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SS-6 Study Guide
Chapter 13 - Background to the Conflict
Lesson 1: Differences Divide North and South
1. Where did most people live and work in the northern region?
During the mid-1800s most Americans, both in the North and in the South, lived and
worked on farms.
While the South continued to concentrate on farming, the North was developing an
economy based on trade and manufacturing.
2. What was the most common way of life in the southern region?
Most Southerners lived on small farms, where they raised cattle, cut lumber, and grew only
enough food to feed their families.
3. Who were the leaders in the southern states?
Wealthy plantation owners.
Southerners who owned 20 or more slaves and had the largest pieces of land often
held the most important positions in Southern society.
4. What were 2 main crops of the South?
Biggest farms: plantations along the Coastal Plains and near the Mississippi River.
They grew crops such as cotton, rice, tobacco, and sugarcane, to sell at market.
Small farms: raised cattle, cut lumber, and grew only enough food to feed their families.
5. In what region did most people live?
Many more people lived in the North than in the South.
By 1860, the population of the North had grown to more than 19 million.
Only 11 million people lived in the South.
Of those 11 million people – nearly 4 million were Africans held as slaves.
6. Where did most slaves work?
Slave owners had come to depend on the work of enslaved people.
Most were taken to large plantations were they worked in the fields, raising acres of cash
crops for the planters to sell at market.
Some slaves were made to work as miners, carpenters, factory workers, and house
servants.
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7. Who invented the cotton gin?
Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. The cotton gin changed the way people processed
cotton and changed the way people worked.
8. How did Senator Hammond feel about slavery?
Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina felt that “cotton was king.”
He knew that the economy of the south was dependent on the use of slaves on the
plantations.
He said that Africans must be slaves or there would be an end of all things and soon.
9. Why did the settlement of the West bring about new arguments about slavery?
People disagreed whether slavery should be allowed on the frontier.
Most white Northerners thought that slavery should go not farther than where it already
was – in the South.
Most white Southerners believed that slave owners had the right to take their slaves
wherever they wanted, including to the West.
The disagreement over slavery led to fierce arguments.