Slavery And The American Economy

The Southern States depended on slave labor to thrive. In 1804, the American Convention of Abolition Societies reported that North Carolina considered “the preservation of their lives, and all they hold dear on earth, as depending on the continuance of slavery…” (Levine, 1992) In the first month of the Civil War, Confederate President Jefferson Davis reminded his congress that the Southern states had flourished up to the point based and dependent upon the Negro slave labor. He added proudly, “The labor of African slaves was and is indispensable…” The economic success of the whole of the United States owed over three quarters of its exports to this labor, and “was absolutely necessary

Was slavery an economic engine for the Southern economy before the Civil War? Men like Senator and businessman James Henry Hammond would say yes immediately without a second thought. People like Hammond believed that slavery in these times were critical to the growth of the southern economy. They made points such as that agricultural sales were a main percentage of business in the south and with the large area of fertile land that slave ownership was a necessary evil. Along with those, the decades preceding the civil war, the north began to industrialize, which in turn created a large demand for cotton, which was heavily supported by slavery. Not only was slavery a supporting crutch for the immense cotton market, but also slave trade proved to be a highly profitable market of his own. Finally, from the perspective of a plantation owner as a business enterprise, owning slaves proved to be most effective by implementing business strategies, much like Henry James Hammond’s. Without slavery, small planters would have been unable to make a steadfast profit, leaving the cotton industry to rely on large plantation owners who would mainly invest their fortune in British luxurious imports, instead of diversifying and reinvesting in schooling or infrastructure. I personally believe that James Henry Hammond and others were correct, with exception to my ethical beliefs, that slavery was a key factor in the growth and preservation of

Southern expansionism took on many forms in the United States between the years 1789 and 1860. Examining southern history for these years shows how slave-grown cotton played a major factor in southern expansion, specifically through the issues of the Louisiana Purchase, soil erosion, the desires of yeoman farmers and planters, Indian removal, the interstate slave trade, the independence movement in Texas, the Mexican War, filibusters in Central America, and especially concerning relations between the southern and northern states. However, southern history shows us that while the growth of southern cotton did in fact play a large role in the rationale for expansion, but there are other concerns involved here. Most notably, the constant dilemma of the slave to free state representation in Congress additionally played a large role in why so many southerners decided to pack up and head west. These two reasons can be explained as the two most primary concerns involving the sudden growth of southern expansion. Despite cotton being one of the major factors that led to southern expansion, it can be proven by examining southern history that the constant struggle between northerners and southerners to balance the ratio of slave to free states in Congress additionally played into expansion.

In the United States, slavery had an overwhelming impact on their political, social, and economical. Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, the first African slaves were brought into the United States. Reasons were because the tobacco, sugar, rice, and coffee fields were expanding which led to increasing the demand for labor. The Atlantic slave trade was an inhuman systematic importation of slaves between the African traders, American planters, and the European merchants bargaining over human lives which led to the Middle Passage. 1675-1775, the slaves were the backbone of monoculture labor and so it was put into law to keep the Africans as slaves. “So prevalent was this Italian-operated slave trade that the word “slave” was derived from the word “Slav,” name for people from Slavic countries” (Williams 3). In both seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation.

There is no doubt that the United States was built upon the hard work of Black-American slaves, referred to at the time as bondpeople, who were the main labor force in producing important American exports, such as cotton or tobacco, which were, in fact, the backbone of the American economy during that time. Due to bondpeople’s overall importance in keeping the United States the powerhouse that it was, the domestic slave trade was a value market that “‘was roughly three times greater than the total amount of all capital, North and South combined, invested in manufacturing, almost three times the amount invested in railroads, and seven times the amount invested in banks’”(23). In “‘In Pressing Need of Cash,’” Daina Ramey Berry, a professor for the Departments of History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas, looks at a fifteen year period, from 1850-1865, of the economic factors of the domestic slave trade. Berry uses Steven Deyle’s findings in his study, "Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life” which examined both the "long-distance interstate trade" and the extensive local or "intrastate" trade of enslaved males and females, who were priced differently depending on their perceived market value (23). With Deyle’s findings, Berry specifically discusses the relationships among gender, age, skill, or type of sale and how those factors, generally, determined the priced paid of enslaved workers.

In Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay area during the 1600s the slave community evolved over a long period of time. Problems occurred regarding their labor that had an important influence on the switch to a society dominated by slave labor. During the 1600s labor in the Chesapeake shifted to slave society because of a shift in culture, economic issues, and frustrations of the tobacco market boom. Each of these reasons all relates back to the labor problem the colonists were facing in Virginia.

