The Civil War and Its Ending of Slavery This paper is about the civil war and about how it ended slavery with the emancipation proclomation. I will also talk abou the physical loses of the war. The South, overwhelmingly agricultural, produced cash crops such ascotton, tobacco and sugarcane for export to the North or to Europe, but it depended on the North for manufactures and for the financial and commercial services essential to trade. Slaves were the largest single investment in the South, and the fear of slave unrest ensured the loyalty of nonslaveholders to the economic and social system.