Impact of Sectionalism

Impact of Sectionalism Sectionalism during the 1800’s- 1840’s, caused a grand impact on American politics and policies. Sectionalism began to grow early in the 1800s, right after the War of 1812. As more factories were built, the South and the North grew further apart. When more people moved to the West, the country began to divide even more in this way. The north wanted and federal rights and the south wanted state rights. Each section wanted different things therefore caused problems in government and society. Americans saw themselves as Southerners or Northerners. People who lived in different parts of the country often disagreed. This was also true even in Congress. Sectionalism, placing the interests of one region ahead of the welfare of the nation as a whole, offers great examples in which the country was split. The National Bank, which was proposed by Alexander Hamilton, brought up a lot of controversy in the south, as well as in the west. Not only did the National Bank disgruntle the southerners, but the Tariff of 1816, proposed by James Madison, did as well. People in the North were busy building new factories, in which they were working in textile mills. People in the North favored a tariff that would help their businesses. The tariff is a tax that made goods from outside of the United States cost more. The tariff would make goods from Europe cost more than goods made in America endorsing the American economy. People in the South did not like the tariff. In the South there were a lot of farms, and not a lot of factories. The tariff would not help them. The South would have to pay more money for the things that they bought, which made them very unhappy. The economies of the two biggest sections of the United States, the south and the north, posed as an immense gap between the two. Due to its farm based economy, slaves were introduced to do much of the labor needed to produce cash crops such as tobacco and cotton that the south’s