A number of factors combined to lead the United states firmly along the path to civil war in the decades between 1820 and 1861, when war began. Those factors included economic, political, and cultural variables that effectively divided the American North from South and led to hostilities between the two regions. This report will examine these causes, arguing that while it is often assumed that slavery was the primary moral and political issue that fostered the onset of tensions leading to war from most historianÆs view, economic differences were important sources of conflict that were of even greater significance in causing the Civil War.
One of the major influences on the shaping of the American economic system that would foster divisiveness in the country was the industrial revolution. The advent of the industrial revolution in the 19th century marked a major turning point for the United States. Prior to the Civil War, the industrial revolutionÆs effects were most readily apparent in the urbanized areas of the North, where the climate and agricultural conditions had precluded agricultural production on the scale enjoyed in the South. The North became the locus of development for the factories and manufacturing facilities that employed new technologies, while the expansion of the railroad system into the West opened up new territories. This westward expansion was greatly facilitated by the railroads, which linked the mining operations of the West to the production and marketing centers of the East and North. Raw goods and natural resources could be shipped easily and inexpensively from the West to these factories via rail.
Prior to the Civil War, manufacturing centered mainly on consumer goods such as textiles, paper, and flour; after the War, with the opening of the Western frontier to pioneers and capitalists, manufacturing shifted from consumer goods to basic "modern" industries such as petroleum, steel, and iron wo...