Example research essay topic: War Of 1812 Northern And Southern - 697 words

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The conclusion of the War of 1812 was the beginning of the industrial revolution that, by the time of the civil war, divided the US into Northern and Southern cultures. This division was gradual, and greatly motivated by technological, international, and agricultural factors of the time. Canals linked the agricultural Northwest to the industrial Northeast, creating an economic relationship that excluded the Southern states. The steady flow of cheap labor was supplied by a huge international immigration to the North, establishing it as the industrial sector of the US. The Souths economic dependence on their newly implemented staple crop cotton established the South as the agricultural sector of the US. The improvement in transportation of goods created by the canals was one of the first factors to separate the North from the South.

Until the 1820 s, goods from the Northwest were delivered to New Orleans via rivers, and then transported to the East coast by ships sailing along the coast of the US. This was a very roundabout way of delivery, but it turned out to be cheaper than hauling any goods over the rough terrain separating the Northeast and West. Canals were the solution. They cost a lot to build, but once construction was complete traffic was so heavy that it paid off the construction bill, through tolls, in matters of years. The Erie Canal, for example, gave New York access to the Great Lakes, and all of the Northwestern cities that bordered them. The South was left mostly untouched by Canals, but suffered from the newly formed relationship between the Northwest and East.

The North no longer relied on the South alone for raw materials, but contrarily, the South relied on the North for the manufacturing of the raw materials it provided. The Norths newly established responsibility of creating manufactured goods from the Northeastern and southern sources would not have been fulfilled if not for the immigrants that labored in the Norths factories. The large workforce of immigrants lived in the North for many reasons. Firstly, few immigrants had the means with which to travel far from the places of their arrival, which were usually the coastal cities of the Northeast.

Those that did travel found that cities provided more opportunities for them than farms, because much land and experience was necessary to succeed as a farmer, as opposed to the ease with which one can become steadily employed at a factory, without any significant skills. Fortunately for the North, the south had few cities, with few factories, and was dominated by huge plantations, and the immigrants found refuge in the busy cities of the north. Most of these immigrants became middle-class factory workers in the North, instead of becoming lower-class servants in the Cotton Kingdom that became the South. In the early Post-war (of 1812) years the south continued its division into sections that cultivated rice, sugar, or tobacco. But the specificity of rice with regards to irrigation, terrain and temperature, the competition the South had to face in the sugar market, and the expensively in land of Tobacco created a problem the Southerners managed to solve with short-staple cotton.

Cotton had almost no competition, would grow in almost any terrain or temperature, caused relatively little damage to the soil, and its seeds were efficiently picked using the cotton-gin. This newly reinforced emphasis on agriculture impeded most movements towards industrialization in the South, destroying any hope for Southern economic independence from the North. The establishment of distinct Northern and Southern cultures was the result of a combination of influential factors, which strengthened the North as an industrialized commercial area and reinforced the south as an agrarian agricultural area. The Canal Age accelerated and greatly improved the economic relationship and transportation of goods between the Northeast and West, but left the South in the dark.

The immigrant work force was exclusive to the North, leaving the South dependant on African slave labor. King Cotton prevented any industrial growth in the south, leaving the North in control of almost all American industry. This sectionalism was the base for a series of conflicts that would lead to a horrific civil war between the Northern and South.

Research essay sample on War Of 1812 Northern And Southern