How The North Won The Civil War

11 Pages 2778 Words

profit they could get. Little did they know, "King Cotton" could buy them time, but not the war.
The North's ever-growing industry was an important supplement to its economical dominance of the South. Between the years of 1840 and 1860, American industry saw sharp and steady growth. In 1840 the total value of goods manufactured in the United States stood at $483 million, increasing over fourfold by 1860 to just under $2 billion, with the North taking the overwhelming majority (Brinkley et al. 312). The underlying reason behind this dramatic expansion can be traced directly to the American Industrial Revolution.
Beginning in the early 1800s, traces of the industrial revolution in England began to bleed into several aspects of the American society. One of the first industries to see quick development was the textile industry, but, thanks to the British government, this development almost never came to pass. Years earlier, England's James Watt had developed the first successful steam engine. This invention, coupled with the creation of James Hargreaves' spinning jenny, completely revolutionized the British textile industry, and eventually made it the most profitable in the world ("Industrial Revolution"). The British government, sparing with its newfound knowledge of machinery, attempted to protect the nation's manufacturing supremacy by preventing the export of textile machinery and even the emigration of skilled mechanics. Despite valiant attempts at deterrence, many immigrants managed to make their way into the United States with the advanced knowledge of English technology, and they were anxious to acquaint America with the new machines (Furnas, 303).
It was people like Samuel Slater who can be credited with beginning the revolution of the textile industry in America. A skilled mechanic in England, Slater spent long hours studying the schematics for the spinning jenny until finally he no longer needed them. He immigr...