Slavery And Politics In The Early American Republic: A Thematic Analysis

Slavery & Politics in the Early American Republic by Matthew Mason, gives a detailed analysis on the role slavery and slave representation played on sectionalism and politics in the Early American Republic. Mason writes about the growth in anti-slave efforts after the Quakers were the first and only organized anti-slave groups in colonial America. There had been no discontinuation in discussion about slavery from the revolution to the Civil War. Mason’s thesis states that the argument that the Missouri Crisis started the fight between the North and South on the issue of slavery. Mason believes that it started much longer before this with events like the American Revolution, the War of 1812, Constitutional Contentions, along with the Missouri

A portion of the North agreed with the south in that it should be a problem that will stay and will be dealt with in the southern states. The 3/5 compromise and the War of 1812 were two major factors that Mason speaks on that directly affected northerners and lead to more push for anti-slavery movements. A quote here supports this, “As Madison won reelection in 1812 and the war dragged on, New England Federalists increasingly argued that were it not for the added power of slave representation, the Republicans would never have been able to enact commercial restrictions or initiate the war” (51). Though rebutted later in the book by a southerner, this was a fair point. With this added slave representation came much more power for the southern states. It helps bring Thomas Jefferson to power. In Thomas Jefferson’s power came the Louisiana Purchase and the Embargo Act. Louisiana Purchase added slave states and the embargo directly affected the northern economy. Without this slave representation the north could have been much more powerful than the south and the Federalist Party could have rose to be a prominent