Data Literacy for Social Studies, Number of Farms per State, 1850 vs. 1860

Studying the economies of the North and South is central to investigating the causes of the Civil War, and agriculture was important in both regions. We created these multi-set bar graphs using a data table from the 1860 U.S. Census to show the number of farms per state in 1850 and 1860. We divided the data according to states that would become Union, Border, and Confederate States during the Civil War. The spreadsheets found here include the original table, recreated table, and graphs. As both the table and graphs in the spreadsheet show, each state’s number of farms increased between 1850 and 1860, with the number of farms in some states more than doubling. The Union states had more farms per state than the Confederate states. In fact, the five states with the highest number of farms were all Union states: New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Indiana. This is because the Confederate states relied on a smaller number of large plantations dependent on enslaved labor, whereas the Union states relied on many smaller, diversified farms that became more mechanized and didn’t require enslaved labor to work them.