The American Civil War - This Mighty Scourge of War

10 The American Civil War

4,500,000 bales. Like the farmers of the

Old Northwest who responded optimistically

to market opportunities, planters and

ambitious slaveholders responded to market

incentives. Still, the slaveholder had little

incentive to invest in labor-saving

machinery and instead invested in land

and slaves.

Like the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, the Tennessee
and Cumberland Rivers had been arteries of
economic exchange in the decades before the
Civil War but the outbreak of war changed them
into routes of military invasion. (Harper's Weekly.
public domain)

The antebellum wests, North and South,

played integral roles in the economic

development of the nation because they

were linked to eastern markets. By the 1840s,

the west had become a principal market for

manufactured goods and provided food for

factory workers who were being pulled to

northern cities by employment. Still, cotton

dominated American exports after the

mid-1830s and served as the basis for

national credit. As the northeastern

economy continued to develop and

diversify, the economy of the South

remained predominantly agrarian.