You may have seen it in several TV series, movies and even in performances by rock bands from the South of the United States of America, such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, the use of the flag of StatesConfederates, that is, that red flag with two blue “X” shaped bands permeated by white stars. Well then, this flag symbolizes the ideological and political uniqueness of southern Americans and goes back to the times of American Civil War (1861-1865), also known as Civil War, one of the biggest wars of modernity and which was fought between the separatists of the US South and the government forces of the North, led by the president Abraham Lincoln.
With the establishment of British immigrants in North America and the consolidation of occupation in the form of thirteencolonies, there was a progressive and accentuated difference in development between the colonies of the South and the colonies of the North. This difference became clearer after Independence. The war was the climax of the tension that had built up between the two regions.
The North of the USA was built around clearly Enlightenment principles, based on the ideals of freedom, work and small private property. It was from the North that the initiative for the development of the industry in America came, but for Therefore, customs measures were taken that restricted the purchase of products from other regions of the world. These measures irritated the southerners, who needed to buy various products for their subsistence, which was eminently agrarian.
In the South, as stated, the agrarian and landowner structure was predominant. While in the North, the valorization of free and salaried work was promoted, in the South, slave labor was the main form of production in the fields. Northerners, also known as Yankees, defended the abolition of slavery and the diversification of agriculture – something that did not exist in the South, which cultivated the modality of plantation, that is, from monoculture on large tracts of land.
Faced with political restrictions from the North, the southern leaders met in Montgomery and decided to create the Confederate States of America, in contrast to the Northern states. The North, which represented national unity and was ruled by Abraham Lincoln, did not accept the southern proposal and war broke out between the two regions of the country in 1861.
One of the strategies taken by northerners to wear down the South was economic destabilization. In 1862, the Homestead Law, Land law, which stimulated west march. This caused the nation's growth prospects to be dissipated from the polarity between South and North and to encompass the West side of the country, in the model of small property proposed by the North.
This measure caused the slave model defended by the South to lose strength. Allied to this, the military power of the North was more sophisticated and efficient than that of the South, which meant that the war ended in 1865, with the surrender of the southerners.
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