Why The North Won The Civil War

11 Pages 2869 Words

s they possessed to Northern Industry for any profit they could get. Little did they know, "King Cotton"
could buy them time, but not the war. The South had bartered something that perhaps it had not intended: its independence (Catton, Reflections 143).

The North's ever-growing industry was an important supplement to its economical dominance of the South. Between the years of 1840 and 1860, American industry saw sharp and steady growth. In 1840 the total value of goods manufactured in the United States stood at $483
million, increasing over fourfold by 1860 to just under $2 billion, with the North taking the king's ransom (Brinkley et al. 312). The underlying reason behind this dramatic expansion can be traced directly to the American Industrial Revolution.

Beginning in the early 1800s, traces of the industrial revolution in England began to bleed into several aspects of the American society. One of the first industries to see quick development
was the textile industry, but, thanks to the British government, this development almost never came to pass. Years earlier, England's James Watt had developed the first successful steam engine. This invention, coupled with the birth of James Hargreaves' spinning jenny, completely
revolutionized the British textile industry, and eventually made it the most profitable in the world ("Industrial Revolution"). The British government, parsimonious with its newfound knowledge of machinery, attempted to protect the nation's manufacturing preeminence by preventing the export of textile machinery and even the emigration of skilled mechanics. Despite valiant attempts at deterrence, though, many immigrants managed to make their way into the United States with the advanced knowledge of English technology, and they were anxious to acquaint America with the new machines (Furnas 303).

And acquaint the Americans they did: more specifically, New England Americans. It was pe...