As mentioned by William Harper, “The cultivation of the great staple crop cannot be carried on without slaves.” (Harper, Memoir in Slavery, 1837) In a time of western expansion and the cotton boom, some slave traders were able to accumulate great wealth from the slave-trading business and sought opportunities to acquire higher social status and financial stability. A con of slavery was when slaves were driven mercilessly to plant, cultivate, and harvest the crops for market. A failed crop meant the planter could lose his initial investment in land and slaves and possibly suffer bankruptcy. A successful crop could earn such high returns that the slaves were often worked beyond human endurance. Plantation masters argued callously that it was cheaper to work the slaves to death and then buy new ones than it was to allow them to live long enough and under sufficiently healthy conditions that they could bear children to increase their numbers.
The south had an extremely large amount of slaves. Over time slavery flourished in the upper south and failed to do so in the north. But there were certain parts of the north that was very important to slavery. The northern states were seeking to buy a greater volume of raw materials but the european trading house basically controlled the market. The northern states were the trade competitors of europe.
Slavery built the U.S.’s economy. As we’ve learned through the readings and all the films and documentaries watched in this class, two of the largest exports out of the U.S. (the South, to be more specific) were cotton and tobacco, which were picked by the slaves. As the demands for cotton and tobacco increased, so did the number of slaves, which unfortunately led to (White Americans) believing to be superior and led to hate and discriminating against a group of people based on their skin color. This led the Civil Rights Movement in 1964, which changed history in America, with some important events that I’ve learned from taking this class. Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion, (also known as the Southampton Insurrection), which was a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton county in Virginia in August 1831.
What made it most interesting was the fact that half the population was African-American who were enslaved. The wealthy treasured the goods that imported from European areas and valued their agriculture. Most southerners lived on farms in small towns along the coast. Economic The Northern economy was industry and was centered around technology and manufacturing. The North did not need slave labor to keep their economy running.
The South were all for slavery: * Slaves would work on the cotton and tobacco plantations in the south, working the land. * It was their cornerstone for all their business and wealth in the Southern States. * Without slavery, they feared that they would lose all aspects of their income and in-turn lose the ‘power’ that they had. * The creation of the cotton gin increased the demand for slavery as more and more production of cotton was in demand. This in-turn upsetted the North.
Slavery was such a vital part in the cultivation of cash crops such as sugarcane that it was introduced to North America with its colonization. The availability of land combined with the growing demand of sugarcane in Europe quickly created an insatiable demand for African slaves, whom, by happenstance, tended to be suited well for work in the warm and tropical environments of the Americas. These Africans at first became indentured servants; nevertheless, the growing arrogance of the white man in his spiritual superiority and the need for even more labor led to the swift decline of the indentured servant. When other alternatives to slavery such as cheap white labor and convict laborers failed to deliver the desired results, the prevalent abstraction of a racially-based slave system finally emerged in the 1680’s. Furthermore, slave uprisings would also play a role in the shaping of the structure of slavery.
This difference in opinions was one of the causes of the Civil War The main cause of the Civil War was greed by the south. The south needed the slaves as a steady work force due to an invention years before the war called the Cotton Gin. This invention enabled plantation to grow to huge sizes. In 1830, 750,000 bales of hay per year were produced. Around 1850, the production of hay bales jumped up to 2.85 million bales per year.
Men are entitled to own slaves and this right has always been protected. Allowing the Africans to become free would disrupt our county’s progression. Moving forward is a priority for a strong economical country. According to a New York Bureau of accounts report, “It would be wise to permit colonists, and other farmers to import as many Negroes as they could purchase for cash, assist them on their farms, as these slaves could do more work for their masters, and were less expensive than hired laborers.” Slaves provided cheap labor, which left big promises for a booming economy. With the ideas of slavery many men will become and remain profitable and money will only benefit our society and allow the United States to grow.
Without it, the work would not have gotten done, or as quickly as it did. As ugly as it is to say, without the forced labor, the United States might not be the United States. The massive production of cotton propelled the United States to becoming a world power. With this crop, the United States was able to breakaway from the Crown: all thanks to slavery. Americans, North and South, both supported slavery.
In the early 1800s, when plantation owners left almost all other crops in favour of the newly profitable cotton. To increase cotton production planters purchased more slaves from Africa and the West Indies before the slave trade was banned in 1808. Thousands of blacks were brought into the United States during these years to tend to cotton fields, the size of plantations increased from relatively small plots to huge farms with as many as several hundred slaves each. Because the entire Southern economy became dependent on cotton, it also became dependent on slavery. Although Northern factories certainly benefited indirectly from slavery, Northern social customs were not tied to slavery as Southern customs were.