The state of Georgia earned the nickname "The Empire State of the South" in the antebellum period largely because of its textile industry. From 1840 until 1890 the state consistently led the South in textile production, Antebellum towns including Macon, Milledgeville, Madison, and Greensboro experimented with steam-powered cotton factories, with varying degrees of success. The steam-powered factories in Madison and Greensboro went broke in the 1850s, while those in Milledgeville and Macon survived to serve the Confederacy. Macon Cotton Factory the leading manufacturing sector of the United States in the years before the Civil War. Georgia's entrepreneurs began to experiment in factory-based industry between 1809 and 1820, but they failed in their first three attempts: the Bolton Factory in Wilkes County, Schley's Factory in Jefferson County, and Jacob Gregg's Factory in Morgan County. Although the details of these failures remain unclear, it may be that the sparse population in these counties near the Indian frontier proved too thin a market for profitable industrialization. Only after 1820 did Georgians push that frontier sufficiently west to develop the suitable waterpower factory sites along the fall line in Georgia. At the end of the 1820s the nullification crisis, in which southerners opposed a protective tariff that subsidized northern industry at the expense of southerners, pushed Georgia's entrepreneurs to industrialize textile production in earnest. At the end of the 1820s Augustin Smith Clayton of Athens constructed a cotton mill near his hometown, hoping to prove the protective tariff that subsidized northern industry at the expense of southerners unnecessary. Augustin Smith Clayton Two of Georgia's important politi... ... middle of paper ... ...ustrial manufacture. Others created industries ancillary to ongoing textile industrialization, such as bobbin mills and foundries. The thirty-year cycle of boom and bust in Georgia's antebellum textile industry proved that the success of southern textile mills was inversely related to long-term trends in the price of cotton. When agriculture suffered, mill building flourished. When agricultural profits rose, Georgia's textile industry floundered. Georgians rationally pursued profits in both agriculture and industry but were mindful of market forces and the history of risks in each area. Nonetheless, despite the setbacks of the late antebellum period, the industrial facilities and expertise developed by Georgians before the war contributed to the Confederacy's logistical ability to fight a truly modern war for four years against the industrial behemoth of the North.
General Richard Sherman’s march to the sea has just finished. After successful capturing Atlanta, Georgia, General Sherman directed his Union army to Savannah, Georgia. Along the way, northerners wreaked havoc on Southern cotton mills and destroy train tracks while completely uprooting 20 percent of Georgian plantations. This effectively halted the Confederate’s means of transportation and economic structure subsequently w...
In “Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism: A New Look at an Old Question” James McPherson argues that the North and the South are two very different parts of the country in which have different ideologies, interests, and values. Mcpherson writes this to show the differences between the north and the south. He gives perspectives from other historians to show how the differently the differences were viewed. These differences included the north being more industrialized while the south was more agricultural. He gives evidence to how the differences between the north and south came together as the south produced tobacoo, rice, sugar and cotton, which was then sent to the north to be made into clothing or other fabrics. Mcpherson analyzes the differences
Before the American civil war, the Southerner’s economy had almost entirely been constructed on slave and cash crop agriculture. The cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney. The cotton gin was a contraption that transmogrified the fabrication of cotton by significantly making the task of removing seeds from the cotton fiber faster. The invention benefitted the slaves because it saved the slaves
An even greater advantage of the North was its industrial development. The states that joined the Confederacy produced just seven percent of the nation’s manufactures on the eve of the war. What made the disparity even greater was that little of this was in heavy industry. The only iron foundry of any size in the Confederacy was the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, which had long supplied the United States Army. Tr...
This helped manufacturers from New England, and led to a crisis known as the nullification crisis. Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina argued that states had a right to nullify this law. Many southerners were against tariff because they feared that if the federal government could do that, they could end slavery as well. They hoped to stop this by nullifying the tariff law because it would weaken the federal government. President Andrew Jackson defended the tariffs, and Congress listened to Jackson, and passed another tariff law. After that, South Carolina became fed up and threatened to secede. Eventually, the two sides came to peace and ended the
Throughout the early parts of the century the North had heavily concentrated on industrial improvement while the South had mostly concentrated on agricultural means. This proved to be of great significance, as the two sides would find themselves in a high cost and high demand war. During the onset of the war the "North contained 80% of total U.S. industry" (Rivera pg.1), and many of these production facilities were quickly and easily transformed in order to support the demands of the military. The South on the other hand had very few production facilities and most of them lay along the contested Border States, and they lost most of these facilities when West Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware opted to...
