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( Northern United States)
The Northern United States is a large geographic region of the United States of America. Although the region includes a considerable portion of what is often called the American Midwest, most Americans refer to the region as simply "The North".[citation needed] Given its large size, the Northern United States includes a wide variety of socioeconomic, religious, ethnic, and cultural differences in its people. One way of identifying the North is to compare and contrast its development with the Southern United States. Before the American Revolution the South tended to be settled by people of British or German Protestant stock, most of whom came to America as either indentured servants or to simply better their fortunes from what they had known in their homeland. The North, however, was settled by a much wider variety of groups - the Dutch founded the New Netherlands colony in what is now New York, the Swedes founded New Sweden in what is now Delaware, and in New England the Puritans, a well-educated and strict English Protestant religious group, founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritans saw themselves as establishing a "City Upon A Hill"; this view of America as a "special place" would have a profound effect upon American history. During the antebellum period before the Civil War, the North and South developed in very different ways. The colder climate and rockier soils of the North led to less emphasis on agriculture than in the South. Northern farmers were usually subsistence farmers, while in the South large plantations were not unusual. Furthermore, Northern farmers usually grew a wide variety of crops, including corn, wheat, beans, and large numbers of livestock. Southern farmers often focused on growing a few large cash crops, such as cotton or tobacco. In turn, the North developed a society in which manufacturing and industry played a large role. In addition, large numbers of immigrants came to the Northern United States; many of these were Irish Catholics driven from their homeland in the 1840s by the Great Irish Famine. German Catholics and Scandinavians also moved to the North in large numbers during this period. The South, in contrast, received very little foreign immigration before the Civil War. The North also developed the nation's first large cities; by 1860 Cincinnati, Chicago, Buffalo, and Cleveland all had well over 100,000 residents, while Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City each had over 400,000 residents. By contrast, the South remained overwhelmingly rural, with few large towns or cities. Despite these differences, however, it was the issue of slavery that drove the North and South apart. Although most white Southerners did not own slaves, wealthy slaveowners, i.e. the so-called "tuckahoes", tended to control Southern politics, and they vigorously defended the institution of slavery as essential to the region's unique character and prosperity. In the North, a small but growing and passionate group called abolitionists declared that slavery was immoral and had to be ended, by force if necessary. In addition, the North's rapidly growing population gave it increasing power in the federal government, a fact which worried Southerners who felt that a Northern-dominated government might try to free the slaves. In 1860 Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois Republican, was elected President. Lincoln's victory came entirely from the Northern states; in most Southern states his name was not even on the ballot. Although Lincoln was a moderate on the slavery issue and declared that he did not intend to interfere with the practice of slavery in the South, many Southerners did not believe him, and in late 1860 and early 1861 eleven Southern states seceded and formed their own nation, the Confederate States of America.
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