The United States as “One Country, Two Systems”

From its inception as an independent country, the United States hosted two social systems, one that officially recognized slavery and one that did not. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention were unable to agree on the elimination of slavery, ultimately allowing it to persist by state discretion and thereby allowing its extension throughout the nation. Seventy years later, at the time of the Civil War, slavery was exclusive to the south. Two distinct social, political, and economic systems characterized a divided house: a more urbanized and rapidly industrializing north, based largely upon free labor, and a mostly rural, agricultural south, based in considerable measure on slavery.