In the period before the American Civil War (1861–65; a war between the Union [the North], who were opposed to slavery, and the Confederacy [the South], who were in favor of slavery), the South had remained a largely rural society, reliant for the most part on one crop, cotton, which was by far the nation's largest export. Southern plantations and farms supplied three-fourths of the world's cotton to textile manufacturers in both the United States and Great Britain. Attempts to diversify (give variety to) the Southern economy had nearly ceased in the decade before the war because cotton prices rose more than 50 percent, stimulating even more new cultivation. Not surprisingly, the Southern economy remained overwhelmingly agricultural. Southern capitalists (people who invest their money into businesses) invested much more money in cotton than in factories or even land. More precisely, they purchased slaves who provided the...