Question about an economic cause of the US Civil War:
The general consensus (as my uneducated head understands it): North & South developed very different economic interests, that put them on the path to war. Industrialization required a different set of tax/tariff policies, so that the North could incentivize investment in factories and to increase movement of labor. Plantations interests made industrialization in the South less profitable. As the North becomes far more diversified economically relative to the South, necessary policies for each region become more divergent. Slavery in the antebellum South was profitable, but required expansion into new territory to remain so.
So here are my questions:
I tried to make sure this wasn't completely covered in the FAQ. I hope a charitable reading of my post contains a question worth answering. But if I need to rework this let me know. Thanks!
EDIT: I thought to clarify: for the necessity of expansion into new territory for slavery: I mean is this different from the normal imperative every economy has for growth? (for ex. if the US does not grow, it cannot sustain current living standards)
The North and the South absolutely had different economic models in mind. The North and the South also had different geographies that affected the way industrialization progressed. THe South, generally, has many rivers leading to the coast, especially the Mississippi, which makes the need for industrialization to transport goods lower. Remember, industrialization does not just mean factories.
To get at your questions, Expansion was necessary for many planters for a couple reasons. First, growing cotton, which was what plantation owners did, is very damaging to the soil, especially when you grow cotton year after year. You can track the production rates of plantations over time and there is a steady decrease, though it begins slowly. Secondly, there's the international economics of the issue. The price of cotton was falling steadily as well during the antebellum period, especially in England as Indian cotton began to invade the market. Planters' reaction to this drop in price was not to diversify their production, but to simply grow more cotton to make up for the lower prices, this in turn required more land for them to grow more. Thirdly, there is the political picture in the United States to consider. If slavery did not expand that would necessarily mean that free states would expand, creating an imbalance in the political scene, which is what Planters feared more than just about anything.
As to your second question, it has long been held that slaves were more expensive to use in factories than free workers because free workers take care of themselves outside of work hours, paying for their own food, shelter, entertainment, etc. However, recent scholarship has shown that this is not necessarily the case. During the 1850s, factories did begin to appear in the South, primarily in the border states, which were operated by slaves. Many plantations had switched to using clock time to regulate their workforce and this was not hard to shift over to factory work. Additionally, a few railroads began to use slave labor in the South, and in places like Jamaica, slaves had been used on railroads for a long time before the abolition of slavery their.
Sources: Definitely check out L. Diane Barnes, Brian Schoen, and Frank Towers, The Old South's Modern Worlds. For a big picture look at the United States during the antebellum period get Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought, though I warn you it's a brick. There's also a good book about English railroad workers in Cuba and the interplay between slavery and industrialization there, but I cannot for the life of me remember it. It's really bothering me.