Ratified by the states in the winter of 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was put into play. It declared, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” (Primary Documents). Officially, this amendment outlawed the practice of slavery, there was, however, an exception. That exception was the use of involuntary servitude, or slavery, as a form of punishment. More than four million African Americans walked free in 1865, this had a rather negative impact on the Southern economy. And so came the Convict-lease system. Many white Southerners saw this system as a solution to their economic hardships; nonetheless, it was often seen as being worse than slavery. In addition to the convict lease system was the practice of Sharecropping and Peonage. These forms of subjugation brought even greater distress to the newly freed African Americans. Despite the ratifying of the Thirteenth Amendment the abhorrent treatment of this newly freed race did not change significantly thanks to programs like the Convict Lease system, Peonage, and Sharecropping.

What is slavery? Slavery is forced labor and this forced labor is what built America and made them become more developed. “Africans peoples were captured and transported to the Americas to work. Most European colonial economies in the Americas from the 16th century through the 19th were dependant on enslaved African labor for their survival.” Many claim that enslavement was very necessary in order for America to thrive and not die off for it is now one of the best countries in the world. However, slavery was not necessary in the Americas it was just a mechanism that just stripped Africans of their human rights, giving the slave masters the “right” to abuse them. Slavery was not necessary in the Americas because without slavery America would

During the period of 1830-1860 slavery existed throughout the United States. The topic of slavery has a long history in the United States, beginning with the slaves used to cultivate tobacco in the southern colonies. When writing the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers realized they could not include any articles against slavery, for it would lead to the South not agreeing upon it. In the 1830’s to 1860’s, attitudes towards the institution of slavery varied throughout social classes and regions, ultimately settling with the North coming out against the expansion of slavery and the South for it.

In the antebellum south, the Large Plantation – agricultural way of life dominated the whole society. Only 25% of white southerners owned slaves and most did not live in mansions but in dark, cramped, two-room cabins. Cotton was the crucial cash crop of the South, but it was not the only crop grown there. Corn, sugar, rice, and tobacco were also grown – but Cotton was king, and the most labor intensive of all these crops. Not only was the South reliant on cotton, but the northern factories relied on the raw material as well as England. The South was the world’s largest producer and from 1815 to 1860 it represented over ½ the U.S. exports.

Everybody has something they feel that makes their lives easier, something a person becomes so accustomed to they could not live without it. This is what African slaves were to the Southern colonists. Slavery was a huge factor in the Southerner’s lives. Originally the colonists used indentured servants to work in their homes and on their plantations. This situation was not ideal because the Southern farmers wanted more control over their workers (orange). Virginian farmers heard about the success of slavery in the Caribbean and thought it would be a good solution to their problems (blue). The southern colonists had a very different way of earning a living than in the north. They needed people to work through “the harsh realities of a

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

In the early years of the 19th century, slavery was more than ever turning into a sectional concern, such that the nation had essentially become divided along regional lines. Based on economic or moral reasoning, people of the Northern states were increasingly in support of opposition to slavery, all the while Southerners became united to defend the institution of slavery. Brought on by profound changes including regional differences in the pattern of slavery in the upper and lower South, as well as the movement of abolitionism in the North, slavery in America had transformed from an issue of politics into a moral campaign during the period of 1815-1860, ultimately polarizing the North and the South to the point in which threats of a Southern disunion would mark the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 (Goldfield et. al, The American Journey, p. 281).

The film “Slavery and The Making Of America” covered the beginning of American slavery in the British colonies until the end of slavery in the southern states and post-civil war reconstruction. This film shows viewers remarkable stories of individual slaves, providing new perspectives on how unjust the slaves experiences were, and besides all the trouble they were facing still having to survive and shape their own lives. The British colonies in North America had an abundance of land and a scarcity of labor ended up producing money crops with the forced labor of African slaves, literally being treated as if they were machines for production.

Like many others demoralized cultures during the Atlantic Slave trade period, Africans fell victim to the sixteenth century discovery of Columbus' so called "New World." Europeans used the Atlantic Slave Trade to capitalize on Columbus' so called "Discovery." For more than three centuries, the regions of Africa were in a state of destabilization. More than thirty million Africans were taken out of Africa and put in the Americas and surrounding countries.