Consider the noted policy mistakes made by the Federal Reserve during the Depression and explain how each may have contributed to economic decline.

“Fed officials…became increasingly alarmed at the prospect of high inflation and increased reserve requirements for banks.”

Explanation: The longest and deepest downturn in the history of the United States and the modern industrial economy lasted more than a decade, beginning in 1929 and ending during World War II in 1941.

There was great wealth in the South, but it was primarily tied up in the slave economy. In 1860, the economic value of slaves in the United States exceeded the invested value of all of the nation's railroads, factories, and banks combined. On the eve of the Civil War, cotton prices were at an all-time high.