At the heart of the divide between the North and the South was slavery. The North simply wanted the states to be “free states.” Most northerners thought that slavery should be outlawed and many northern states had diminished slavery. The South, however, wanted the new states to be “slave states.” The economies of of the two areas are different because Northern states use industrial work like factories, while Southern states used slaves. The decision of using and not using slaves became an imperative decision to economy as well. Without big farms to run, the people in the North did not rely on slave labor. 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. So slavery was the base of all issues in the south and north of the United States.
