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Throughout Our Journey In Lps 35 We Have Been Debating

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Throughout our journey in LPS 35 we have been debating law and how it influences society, and how society influences law. What we have not deliberated in class is what brought about the end of slavery; was it because technology was out-pacing manual labor with the introduction of the steam engine, or could it have been that society was warming up to the idea of abolishing because they found slavery distasteful? Of these two theories, I strongly favor technological advancement out-dating slavery, but the idea that society dictated it obsolete has merit as well. There are the two leading theories concerning abolition, and of the duo, society gets a lot more attention due to its easy ability to be observed. Slavery and the Making of America,…show more content…
Thanks to the actions by the colonial powers, the slave trade grinded to a halt and the only source of slaves was offspring of other slaves. This essentially turned slavery from an external and internal trade, to a solely internal trade.
American law addressed how people would become slaves: “…a slave inherited that status from the mother, served for a lifetime, was of African descent, and was chattel property able to be bought and sold independently of the land” (32, Horton and Horton). Over time, states amended or completely abolished these laws, but this was standard practice up until the Civil War. We can see a somewhat extension of this practice even after the Civil War, but it was just the opposite, the Grandfather Clause. In the wake of Reconstruction throughout the South, there was still an abundance of animosity to those of any other color than white, and the legislatures wished to keep the whites in power, and anyone else out. Poll taxes and literacy tests soon regulated voting throughout the South, but those who had grandfathers who could vote without poll taxes or literacy tests were exempts from such regulations. This curtailed most now free blacks from voting, and still allowed all white to vote. It was only until 1915 that “Grandfather Clauses” and regulated voting was found unconstitutional. What was not discussed
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