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Essay about Southerns Experienced Development in Different Ways

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During the time period between 1820 and 1861 the American South was shaped from many political, economic, social, and cultural developments. However, during this time period Southerners experienced these developments in different ways. For example, the slaves of this time lived much differently than the plantation owners. There were many sources of division, as well as unity, during this time. There were many political developments in the South during this time period. One of them was slavery. Slavery had been an issue for a very long time. Southern Representatives fought for slavery and this was an issue in Congress. It was hard to keep a balance of power in Congress between the North and the South due to the different populations. For …show more content…

Once the railroads came, farmers in these same counties grew 400,000 bushels and sold their crop at a dollar a bushel. Railroads also stimulated other areas of the economy, notably the mining and iron industries. There were social developments in the South during this time period as well. Since slavery was an extreme moral issue, there were many people arguing either for or against it. The southern whites came up with many different reasons to defend slavery. One way they defended it was by saying that the Bible did not condemn it. They argued that the Bible said it allowed the enslavement of Heathens, which the south believed African Americans to be. They also said that many other societies depended on slavery, like they did. They believed that some of the greatest empires, like classical Greece and Rome, depended on slavery and would not have existed without it. Slavery defenders reasoned that African Americans didn’t have the ability to care for themselves and that they were an inferior race, in which needed someone to care for them. They argued that slaves in the South lived better than the factory workers of the North. Masters cared for the slaves; while northern workers had no claim to their employer. They thought that the manner in which the slaves were treated was much more humane than how the workers in the factories were treated. There were

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