By the mid-1800s team engines brought about many changes to the United States, especially in the North. First, steamboats replaced flatboats on rivers. Then, steam locomotives replaced river travel with railroads. Railroads and the telegraph both helped link distant places.
Steam-driven machines increased the number of factories, workers, and the size of cities. The new factories also greatly increased the amount of goods workers could produce. Workers, however, received low wages and faced dangerous working conditions.
The South bought clothing, machinery, and other goods produced in Northern factories. Its own economy centered on agriculture. Its population, mostly rural, included small farmers, large planters, poor whites, and African Americans.
Most African Americans were enslaved. They provided the labor for producing the South's cash crops (especially cotton), which Southerners sold to Northern textile mills. Slavery, however, caused untold misery among African Americans.
