Imagine that circumstances had forced the North to surrender to the South in the Civil War, causing two countries to share the region now occupied by the United States. What economic effects might this have had on the North? the South? the region as a whole?

With its mild climate and fertile soil, the South became an agrarian society, where tobacco, rice, sugar, cotton, wheat, and hemp undergirded the economy. Because of a labor shortage, landowners bought African slaves to work their massive plantations, and even small-scale farmers often used slave labor as their means allowed.