Geographical Influence on Pre-Civil War America Essay

Introduction

The American Civil War remains a highly relevant and still not fully explored topic not only for historians in the United States (US) but also for foreign researchers. There are many reasons, such as the preceding intense political conflict between Northern and Southern states, their differing economic models, and opposing social structures. Each of these would be fair to consider as driving factors that consequently led to the American nation’s division and further military conflict. Many studies examine the preceding national crisis through the lenses of economics, politics, and sociology. Rarely do historical experts consider geography as a set of critical factors contributing to social division, not only in the case of the American Civil War but also in any domestic military conflict. Geography serves as the primary driver and forces people to adapt and create particular infrastructures and systems for survival, which then affect individuals existing within those. In the case of the pre-war tensions between the Union and the Confederacy, soil, resources, and climate were the critical influencing geographical elements that formed both sides and divided them.

Natural Resources, Soil, Climate, and Pre-Civil War Economy

Resources, the quality of the soil, and the climate of a particular area are the cornerstones of any society, as they determine the economic core of the local human population. Before the Industrial Revolution, people had three options, which were agriculture, hunting and gathering, and nomadism. After the civilizational paradigm changed, agriculture remained, and an industrial economy appeared. The leading causes that force societies to industrialize are the lack of soil fertility, the harsh climate, and the presence of natural resources. In the pre-war North, only small farmsteads where no additional labor force was needed were productive and profitable enough, mainly due to geographical factors.¹However, the regions of the Union were rich in iron and copper, the fundamentals of industrial production.² These geographical factors made the Union a global industrial giant. All of the Confederate states were in a moist subtropical climatic zone.³ It was ideal for the cultivation of various crops and the development of large plantations. Differences in natural resources and regional features of atmospheric temperatures, precipitation, and soils were manifested in different economies.

Agricultural and Industrial Economies, Slavery, and Social Relations

From history, it is known that large plantations required a lot of labor for their successful operation, and Southerners enslaved Black people for it. The reasons were not only the vastness of agricultural fields, diversity of plants cultivated, and technological limitations but also the possibility of harvesting several crops annually due to the favorable climate and rich soils. One might say that economic intentions that were the product of a combination of human desire for profit, territorial and climatic conditions, and geographical opportunities made the Confederate economy fully slavery-centric. According to Berger, institutional slavery has a long-term and intergenerational effect, which is the significant reduction of the upward mobility of local communities.⁴ It increases inequality and poverty, especially among repressed groups. Such an environment is the ideal setting for forming the rigid, inflexible, and oppressive hierarchies and systems the South was in before the Civil War. The North had a relatively equal society with more industries, socioeconomic groups, and categories of professionals because it did not rely too heavily on geography economically.

Geography’s Influence on Social Values and Laws

The influence of geography on people in both the Union and Confederation is also visible in social values, principles, and even laws. As noted above, the South was comparatively more dependent on its nature. Consequently, the Confederacy strongly relied on the slave labor force, who were the Black people, and their control. It is not surprising that Southerners’ values were centered on racism, inequality, and superiority. According to Moore, Confederates’ major, fundamental ideas were “that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.”⁵ Judging by Forten’s records, most northerners, however, considered them to be the philosophical core of such principles as freedom, sympathy, compassion, and the equality of individuals before the law.⁶ Drastically different perspectives on ethics and racial and ethnic relations have manifested themselves even in the legal contradictions of federal and state laws.⁷ Retrospectively, the Civil War was the bloody yet natural conclusion or the endpoint of almost a century-old growing division.

Conclusion

This paper is a historical analysis that explores North American geographic features such as soil, natural resources, and climate that have influenced the economies, societies, and laws of the North and South. It has been found that it is possible to draw a causal link between political events, differences in economic models and social hierarchies, tendencies, and geographic specificities and features. Geography influences human civilization more strongly and nuancedly than people think. Historians and political scientists dealing with American history, the 19th century specifically, should look deeper into neighboring disciplines such as geology and climatology to develop new knowledge and uncover unexpected linkages and causal relations.

Footnotes

1. “The North and the South,” American Battlefield Trust, n.d., Web.
2. “The North and the South:” para. 2.
3. “Climate Zones,” National Weather Service, n.d., Web.
4. Thor Berger, “Places of Persistence: Slavery and the Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States,” Demography 55, no. 4 (Summer 2018): 1550.
5. Frank Moore, ed., Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, with Documents, Narratives, Illustrative Incidents, Poetry, etc. Volume I (New York: 1861), 45.
6. Charlotte Forten, The Journal of Charlotte L. Forten: Free Negro in the Slave Era, ed. Ray Allen Billington (Dryden Press: 1953), 34.
7. Richard Peters, Report of the case of Edward Prigg against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, argued and adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States, at January term, 1842, [Philadelphia]: Library of Congress, 1842: 74.