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Social Differences Between North And South

Decent Essays

By 1860, the United States seemed to be divided into two very different cultures — Northern and Southern. Write a five-paragraph essay that explains the differences between the social structure, economy, and political goals of the North and South. Though the U.S. civil war itself spanned only four years, the wide-ranging social, economic, and political differences between the northern and the southern states had existed long before the firing of the first shot at Fort Sumter. In the social sphere, though the North and the South differed on what constituted a “gentleman,” there was no dispute over the man’s role in relation to the woman’s. In the context of economy, southern wealth relied on farming, land, and slaves, while the northerners relied on industrial capital …show more content…

Despite differing cultural norms, the North and the South did share one common view: the role of the man in society and family. In both Northern and Southern cultures, the man was expected to provide for his family and be the head of the household. His spheres included those of politics and work, and the he was expected to keep his family -and his wife- in line. Despite this similarity, the North and the South did differ on the epitomy of the gentleman. In the South, a gentleman was expected to defend his family’s honor using violence. In the North, on the other hand, this show of violence was not expected, nor appreciated. Instead, Northerners felt that a gentleman should be self-made, hardworking, and educated. The North and the South also differed in the factors which controlled their economies. In the South, the two most important commodities were land and slaves. Plantations were a large source of wealth for the southern elite, and slavery was both rampant and lucrative. In the North, on the other hand, slavery was looked down upon, and farming made up a portion of the economy, but nowhere near as much as it did in the South. Instead, the Northern

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