Chapter One: Agriculture, Populism, and The Rise of Fusion When the federal troops were removed in 1870, North Carolina reverted to its prewar identity of a mostly white, Democrat controlled state. The key difference was the lack of slave labor, which forced many into sharecropping and tenant farming and proved to weaken the white cultural domination that had previously ruled the state. With newfound freedom, blacks were able to make slow, but steady inroads. The Fusionist movement of Populists and Republicans in the early 1890s gave Republicans control of the state for the first time in decades. North Carolina and much of the South were economically lagging compared to the rest of the country.
This article by Larry Rivers A Troublesome Property: Master-Slave Relations in Florida, 1821-1865 was a very open and honesty thread to read. My reaction to this article was pleasing it opened my eyes to how Florida was divided into sections according to counties and slavery occurrences. The article clearly talks about how the troublesome property with the master slaves in Florida had its ups and downs when it came to the slaves in rebellion. It explains how the slave masters treated their families and their laborers.
On May the 5th 1964 Major William Tecumseh Sherman was beginning his invasion of Atlanta. He first started with Atlanta because Georgia was “Heart of the Confederacy”. Georgia was heart of the Confederacy because it was an important location. It was mainly important because it had many founderies, factories, supply depots, and it was where the countries main arsenal factories
The northern and southern states of America gradually grew to become very different in both ideas but also economically. One of the prevailing ideas that differed between both regions was slavery. In the north, the economy was mostly composed of the manufacturing industry while in the south the economy was mostly based on agriculture. Seeing as how the south was dependent on slaves for their workforce in agriculture it only makes sense that they would highly oppose any conflicting views and laws. Any freedom given to slaves was a threat to the souths livelihood.
Moral reasons combined with the material reasons, which contributed of the scarcity of slavery in the North. The main moral cause in the North was that the white population did not want to be outnumbered and overly influenced by the black slave population (Pg. 329). Therefore, it is “not in the interest of Negros, but of whites” that slavery was rare in the North. Even in states where slavery was abolished, the white population oppressed the black population in order to maintain white superiority.
Southerners—Democrats and Whigs alike—jumped at the opportunity to open Northern territories to slavery, but Northerners recoiled, outraged that the Missouri Compromise had been violated. Riots and protests against the Kansas-Nebraska Act erupted in Northern cities. What Douglas had failed to realize was that most Northerners regarded the Missouri Compromise to be almost sacred. The publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the brutal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act had by this time awakened hundreds of thousands in the North to the horrors of slavery.
As young nations slowly progress to their full potential, many obstacles riddle their ways. For the United States, the Constitution was the word of law, written by demigods who could possibly do no wrong. Until of course, the question of archaic versus modern morality rises. Such was the problem in between the troubled years of 1820 and 1860. Rapid polarization on the institution of slavery between the North and the South, as well as the magnitude of importance of the ideologies of secession and slavery led to political compromise being increasingly difficult.
Moreover, the presentation of Republicans as a single-issue party of abolition reveals how this devoted “horde” of abolitionist politicians worried Southerners in their time of uncertainty. (58) Republicans are also thought to believe in a “war against slavery until there shall not be a slave in America,” a process that would upend the relationship between slaveholders and their property. (58) This distinction was previously upheld, though the new Republican President-elect causes Toombs to articulate how the situation has changed. Believing that abolitionists have seized control of the government, secessionists see the abolition of slavery as very likely under Lincoln.
What led the Southern States to secede from the Union in 1860 and 1861? As the United States had just finished ratifying the Constitution and establishing democracy in the late 1700’s. Tensions between the North and South of the country began to rise as differences between the two were boiling over many issues both political and economic. Such issues were dealing with the laws regarding slavery and where certain jurisdictions would lie in those cases.
The civil war is associated with southern succession, slavery, and the Republican Party, all factors which this dispute entailed. The initiation for such conflict though, lies in the territorial expansion that Americans believed was destined for the United States at the time. Territorial expansion pinned Americans against one another when debating whether the new states should be slaves states or not, questioned the power the Federal government had in comparison to states’ rights, and put at risk the unity of the U.S.A as a nation. With a vast majority of land acquired through agreements such as the Louisiana Purchase it was difficult to decide whether slavery should spread further west, not do so, or be equally distributed. How this was going to take place led to a long and costly conflict known as the American Civil War.
The economic growth of North and South America from the 1800s to the 1860s differed in multiple ways. Various factors such as: culture, views toward slavery, population, agriculture, and industry greatly effected the separation of economic growth in America. As their conflicting opinions towards slavery grew stronger, the South continued to rely on agriculture; however, the North fulfilled their economic needs through industry. In spite of their differences, the North and South did have some similarities in their economic growth. One similarity the North and South had was the influence of Native Americans on their economic systems through trade.
The convention will encourage Charleston to draft a law of secession. They will announce that the Ordinance of Secession will be enforced on December 20. Soon after, South Carolina will become the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the United States. However, the northern regions seems to believe that our declaration of secession was a result of the refusal of free states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts. After realizing this act in the Declaration, we realized that the United States Constitution failed to establish each State as an equal in the Union, with separate control over its own institutions, such as the right of property in slaves.
The actions that took place due to this event eventually had a compromise that somewhat settled the differences in both the North and South economy’s. It settled with the Civil War and the act of slaves counting as ⅗’s vote and then the new state deciding whether they were a free state or slave
Inside days of the fall of Fort Sumter, four more states had joined the Confederacy, these states being Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. The lines were drawn, very clearly. On paper, the Union exceeded the Confederacy verging on each and every way. Almost 21 million individuals lived in 23 Northern states. The South guaranteed only 9 million individuals, 3.5 million of which were slaves, in 11 confederate states.
We see the contradictions arise for the South beginning in 1764 with the passage of the Sugar Act and the effective end of England’s salutary neglect on its colonies. By this time, the colonies had already established their own forms of government which were run by ‘the people’ (as evidenced by the Mayflower Compact and House of Burgesses) and had grown content governing themselves with little to no interference from mother England. So, when she did try to finally exert authority over the colonies it was met with resistance. In resisting England’s attempts to regain control over its colonies, the colonies found that if they worked together, they could stand up to England and even win, as evidenced by the non-importation movement in 1764 and parliaments revision of the Grenville Acts as a response to the colonists united boycott. This unity would continue all the way through to the American Revolution.8