The Market Revolution And The Civil War

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The Market Revolution and the Civil War

When the Union was formed after the Revolution it was set up as a federal system which provided for state’s rights over the government’s rights, as it was set up the constitution had already provided for division between the states who favored state‘s rights and the states who favored the government rights. But the main issue during the Continental Convention was not over state’s rights but slavery; some states were committed to slavery while others in the North wanted to ban slavery. To solve the problem the Constitutional Convention came with the three-fifths rule. Differences over slavery were “settled” but little did the Founding Father know that these differences would be born again to doom the republic.
The three-fifths rule supposedly solve the problem of sectionalism that existed the Union. Slavery was not an important issue in the states but as the population grew and started to think about human rights slaves became to be gradually emancipated in Northern states and differences started to grow again culturally and economically. “Some Northerners thought Southerners would recognize the inefficiency of slavery and end it voluntarily”1 but the events that will come about will make Southerners consider slavery as inevitable.
The Market Revolution was the first step into aggravating sectional differences between the North and the South. In the North an industrial power was emerging with an urban population composed of whites, immigrants, and free blacks. By contrast the South was agrarian and feudal society trying to survive with an economy based on slave labor and cotton export but the benefits were so large for both sides that differences were put aside and the South supported the North so there was little animosity between them.
All the tensions began to build up when ideas of reforms were starting to be heard especially reform in slavery. The creation of an abolit...