The religious changes of the Second Great Awakening, the Romantic Movement, the development of a democratic political culture, and the creation of a domestic national market fundamentally transformed the United States in the years after 1815. These changes did not occur only in the North; they affected the South as well, often in dramatic ways. Indeed, as we have seen, the rapid expansion of cotton production in the South propelled the country's explosive economic growth in the 1820s and the 1830s, and shareholders and slaves had strong ties to the international market well before the nineteenth century. However, the impact of these developments on the two sections of the nation was not uniform, and the abolition of slavery in the northern states after the revolution heightened southern distinctiveness. In important ways, southern values and culture increasingly diverged from the rest of the country. The conflict between nationalism and sectionalism became an increasingly important aspect of southern--and American--life in the years after 1820.