During the American Revolution and the civil war, the North and the South experienced development of different socio-political and cultural environmental conditions. The North became an industrial and manufacturing powerhouse as a result of rise of movements like abolitionism and women’s right while the South became a cotton kingdom whose labor was sourced from slavery (Spark notes, 2011).
...iled to gain the recognition of the European nations, North's superior resources made the outcome inevitable, and moral of the South towards the end of the war. The Civil War was a trying time for both the North and the South alike, but the question of its outcome was obvious from the start. The North was guaranteed a decisive victory over the ill-equipped South. Northerners, prepared to endure the deficit of war, were startled to find that they were experiencing an enormous industrial boom even after the first year of war. To the South, however, the war was a draining and debilitating leech, sucking the land dry of any appearance of economical formidability. The debate continues whether or not the South could have won the Civil war. It’s always going to be a bunch of “what ifs?”
The North and South were forming completely different economies, and therefore completely different geographies, from one another during the period of the Industrial Revolution and right before the Civil War. The North’s economy was based mainly upon industrialization from the formation of the American System, which was producing large quantities of goods in factories. The North was becoming much more urbanized due to factories being located in cities, near the major railroad systems for transportation of the goods, along with the movement of large groups of factory workers to the cities to be closer to their jobs. With the North’s increased rate of job opportunities, many different people of different ethnic groups and classes ended up working together. This ignited the demise of the North’s social order. The South was not as rapidly urbanizing as the North, and therefore social order was still in existence; the South’s economy was based upon the production of cotton after Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin. Large cotton plantations’ production made up the bulk of America’s...
Stanley, George E. "The Rise Of Manufacturing." The Era of Reconstruction and Expansion (1865-1900. N.p.: World Almanac Library, 2005. 20-21. Google Books. World Almanac Library. Web. 29 Sept. 2013.
The South was built politically, culturally, and economically on slavery. In the Antebellum South, the most important factor was not wealth but power. One theme of the Antebellum South was white supremacy and slavery ensured this through the control of labor which also worked as a system of racial adjustment and social order. Slave ownership elevated the status of the wealthy planters and this allowed the institution of slavery to be accepted due to the paternalistic culture of the South. This paternalistic master-slave relationship was important for slaveholders to maintain their power. The wealthy planters set the tone for the Southern society which maintained this idea of white supremacy through the exercising of hegemony. This infatuation
Of one of the first to kick off, was the textile industry. Which helped Americna manufactoring. Hundreds of young women from farms were sent to mill towns to work in textile factories. In Document C, Farm familys strive to get their daughters into mills to help support the family and the farm. As manufactoring grew, transportation was key in connecting cities for trade.
With the economic system, the south had a very hard time producing their main source “cotton and tobacco”. “Cotton became commercially significant in the 1790’s after the invention of a new cotton gin by Eli Whitney. (PG 314)” Let alone, if they had a hard time producing goods, the gains would be extremely unprofitable. While in the North, “In 1837, John Deere patented a strong, smooth steel plow that sliced through prairie soil so cleanly that farmers called it the “singing plow.” (PG 281).” Deere’s company became the leading source to saving time and energy for farming as it breaks much more ground to plant more crops. As well as mechanical reapers, which then could harvest twelve acres a day can double the corn and wheat. The North was becoming more advanced by the second. Many moved in the cities where they would work in factories, which contributed to the nation’s economic growth because factory workers actually produced twice as much of labor as agricultural workers. Steam engines would be a source of energy and while coal was cutting prices in half actually created more factories, railroads for transportation, and ships which also gave a rise in agricultural productivity.
The Southern Colonies had many different jobs that people worked. Agriculture was a huge part in the economy. The farmers planted corn, wheat, grain, rice, cotton, fruit, tobacco, sticky maple to make pitch, and also raised livestock. Charlestown was the capital of South Carolina, it was the biggest city and was a busy trade center. *Georgia’s agriculture included sugar, rice, and indigo. There were also plantations in the Southern colonies. The plantations were worked by slaves. The farmer’s children only learned how to read and write if their parents taught them. The slaves that lived in the plantations died young due to bad treatment. Most of the colonists lived on small
In the beginning of the 1800s, economic diversities between the two different regions had also grown. By the year 1860, cotton was the chief crop for the South; it also represented fifty-seven percent of all American exports. The prosperity of cotton fulfilled the South's reliance on the plantation system and its crucial elementslavery.