Enslaved people in the antebellum South constituted about one-third of the southern population. Most lived on large plantations or small farms; many masters owned fewer than 50 enslaved people. Land owners sought to make their enslaved completely dependent on them through a system of restrictive codes.
They were usually prohibited from learning to read and write, and their behavior and movement was restricted. Many masters raped enslaved women, and rewarded obedient behavior with favors, while rebellious enslaved people were brutally punished. A strict hierarchy among the enslaved from privileged house workers and skilled artisans down to lowly field hands helped keep them divided and less likely to organize against their masters. Marriages between enslaved men and women had no legal basis, but many did marry and raise large families; most owners of enslaved workers encouraged this practice, but nonetheless did not usually hesitate to divide families by sale or removal.
Rebellions among enslaved people did occur—notably ones led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in and by Denmark Vesey in Charleston in —but few were successful. In the North, the increased repression of southern Black people only fanned the flames of the growing abolitionist movement. Free Black people and other antislavery northerners had begun helping enslaved people escape from southern plantations to the North via a loose network of safe houses as early as the s.
This practice, known as the Underground Railroad , gained real momentum in the s. Seward and Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Although estimates vary widely, it may have helped anywhere from 40, to , enslaved people reach freedom.
Although the Missouri Compromise was designed to maintain an even balance between slave and free states, it was able to help quell the forces of sectionalism only temporarily. In , another tenuous compromise was negotiated to resolve the question of slavery in territories won during the Mexican-American War. Four years later, however, the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict, leading pro- and anti-slavery forces to battle it out—with considerable bloodshed—in the new state of Kansas.
In , the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court involving an enslaved man who sued for his freedom on the grounds that his master had taken him into free territory effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by ruling that all territories were open to slavery.
In , two years after the Dred Scott decision, an event occurred that would ignite passions nationwide over the issue of slavery. The insurrection exposed the growing national rift over slavery: Brown was hailed as a martyred hero by northern abolitionists, but was vilified as a mass murderer in the South.
The South would reach the breaking point the following year, when Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected as president. Within three months, seven southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America ; four more would follow after the Civil War began. A map of the United States that shows 'free states,' 'slave states,' and 'undecided' ones, as it appeared in the book 'American Slavery and Colour,' by William Chambers, Chronically in debt, New World planters could exploit slave labor with expending scarce currency.
Slavery provided the cheapest and most expedient way to meet the demand for labor in mining and agriculture. The slave trade had profound consequences for Europe. Between the early s and the early s, the slave trade became one of Europe's largest and most profitable industries. Profits from the slave trade were said to run as high as percent. But in reality, the increased processing capacity accelerated demand. The more cotton processed, the more that could be exported to the mills of Great Britain and New England.
And the invention of the cotton gin coincided with other developments that opened up large-scale global trade: Cargo ships were built bigger, better and easier to navigate. Powerful navies protected them against piracy. And newly invented steam engines powered these ships, as well as looms and weaving machines, which increased the capacity to produce cotton cloth. With all these factors amping up production and distribution, the South was poised to expand its cotton-based economy.
With more land needed for cultivation, the number of plantations expanded in the South and moved west into new territory. Production exploded: Between and alone, the U. The upshot: As cotton became the backbone of the Southern economy, slavery drove impressive profits. The benefits of cotton produced by enslaved workers extended to industries beyond the South. In the North and Great Britain, cotton mills hummed, while the financial and shipping industries also saw gains.
Banks in New York and London provided capital to new and expanding plantations for purchasing both land and enslaved workers. As a result, enslaved people became a legal form of property that could be used as collateral in business transactions or to pay off outstanding debt.
A sort of sales tax was also levied on enslaved worker transactions. Steadily, a near-feudal society emerged in the South. At the top was the aristocratic landowning elite, who wielded much of the economic and political power.
Their plantations spanned upward of a thousand acres, controlling hundreds—and, in some cases, thousands—of enslaved people. A culture of gentility and high-minded codes of honor emerged. Below the elite class were the small planters who owned a handful of enslaved people. These farmers were self-made and fiercely independent. Small farmers without enslaved workers and landless whites were at the bottom, making up three-quarters of the white population—and dreaming of the day when they, too, might own enslaved people.
Enslaved people returning from the cotton fields in South Carolina, circa However, by , political and economic pressure on the South placed a wedge between the North and South. The Abolitionist movement , which called for an elimination of the institution of slavery, gained influence in Congress.
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