One of these differences was in the area of economy. The economy of an area has to do with how people make a living and how they spend their money. In the North, the economy was based on industry. They built factories and manufactured products to sell to other countries and to the southern states. They did not do a lot of farming because the soil was rocky and the colder climate made for a shorter growing season. Most people in the North worked in factories or owned their own businesses. In the South, the economy was based on agriculture. The soil was fertile and good for farming. They grew crops like cotton, rice, and tobacco on small farms and large plantations. The many large farms and plantations required thousands of workers. Because of this great need, the farmers began to depend on slave labor instead of trying to hire people to work in their fields.Another difference between the North and South had to do with the new states forming in the western territories. The North wanted the new states to be “free states.” Most northerners thought that slavery was wrong and many northern states had outlawed slavery. The South, however, wanted the new states to be “slave states.” Cotton, rice, and tobacco were very hard on the southern soil. These plants soon took all of the nutrients out of the soil. Without these nutrients the soil would not grow good crops. Because of this, the Southern farmers wanted to move west into the new states and take their slaves with them.These differences in the areas of economy, slavery, and new states began to divide the northern and southern states. In 1854, the U.S. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which essentially opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict. Pro- and anti-slavery forces struggled violently in “Bleeding Kansas,” while opposition to the act in the North led to the formation of the Republican Party, a new political entity based on the principle of opposing slavery’s extension into the western territories. After the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case (1857) confirmed the legality of slavery in the territories, the abolitionist John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 convinced more and more southerners that their northern neighbors were bent on the destruction of the “peculiar institution” that sustained them. Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 was the final straw, and within three months seven southern states–South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas–had seceded from the United States.
