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The Pros And Cons Of Slavery In America

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America was founded on the principles of freedom. Some of the first settlers came for religious freedom, and people today still immigrate for various types of freedom not present in other countries. But back in the 18th and 19th centuries, not everyone was free. Slavery had existed in America since the founding of the country. The South mainly used slaves for work on plantations, and the North used them for various tasks like housekeeping and working in factories. Many people in the North started to oppose slavery, and by the late 1700’s many states in the North had outlawed it. Slavery went on in the South for almost another century until it was finally banned. This did not make free blacks free to live like everybody else, though. Free blacks in the North were not very free because of their limited freedoms in politics, economics, and in their social lives. Blacks in the North were not very free because they had very little social freedom. In Charles Mackay’s Life and Liberty in America: or Sketches of a Tour in the United States and Canada in 1857-1858, he wrote, “…he [blacks] shall not be free to dine and drink at our board [table]… to mingle with us in the concert-room, the lecture-room, the theatre, or the church…” (Doc B). Blacks were very isolated in this society. They could not interact with Whites at all. Whites restricted blacks from doing much of anything in society. They could not eat at the same table as whites or even associate with them. Whites would not
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