Comparative essay on the North, South, and West from 1865 to 1900 A.D

Comparative on the North, South, and West from 1865 to 1900 A.D - Essay Example At the end of the Civil War in 1865, America was not yet the 50-state nation it is now. It was but an adolescent alliance of 35 tension-filled states of 24 victorious and predominantly northern Union States and 11 Southern states that failed to secede as the Confederate States of America. After the war, a combination of events fuelled an economic boom that pushed the population of the country from the North-South axis on the Eastern end towards the West. The Civil War had been a battle that pitted the rich industrial North allied to the seat of government in the East, against the agricultural South. The expansion to the West, however, helped temper the nation’s simmering post-War energies. Specific events in these regions during the period shaped the U.S. geographically, socially, economically, and politically and prepared the ground for our ascent to worldwide supremacy (Sobel 188-89). The powerful North grew on the backs of tough, hard-working European immigrants who industrialized and enriched their way to economic dominance. Perhaps the harsh climate helped, but it was really geography that made the region the seat of U.S. industrial production and wealth by the late 19th century: Pennsylvania oil, steel mills in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan, manufacturing and mining in Wisconsin and Minnesota – all bonded with the financial might of New York under the expert, at times misguided and corrupt, governance by elected officials in D.C., the nation’s capital (Carnegie 653-657). Civil War victory and Reconstruction made an already strong region even stronger as industrialists, bankers, and businessmen took advantage of opportunities to reconstruct a devastated South. Victory also entrenched the north-based Republican Party as a political power that dominated American politics, producing two-thirds of post-Civil War Presidents (Sobel 201-7). The