ipl-logo

Causes Of Slavery Divide The Nation

1223 Words5 Pages

How Slavery Divided the Nation There was a great deal of tension in the United States of America during mid-1800s between the North and South after the anti-slavery movement began. This divisional model is known as sectionalism which had both short-term and long-term effects. Some of the long-term causes of sectionalism were social stability, slavery in the west, and a general economic interest while short-term causes included the election of Abraham Lincoln and the westward expansion. Sectionalism was undoubtedly linked to slavery which shaped the American people’s perception of the division of the union at each step. Slavery in the west, economic interest, social stability, the election of western expansion and Abraham Lincoln are causes, …show more content…

One of the most important long-term causes of this was slavery in the new states joining the union. After the Mexican war had been settled with the signing of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the United States had acquired the land of modern-day Utah, Nevada, California, New Mexico, and other areas in the west (Lecture, 06/04/2018). With the newly acquired land, this created new conflicts between the north and south over whether or not the new states would permit slavery. The Confederates believed that fighting for slavery was justified because for them it was more than just about the economic benefits. Slavery worked like cement to hold the Confederates together. They believed that removing slavery would destroy social order as they knew it. Additionally, slavery created a white liberty effectively making white people equal in not being slaves (Manning, 32-33). The Confederates were afraid that if the new states became slave free states, it would lead to a new trend of slavery being removed from the slave states. This was one of the major events that led to …show more content…

During this time period, the southern states had a booming economy from the cotton industry. Southern cotton became a worldwide commodity and they quickly became the leading exporters of cotton around the world. The industry was also highly dependent on slavery because this provided them with free labor workforce. The north could not compete with them on a fair level for this reason. James Henry Hammond, a plantation owner from South Carolina, once famously stated that “Cotton is king” (06/01/2018). What Hammond meant by this was that the world had become so dependent on the southern cotton industry that there was no need to fear war with the northern states. This, however, was not really the case. The conflict against slavery was directly a conflict against the cotton industry due to the dependence on slaves in the cotton plantations. With conflicts from the north emerging against slavery, the interests in preserving the economy of the south led to the emergence of sectionalism, rather than reforming the southern economy. This system overall supported the perception that the southerners held about the division of the union and an effort to preserve their thriving

Show More
Related
602 Words | 3 Pages

In 1793 man named Eli Whitney's created an invention this machine was able to reduce the time it took to separate seeds from the cotton this creation was called the cotton gin. The invention help cotton become very profitable. It was a major economic difference between the north and south region. Down in the south the economy started only worrying about the cotton which means they depended on slavery but up North they worried more on their industries to help more with their work. Up north their industries were buying raw cotton and putting it into finished goods.

Read More
438 Words | 2 Pages

As the steamship and transportation as a whole began to futher integrate itself into northern economy, the South focused more on cotton growth and strenghtening planations. The concerns about the workload were justified through the necessity of cotton, buhe concept of slaves being property and used harshly for profit went against the country’s Declaration of Independance which states that man is entitled to liberty. On the other hand, the North spent days at the factory to create product and participate in trade. Although the North used southern cotton for textile creation, there is no denying that with one clear side of manufacturing, and another on agriculture, the lines of national economy were clearly blurred as both ends of America continued to work without working

Read More
581 Words | 3 Pages

In the late nineteenth century, the North and the South were sharply divided in terms of lifestyle, economical strengths and weaknesses, morals, and political viewpoints. There were many issues that were heatedly debated at the time; slavery, education, industrial expansion, and the rights of freed African Americans. The economy varied hugely depending on the region. In the North, factories fed the economy, and it was full of booming cities. The South however was dependent on "King Cotton," a crop which was almost entirely dependent on slave labor.

Read More
171 Words | 1 Pages

The booming production of cotton in the south during the 19th century was a vast money maker and supplied for the Southern economy, however, it also caused many set backs. Cotton fueled the economy of the Southern states and arguably the economy of the Northern states as well, and also played a major role in the global economy of that time. Cotton indeed brought great wealth to the Southern states, but only the plantation owners benefitted from this wealth. The rest of the population was left poor, uneducated, and illiterate. Despite the wealth and power that cotton brought to the south, it also brought slavery and thus the Civil War which ultimately left the South weak and powerless.

Read More
816 Words | 4 Pages

During the war, the South faced poverty and struggled to gain support from foreign countries. The Confederacy was also known for being the rebels. The Confederates seceded because they wanted to hold on to slavery, states’ rights, and political liberty for whites. They thought that the election of Abraham Lincoln threatened their way of living based on slavery. The Confederate’s president was Jefferson Davis, who was from Mississippi.

