As the chapters on the Civil War and Reconstruction made clear, sectionalism had long been a source of conflict in American society. The Civil War was fought in part to prevent the forces of sectionalism from dividing the Union. Even so, the regional geographies, economies, and cultures of the South and the West continued to set them apart as distinct sections. In both sections, ethnic and racial conflict led to widespread violence and the development of social caste systems to justify segregation of African Americans, Indians, Hispanics, and Asians. But the West and South cannot be viewed as regions isolated from the increasingly industrialized Northeast and Midwest; far from it. As this chapter will show, the process of industrialization and urbanization described in Chapters 19 and 20 knit the South and West even more closely to the other regions of the country, even as both regions continued to depend heavily on agriculture and the exploitation of natural resources.
