Sectionalism, States' Rights, and Nullification

Sectionalism
       Sectionalism means tension among regions, and thinking about your needs before everyone else's. During this time period, the North and the South had very different perspectives about economy and slavery. The North was leaning more toward a progressive society with a lot more industry. The people living in this region saw the South as stagnant and their economy was based on agriculture. The bases of regional economies varied throughout the Union. In the northeast, the economy was based on manufacturing and dairy or cattle. In the midwest, they focused on farming corn and wheat. The upper south's economy was based on tobacco, as well as corn and wheat. Finally, the lower south focused a lot on farming cotton on large slave plantations. Furthermore, the two main regions (North and South) were divided on the issue of slavery. In the North, most people were anti-slavery but not all were abolitionists. These people believed that the right to enjoy liberty is unalienable. Also, that all people should have the right to be educated. Most Northerners thought that slave owners were man-stealers, and that slavery was immoral. On the contrary, pro-slavery people believed that they were helping slaves by providing them with a place to live and food to eat (this idea was referred to as Paternalism). The North and South were very divided during this time period.
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States' Rights and Nullification
     Another cause of the Civil War was when South Carolina decided to assert their states' rights by ignoring and nullifying the federal tariff law. The idea of states' rights is that the needs of the states come before the needs of the nation. This is like sectionalism because people in South Carolina thought that their region was better and more important than the nation. South Carolina nullified the tarrif law because they felt that it only hurt their economy. Since South Carolina has many ports, the tariff law took away a lot of money that the state could have made. When the state did nullify the law, war almost broke out when President Jackson sent troops to South Carolina. These events were very important because it showed that the South was serious, and there was a real possibility of war.
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