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The Civil War
(1861-1865)



The Southern Economy


The Southern Economy
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   high interest, readability grades 3 to 5
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   4.84

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    ports, slavery, than, cost, serve, against, coast, country, general, order, government, other, barrel, extra, leaving, pound
     content words:    Civil War, African Americans, Great Britain, William Sherman


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The Southern Economy
By Cathy Pearl
  

1     The Civil War cost more than any other war the country had fought before it. Because of this, the North and the South had to find ways to raise money. The economy in each part of the country was affected in different ways. The South had a harder time than the North.
 
2     There weren't a lot of factories in the South. The people in the South were using cotton to get what they needed. The South would sell cotton to other parts of the country. It would then buy what it needed.
 
3     The South's economy was built on the labor of slaves. African Americans were forced to work the farms and plantations where cotton was grown. Without their hard work, much of the cotton would be left to rot in the fields. There wouldn't be enough people to harvest it.
 
4     The war hurt the cotton trade. The North set up a blockade in the waters off the coast of Southern ports. This blockade was able to keep many ships from leaving. The South had a hard time getting their cotton to other countries to sell.

Paragraphs 5 to 12:
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