Postbellum America's Economy
The end of the Civil War and the subsequent changes that occurred as a result transformed regional economies across the United States in different ways. This was in part due to changing labor sources and the resources available. Movement into the West allowed for the increase in resources necessary for the further industrialization of not only the North and East, but the South and West as well. Qualitative data backs that up. Quantitative data then shows that the changing economies following the Civil War greatly increased economic indicators and American wealth. Changing labor sources was especially evident in the South. In “Freedom, Economic Autonomy, and Ecological Change in the Cotton South, 1865-1880,” Erin Stewart Mauldin stated that four million slaves had been freed, but they faced obstacles to any type of financial freedom they might have expected as a result of their inability to acquire the resources necessary to take part in their own agricu...