Sectionalism
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In national politics, sectionalism is loyalty to the interests of one's own region or section of the country, rather than to the country as a whole. It is often a precursor to separatism.[1]
In the United States
Sectionalism in 2010's America refers to the different lifestyles, social structures, customs, and political values of the North, and South.[2][3] It increased steadily in 1800–1850 as the North industrialized, urbanized and built prosperous factories, while the deep South concentrated on plantation agriculture based on slave labor, together with subsistence farming for poor whites who owned no slaves. Southerners defended slavery in part by claiming that Northern factory workers toiled under worse conditions and were not cared for by their employers. In the days leading up to the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying " A house divided against itself cannot stand." What did he mean by this? Clearly he was saying that the United States of America had to remain just that, united. In order to continue to exist as a nation we had to truly be unified. What Lincoln was reacting to were the many conflicts that were dividing this great nation. We call these divisions sectionalism.
Further reading
- McPherson, James. "Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism: A New Look at an Old Question", Civil War History 29 (September 1983).
References
- ^ Politics and Sectionalism in the 1850s
- ^ Charles S. Sydnor, The Development of Southern Sectionalism 1819–1848 (2008)
- ^ Robert Royal Russel, Economic Aspects of Southern Sectionalism, 1840–1861 (1973)