Early Colonial North America

North and South
The origins of the differences between the north and the south in early colonial America on up to the Civil War stem from political beliefs, economics, and social customs. The South was always more agrarian than the North. The South was also interested in controlling its own trade with other countries instead of having it controlled for them by a centralized government. That is one reason the South resisted the Constitution and why Alexander Hamilton, the leading writer of the Federalist Papers, argued for centralization via a strong federal government. Hamilton thought that if the states could control their own destinies with respect to trade with other countries it would soon enough lead to foreign entanglements in wars and so on. The South rejected this idea out of hand with its Anti-Federalist position, but in the end, the Constitution was ratified following a compromise between the North and the South, with the Bill of Rights being incorporated into the Constitution as a means of preserving the states’ autonomy in the face of federal authority.
At least that was the idea in theory—but in practice it all began to fall apart as soon as the Constitution was established. The North and South were never fully in alignment. The South paid far more in taxes than the North did, which meant the Union was heavily dependent upon the South for its continued existence. The North was the seat of industry. Its soil and climate was more conducive to small farmlands—nothing like the large plantations that the South enjoyed. The North, however, had far more natural resources, which allowed it to flourish, industrially speaking. Labor was concentrated in urban areas, especially after the rise of the Industrial Age, which brought the differences between the North and South into sharper focus.
The evolution of these differences really starts with the Industrial Age, but the origin of these differences was apparent from the beginning. The North was more diverse in terms of population and character, and while slavery existed in the North it was far more common in the South—but still even in the South only a third of Southerners owned any slaves. Slavery in the North was gradually replaced by immigrant workers coming from other states to find new work and a new life in the US. In the South, it was less common for immigrants to have any place to go, as it was largely plantation living and there was no room for immigrants to obtain a foothold. The West was often seen as a frontier for some, but it too was not exactly stable or settled to the degree that urban areas in the North were.
Transportation was much easier in the North than it was in the South in the early days. The railroad provided some links in the South and out to the West, but the North had twice as much railroad track as the South did, which meant transportation of people and goods was easier and more conducive to the needs of larger, more diverse populations. The South was diverse in the sense that there were nearly as many blacks as there were whites—and not every black was a slave—but in terms of cities the South really only had New Orleans, which was the major port city of the South.
Politically speaking, the South was Democratic and the North was Republican in general. The South wanted states’ rights; the North tended towards federalism. The South was agrarian and the North was business and commerce-oriented. But the South was far more profitable, which is one reason why it resisted Industrialization: it saw no need for it.
As far as religion goes in the early colonial days, the North was populated by religious reformers, like the Puritans, the Quakers and so on. The South was more of a place where businessmen were looking to expand and grow their wealth through land acquisition. Religion was a part of the Southern culture, but it was integrated with an aristocratic class consciousness that was not always a part of the way of life in the North, especially as more immigrants settled in the North and thus made it the home of the working-class.
Patterns and trends established in the earliest part of the colonial period continued up until the American Revolution in terms of the South focusing on its own objectives and the North seeking to pull the South into its ambitions to be independent from England. The middle colonies—like Virginia—were just as interested in independence, however. None of the colonies like paying taxes to England and none of them liked England meddling in their affairs. The Boston Tea Party was as much about showing England that the American colonists were not going to tolerate foreign rule any longer as it was about protesting taxes and trade rights.
The drafting of the Articles of Confederation was a first step in solidarity among the colonies—but still the South wanted to maintain its autonomy and viewed the Congress more as a diplomatic assembly than as anything else. The North felt the need for a more unified structure of government, however, because it did not want the South to become too independent. Claims of land to the west of the Mississippi were a sticking point for many states—and those claims would lead inevitably to a clash of wills over the following decades leading up to the Civil War. The Articles of Confederation were also not very strong in the sense that it laid the framework for enforcement or for collecting taxes (needed to pay for the war). The Articles characterized the Union as a league of friendship among the independent states—it was not exactly the language used to describe the United States as the country is known today. That was another reason the North wanted to push for the creation of the Constitution. It wanted something more formal, more binding, and more centralized.
The Anti-Federalists resisted the Constitution for that specific reason. State sovereignty was at stake in their opinion, and a federal government with Congressional powers of oversight was a threat to their sovereignty, which they felt they had just fought for and won from England. Why would they hand over their newly won freedom to bureaucrats in the federal government whose interests would not necessarily align with their own? That was a major sticking point that would create tensions for decades. Hamilton represented the business and banking interests of the North. Jefferson represented the farmers and land owners of the South. These differences would be excruciatingly pronounced in the run-up to the Civil War, when the Southern states would secede in response to Lincoln’s election and what they saw as a threat to their sovereignty.
The South preferred local government. The North preferred central government. Nonetheless, the Connecticut Compromise brought North and South together to agree upon the Constitution, which incorporated the Articles of Confederation meant to mollify the South. However, the South began to grow weary of the North and the federal government, just as the colonies had grown weary of England and its authority over the colonies. The South developed its own character and contacts and trade and the North wanted more say in how the South developed.
These divisions led to sharp tensions in terms of national politics, with Democrats and Republicans having two different visions for America. Democrats denounced the idea of a national bank; Republicans tended to favor it. Slavery became seen as an evil and “peculiar institution” even though it was tolerated in the North and not really a bone of contention politically speaking. It only became used in Union propaganda once the War began in earnest and Lincoln could vilify the South by promising to end slavery—a point that kept England from coming to the aid of the South since England had already abolished slavery by that point and it could not very well go and defend a separatist faction that still insisted on maintaining the peculiar institution.
In my opinion, the Civil War was inevitable precisely because the conflict between the Federalist and the Anti-Federalists was never really resolved. The compromise that allowed for the ratification of the Constitution was a temporary fix that only seemed all the more offensive as time wore on. As the nation expanded westward, the South had its own demands in terms of how the Western states would be governed, and the North had its demands. Taxation, tariffs and trade continued to be issues as well, and the South finally announced that it was pulling out of the Union when Lincoln was elected. For the South, Lincoln represented everything detestable about Republicanism and Northern ways. The South wanted the independence to pursue its own manifest destiny—and the North wanted the same; they just disagreed on what that destiny should be. When Lincoln sent ships to Ft. Sumter, the South resisted with force, and the Civil War ensued. In the end, it was all about business—slavery was a way to symbolize the conflict—but even after the war little was done to help the freed slaves obtain equitability in America. The Northern way of doing business prevailed—that is all.