Potato Famine Of The 19th Century

As we already noted – in the 1800s expediency of slavery was disputed. While industrial North almost abandoned bondage, by the early 19th century, slavery was almost exclusively confined to the South, home to more than 90 percent of American blacks (Barney W., p. 61). Agrarian South needed free labor force in order to stimulate economic growth. In particular, whites exploited blacks in textile production. This conditioned the differences in economic and social development of the North and South, and opposing viewpoints on the social structure. “Northerners now saw slavery as a barbaric relic from the past, a barrier to secular and Christian progress that contradicted the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and degraded the free-labor aspirations of Northern society” (Barney W., p. 63).

Around 1914 to 1920, over 500,000 African Americans had gathered their belongings and embarked on a journey to the North. World War I and the economic boom that accompanied it created the conditions that made the entrance of black migrants into northern industries possible. However, until then European immigrants had been arriving at an annual rate that surpassed the North’s total black population, thus providing employers with

In the North, people either lived on a farm or in cities. Urban areas, between 1840-1860, became very populated as people moved from farms. “By 1860, about seven in ten northerners still lived on farms. But more and more northerners were moving to towns and cities” (Hart 265). Many people crowded big cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. African Americans were free in the North, but were not treated equal to their white counterparts. Immigrants spiked the North’s population between 1845 and 1860. Some immigrants bought land while others worked in shops. Many northerners treated immigrants like African Americans were treated in the South- discriminating against

In the years preceding the war, a new wave of immigrants came to the United States fleeing the potato famine of 1845 and 1846 in Ireland. A few of the immigrants remained in the Southern entry ports of Charleston and New Orleans. However, the majority swelled the numbers in the Northern cities where they found work in the factories. By 1857, the number of factory workers had risen to 1.2 million, and the industrial labor force had risen to almost 1 million people working an average of sixty-eight to seventy-two hours a week.

One key difference between the North and South was the North’s abundance of cheap labor. Between 1845 and 1855 around 3 million people immigrated to the US (304). This new influx of people brought large quantities of low waged factory, mine and construction workers to the Northern states just in time to aid in the industrial revolution. Contrary to the North, southern states still relied heavily on slave labor as their economy was dependent on cash crops. Furthermore, slavery was not only an economic institution but now a way of life for Southerners. Therefore, slavery was more widely accepted and condoned as it was both a way of life and an economic institution. However, Northerners did not experience this way of life or rely on slave labor. Due to this, Northerners we more eager to expel slavery. Northerners’ discontentment with slavery created negative responses to the Compromise of 1850 as opposed to the Southerners. One of the five federal laws in the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, disabled Northerners’ to remain impartial to the slavery conflict (315). The Compromise strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act, forcing Northerners to return

Migration and population have played a massive role in defining the American lifestyle during the 18th and 19th centuries. One instance of this is through the different beliefs seen in contrasting ideals in the north and south. In the north, with much less of a reliance on agriculture, do not depend on the economic benefits of slavery as much as the south does. As a result, due to this, as well as the emergence of democratic philosophies, Americans, specifically those in northern colonies who didn’t rely on a cheap labor source, began to view such treatment as unequal and completely contradictory to the liberties granted in the Bill of RIghts. Additionally,

Factories enabled a large number of people to be supervised together and replaced hand tools with power-driven machinery. The availability of factory jobs in the north caused a great influx of workers to the region during this era. One group of people, immigrants, particularly met the demand for labor in the north. Between 1840 and 1860, over 4 million people entered the United States. About 90 percent of these immigrants headed for the northern states where job opportunities were abundant. The new advancements in railroads and steamboats, the increase in commercial farming, and the development of large factories triggered the relocation of multitudes to northern cities. Each one building upon another, the events that took place in the north during the 1800s instigated an extreme growth of cities and urban societies, proving population growth to be a key effect of the industrialization in the United States north.

