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→Description of the North prior to 1850
==Prelude to war==
==Prelude to war==
===Description of the North prior to 1850===
===Description of the North prior to 1860===
The chief characteristic of the North was its industrialization, which was rapid. Plants to manufacture metal goods sprang up almost as fast as they were invented, and after manufacture they spread quickly. In 1840, [[John Deere]] was manufacturing a new stainless-steel plow that he had invented barely three years before; by 1848 the plows were selling at the rate of a thousand a year. By 1857, Deere and his partner had expanded with the manufacture of so much farm equipment that the Middle West was made the country's greatest wheat-producing area. Farm equipment also included the first examples of steam-powered plows, and in 1859 there were contests as to who could build and deploy the best plow. One such plow at a contest at Freeport, Illinois caused an official committee to declare the machine could "plow 25 acres a day at 62.5 cents an acre" versus a normal manual charge of $2.50 an acre. (Nevins, pg 166-168)
Inventions were not limited to farming. Locomotives, sewing machines, shoe peggers, reapers, augers, turbines, hydraulics, power looms, rotary presses, and more raced out of factories at near break-neck speed. Standardization was also an American invention, as Connecticutt's Samuel Colt demonstrated with his revolver which had interchangable parts. To keep up with the exporting demand, Northern shipyards produced so many ships that they threatened to eclipse their chief rival, Great Britain. (TL 1, pg 18)
The North was also a melting pot of immigration. Northern cities were crowded and boisterous, and expanding rapidly. New York's population had jumped from 515,000 to 814,000 in the 1850's; Chicago's had gone from its 1837 incorporation with barely more than 4,000 people to over 112,000 by 1860. (TL 1, pg 16)
===Description of the South prior to 1860===
===Description of the South prior to 1860===
The South was largly agrarian. A Southern boast, "Cotton is king!" became very true by the 1850's, as cotton was grown, harvested, and shipped to market in vast quantities. The number of bales in 1849 was 2 million; by 1859 it had jumped to 5.7 million, amounting to more than half of all American exports and seven-eighths of the total amount of cotton in the world. (TL 1, pg 10)
The South was largly agrarian. A Southern boast, "Cotton is king!" became very true by the 1850's, as cotton was grown, harvested, and shipped to market in vast quantities. The number of bales in 1849 was 2 million; by 1859 it had jumped to 5.7 million, amounting to more than half of all American exports and seven-eighths of the total amount of cotton in the world. (TL 1, pg 10)