Abstract
The beginning of the nineteenth Century was mostly rural: indeed the Americans living in the countryside were five times in number than those living in cities. Moreover the nation grew considerably in 1790; there were four million American and seventy years later, there are thirty-nine million. That rapid rise, especially due to immigration, was followed by technological changes which modified the economy of the new nation. Nevertheless, those changes were not equal in the whole country: a gap in each matter was widening between the North and the South. To what extend can we say that the economic opposition between those two parts finally leads to modernity in the whole United States? To understand it, we will first study the two different economies, on the basis of the divide. However, we will see that there was a communication between the two worlds. Finally we will analyze the social changes which resulted from that situation.
