Paper on soutnern economy during the civil war era

The United States economy has always varied by region. Most notably, during the period leading up to the Civil War, the markets of the North and the South grew at markedly different rates and in considerably different directions. Different occupations combined with local market practices produced varying growth rates of the economy in the two regions. In the early 1800’s the South had more manufacturing than the Northeast. But after the War of 1812 cotton agricultural production displaced everything in the south, while the north experienced tremendous growth in industrialization and technology.
There was some manufacturing in the antebellum south. Cotton and waterpower made textile manufacturing profitable. But Southern manufacturing was small in scale compared to the north; only 15 percent of the nation’s manufactured goods came from the south in 1860. Southerners were not industrial capitalists. In fact white society in the south was generally stagnant, with no innov...