Civil War and Reconstruction 1850-1877: Business and Economy Research Article from American Eras

This Study Guide consists of approximately 48 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Civil War and Reconstruction 1850-1877.

Civil War and Reconstruction 1850-1877: Business and Economy Research Article from American Eras

This Study Guide consists of approximately 48 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Civil War and Reconstruction 1850-1877.
This section contains 1,714 words
(approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Civil War and Reconstruction 1850-1877: Business and Economy Encyclopedia Article

The Midst of Change.

The Civil War caught Americans in various stages of a profound economic transformation. Pockets of the nation, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest, had begun to industrialize and to lay the foundations for centralized, national market structures. In other regions, rural, local patterns of economic life still prevailed. And of course in the South, an economy built around slave labor and the export of agricultural commodities had taken deep root. Still, above the Mason-Dixon Line the pace of change began accelerating rapidly over the 1850s, driven above all by the railroads, which opened possibilities of enterprise on an unprecedented scale. The war itself checked some aspects of this change temporarily; others it intensified, especially as it destroyed Southern slavery and the economy it had supported. By 1877 it was becoming clear that the entire nation was being drawn into a new, recognizably modern economic system...

(read more)

This section contains 1,714 words
(approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Civil War and Reconstruction 1850-1877: Business and Economy Encyclopedia Article
Copyrights
Gale
Civil War and Reconstruction 1850-1877: Business and Economy from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.