Read More
734 Words | 3 Pages

The southern cotton kingdom was equal to the nations railroads, banks and factories in economic profit (313). This created a southern “slaveocracy” which allowed the rich southern planters to dominate the common class (317). The economy of the south depended on slavery since the cotton industry hindered industrial development and technological growth (315). It was true that slaves had better diets and lower mortality rates in American slavery compared to other countries with slavery, but the practice was dwindling worldwide, therefore there were only a few small countries to compare America to (322). Some smaller scale slave owners worked the fields alongside slaves and some had house slaves, but the majority worked in the Deep South on cotton plantations where they knew a slave drivers punishment better than their master’s companionship

Read More
521 Words | 3 Pages

The differences between the North and the South during the Market Revolution were extremely divergent, and the continual growth of cotton as a staple crop caused societal changes that created a larger divide between the two (Schultz, 2014). Whereas, the North depended on commercialized farming and industrialization, the South remain predominately agricultural with few cities, and depended on the export of cotton. The money gained by the growth of cotton led to a societal hierarchy that placed Plantation owners at the top, then small farmers, white farm laborers without property, and finally slaves (Schultz, 2009). This hierarchical order deeply impacted the society of the south with deep divisions, but one true commonality that was a belief in slavery.

Read More
1038 Words | 5 Pages

The Way Slavery Divided the North and the South When the first African slaves were brought to the Northern colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, slavery began in America. Slavery thrived in the South because of the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco and cotton. Most landowners highly depended on slaves to keep their farm going. This put out a high demand for slaves that only kept growing.

Read More
1160 Words | 5 Pages

The North had already vanished slavery, but it was still present in the south. This is how slavery lead to the war. The concepts of the Constitution the union were based on the principles of freedom and liberty that all mean were created equal. The American revolutionaries had fought for independence, they had forgotten to think about the slaves in the south. While the American were cheering about their independence it sent a cruel message to the slaves.

Read More
1451 Words | 6 Pages

‘Slavery was the root cause of secession’. ‘November 6 1860, Lincoln was elected president of America which resulted in panic emerging in the South’ . The election of Lincoln as president who was a Republican leader meant that ideologies, movements and values from the North would be implemented in the South which meant the abolition of slavery. Slavery was a huge characteristic of the South as the economy; politics; social status and psychological mind-sets were influenced by the process of slavery. The southern white population then derived the idea of secession which meant the South would gain independence from Northern aggression .

Read More
766 Words | 4 Pages

No matter your stance at the time, one thing became clear: socially, politically and economically, slavery was the fabric of American success and gave birth to the Old South as we know it today. At the center of the entire institution of slavery, and central to its defense, was the economic domination it provided a young country in international markets. In the early 19th century, cotton was a popular commodity and overtook sugar as the main crop produced by slave labor. The production of cotton became the nation’s top priority; America supplied ¾ of the cotton supply to the entire world.

Read More
661 Words | 3 Pages

This was caused by the recurring conflict of the status of slavery within the US. The Northern states were against slavery as it went against the Constitution while Southern states favored slavery as they used slave labor for their crop production. Slavery was prohibited in the Northern states, while many Southern states practiced slavery. When various aspects including the election of Abraham Lincoln threaten the status of slavery, South Carolina seceded from the union. This led to the secession of the remaining Southern states and the formation of the Confederacy.

Read More
604 Words | 3 Pages

To a greater extent, slavery was the greatest cause of the outbreak of the civil war in 1860. Disputes of slavery caused economic and political troubles between the northern and southern states leading up to the civil war. The fact the the northern and southern states were different in almost every way caused them to turn out like completely different territories, one of their greatest differences was the fact that most southern states economy relied on hard labour, agricultural jobs like tobacco in Maryland, and cotton in Virginia; this caused their economy to be more based on the labour of slaves than the more developed territories in the north (Harrold), who after this time was starting to not need the slave labour in their territories because after early 1800’s, the industrial revolution had been spreading to America, and the country developed very quickly. But in this expansion, only the north states were getting the effect of the industrial revolution, meaning the north would not need slave

Read More
464 Words | 2 Pages

Most of the South’s influence in the world came from its colossal cotton crop, gathered by slave labor, for “cotton...tied the American economy to slavery” (Alexis). Southerner enjoyed the economic benefits of slavery and found those very difficult to just pass up like the abolitionists requested. With such big plantations, planters needed help to run them, but unlike small farmers in the South, they could not create enough children to contribute in running an estate of that size; Southern planters needed slaves to continue to make

Read More
1609 Words | 7 Pages

His plan backfired when the growing profitability of cotton actually increased the need for slaves to work as field hands. As Southern planters moved west to acquire more land for planting cotton, they brought their slaves along with them and even purchased more from the tobacco colonies of Maryland and Virginia (“Cotton Kingdom” 75). This shift westwards spread the plantation system of agriculture and rooted the institution of slavery as an integral part of the Southern economy. In short, the influence of the

Read More

More about Causes Of Slavery Divide The Nation

Open Document