gaps between the North and South and this gap’s materials. The passage mentions the agricultural side of the South and how the North is more industrialized. In the long run, the North would have prospered more because it was involved more in the Industrial Revolution that later greatly changed our nation. Many cities in the North became dependant on trading and exporting manufactured goods with Europe, while the South did not rely as much on trading their cotton and tobacco with Europe directly. The Tariff Act of 1828 was established so that Northerners could protect their industries. It put extremely high import fees on all European exported goods, and the South’s reaction was very hostile. These financial inequalities also created a form of sectionalism that split up our country. The North had its many farmers and low-income Democratic majority in some states just as the South had its supporters of industrialization. The small-time farmers in the North who did not have slaves complained that the Southern slave owners, who could make more money with cheap labor, were cheating them out of money they deserved. These differences eventually led disagreements over the new territories and who would receive them: the slave states or the free states. If the territories became proslavery, then the South would prosper more by making the new areas agriculturally-dominated. The North would become wealthier if the new territories became free, because the industrialized areas would generate a lot of trading for the cities in the Northeast. These disagreements were one of the many reasons the Civil War was fought. Economic discrepancies were not the only problem that started the bloodiest war in the U.S.: the American Civil War. John Brown, an important abolitionist during this time,...