Slavery was a disgraceful part of our history for many years. Its start grew from a need for a labor source in the new and growing America. The Southern economy thrived from slave labor whereas the North did not rely on the labor of slaves. This paper will prove that slavery failed in the North because in the North there was no need for large labor to support the economic structure compared to the South where slavery was needed to support their economy. There are three main points that will be used to support this. They are; Northern industry and Southern industry were very different, the slave population was smaller in the North because of the different economy in the North, and the smaller slave population and less

In the early 1800’s the Industrial revolution changed the economy and lifestyles of the North and South immensely and created the first of the many differences to come between the North and South. During the time period of the Industrial Revolution, the North took its shape of the way we know it to be today, with factories and laborers working long hard days. In these factories, the workers were not slaves they were laborers and immigrants. Likewise, in the South, the industrial revolution changed its economy, however in a much more subtle way than in the North. The South was introduced to the cotton gin, mechanical reaper, and many more

Very many foreign immigrants were coming to America for better lives and to find work. In the North alone, the population rose from 5 million to 31 million, between the period of 1800 to 1850. Some immigrants were able to find work right away, while others lived in poverty. The North’s social structure made it easy for immigrants to come and settle and start making a living right away by working in one of the factories. The Northern people believed that everyone had an equal opportunity, no matter where you started out at, one day you would achieve wealth and power.

The South gained its workforce through the African slave trade and once that ended in 1808 then it was domestic trade along with illegal smuggling. Also, a more gruesome way that slaves were produced was by breeding slaves like cattle. This was a common practice done by plantation owners, such as Mr. Covey, who “boasted that he bought her simply “as a breeder.” The “her” in this quote referred to a female slave that Mr. Covey had recently purchased and it was evident that she could not work to a great extent, so he knew that she would be used for something else, such as a “breeder”. This inhumane action allowed slave owners to keep slaves circulating throughout the South. Without this practice many would have either lost slaves or would have had to import more illegally from Africa. The realm of slavery would continue to grow with this even after the slave trade ended in 1808. Southern elites never hired an immigrant or local American for a job on the farm. All forms of labor were done by the slaves so that they did not have to pay for labor. Interestingly, the North had its own form of slavery called ‘wage slavery’ that was used to amass a large enough workforce to work in the factories. The people who had this job were called ‘slavers’ and one particular slaver for the Lowell factories rode in a “long, low, black’ wagon” that was “paid a dollar a head for all

After the post-Civil War Reconstruction period ended in 1876, white supremacy was largely restored across the South.Around 1916, when the Great Migration began, a factory wage in the urban North was typically three times more than what blacks could expect to make working the land in the rural South it was pretty hard for them to live.By the end of 1919, some 1 million blacks had left the South, usually traveling by train, boat or bus; a smaller number had automobiles or even horse-drawn carts they couldn’t take it any more so they decided to leave.many blacks headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the First World War. Migrants were forced to deal with poor working conditions and competition

Slavery was an institution that caused much division between the north and south of the United States back in the 1800’s that instigated many political, economic and moral fights between northern abolitionists and southern slaveholders. The system was established on the basis of economic profits, cheap labor, and morality of “saving” Africans from their previous lifestyle. The Southern states were notorious slave-holding states, while the North contained few, but far, slave-holders. Despite the number of slaves present in the south, their impact on production effected the economy in the north. The few but proud abolitionists in the north saw right through southerner’s proslavery ideology, and refuted their claims on the grounds of

Before the war began, the Union was on its way towards a commercial and manufacturing economy, which had a direct impact on the civil war against the South. Even though, the North was at war, it continued its rapid industrialization to suppress the rebellion, while the South still depended on slave labor. Immigrants were also a major advantage for the North because several of them began to work in different factories in urban areas. Additionally, “Free states attracted the vast majority of the waves of European immigration through the mid-19th century. Fully seven-eighths of foreign immigrants settled in free states.” (Arrington).

The decline of slavery in the upper South in the early 19th century can be identified as a profound change which would contribute to the eventual division of the nation. After 1830, the pattern of regional slavery in the South experienced great variations, such that the upper South gradually declined ties with slavery while the lower South distinctively became identified with it. This profound change was brought on by a shift in utilizing free labor rather than slavery to drive economic production in the upper South (Goldfield et. al, p. 285). The climate and geography in states of the upper South overtime proved less