Tag: soil

Studying U. S. agricultural history, as I have been doing, sheds new light on historical issues that once seemed solved. Thus my question: Could the deterioration of Southern soil have been a cause of the Civil War?

We know that the Civil War was not fought over freeing slaves but over whether slavery would expand as the nation moved westward. [1] It is less well-known that the South experienced widespread deterioration of its land during the half-century before the Civil War. Much of the South was planted in large monocultures, first tobacco and then cotton. Growing cotton and tobacco year after year takes the nutrients out of the soil.

What could southerners do? Continue reading “Was Southern Soil Exhaustion a Cause of the Civil War?”