Why were there so many different products in different regions of the country?

Answer 1

The variety of products available to early Americans depends on what time period you're talking about. America relied on imports from Britain and vigorous trading went on between our two countries, in fact it was disagreements over trade and tariffs that pushed us into Revolution with the Boston Tea Party, the Stamp Act and the ultimate assault: what came to be called the Intolerable Acts. Food shortages--manufactured goods, paper products, red cloth, simple items like pins and needles, tea, coffee were costly and hard to come by. But Americans endured and innovated, like the self-sufficient folks they were. American manufacturing advanced--"necessity is the mother of invention. In some ways, the "West", which in early America referred to territories west of the Alleghenies and included what came to be Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio etc., may have fared better than the what was then known as the "Tidewater", the coast along Chesapeake Bay that included the intellectual, cultural, political and economic hub, Boston. People in "the West" were rural farmers, they probably relied less on imported goods and made do for themselves; salt and sugar were probably the only things they could not produce themselves. They eventually became the backbone of Andrew Jackson's new Democratic party in the early 1800s after he served as a Colonel, "Old Hickory", in the War of 1812 and was elected to two terms as the first Democratic President.