Unit 5.2

Notes

The Green Revolution RRHS APHG 2025-2026 1 The US in the 1800s • Industrial north • Agrarian south By the 1800s the Northern states began to industrialize and export manufactured goods. As the Northern states industrialized they attracted new immigrants while the South’s population stagnated. In 1800 half of all Americans lived in the South, but by 1850 only one- third of the population was there. The Southern economy relied on producing and exporting cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco and wheat. The South also depended heavily on food imported from the upper-Mississippi valley. Production of work intensive cash crops like cotton and tobacco expanded and the Southern economy became increasingly dependent on slave labor to keep the price of its crops competitive. Technological improvements like Eli Whitney’s cotton gin also helped increase cotton production and made slavery profitable. This regional divide and the growing dependency on slavery in the south for profitable export-oriented agriculture and the increasing social resistance and call for abolition of slavery in the north led to an explosive regional divide within the country. There was relatively little infrastructure or...