How did the issue of slavery in the US play into the creation of sectional identities?

Answer 1

The Northern and Southern US states followed a different path of economic growth. The North developed a strong manufacturing sector while the Southern states followed an agricultural path for the most part. Both sections of the country had owned slaves since the early 1600s. However, with the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, a device that made it easier to separate cotton from the seeds, slavery became very profitable and a mainstay in the Southern economy.

The Northern states had little need for slaves in their manufacturing economy with factories and textile mills increasingly taking over much manual labor. And so it was easy for abolitiionist groups to grow and develop there and slavery increasingly became a distasteful practice to many northerners. Meanwhile, the Southern states needed more and more slaves to grow and pick cotton and prepare it for a market that was hungry for that product. Slavery thus became entrenched in the South and many Southerners could not envision a society without it.