Pro Slavery Research Paper

The North’s economy was based on textiles, shipping, and skilled trades. Their climate was not suited for the same type of agricultural products that the South produced like cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco. Northern states like New England manufactured and shipped goods like guns, clocks, plows and axes (page 399). One reason for the South’s dependence on slavery is because their economy relied on the existence of slave labor. For example, the cultivation of cotton depended largely on slave labor, with 75% of the crop grown on plantations,

People around here in Kentucky mostly grow hemp and tobacco, they own the most slaves. The farms around here are smaller than than most around the south. The main slave trade market was in Louisville. Bell county is just out of Knoxville. It is quite close from Louisville so I don't have to travel far to get me some new boys.

In the 1860 United States Census it shows that 55% or 436,631 of people in Mississippi were slaves by the year 1860, meaning that the majority of people in one state alone were enslaved. This shows how one state alone had took advantage of the gin leading to the heavy increase in the need for slaves to pick and produce cotton. Although some of these slaves were used for other jobs besides agriculture, the vast majority were used for the cotton industry.

The crops grown on plantations and the slavery system changed significantly between 1800-1860. In the early 1800s, plantation owners grew a variety of crops – cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, hemp, and wheat. Cotton had the potential to be profitable, but there was wasn’t much area where cotton could be grown. However, the invention of the cotton gin changed this - the cotton gin was a machine that made it much easier to separate the seeds from cotton. Plantation owners could now grow lots of cotton; this would make them a lot of money. As a result, slavery became more important because the demand for cotton was high worldwide. By 1860, cotton was the main export of the south. The invention of the cotton gin and high demand for cotton changed

The Southern Colonies developed race-based slavery because of the rising need to increase labor and to decrease costs. The move toward profit-based agriculture over subsistence farming meant that there was an expanding need for laborers, which would increasingly expand with success, necessitating a further increase of cheap labor. In addition to being labor intensive, the Southern crops: rice, tobacco, sugarcane, and indigo were grown for cash rather than for immediate need. Technically there is no such thing as enough with a goal as abstract as profit and so would not end with a fulfilled, finite, need but rather with means and a desire to expand. With profit as a goal expansion is only limited by available, usable, acreage and becomes a goal in and of itself. With expansion as a goal, a self-replenishing and unpaid workforce allows for greater profit and thus greater expansion. It was a snowball effect creating a market for humans.

Slavery was extremely beneficial because it served as the foundation for producing tobacco, cotton, and rice in the South. Diversity amongst British colonies was evident when it came to creating laws related to slaves. Colonies in the South such as Carolina relied on slaves for economic stability. These colonies established a slave society where laws allowed slaves to be seen as legal property and removed all individual freedom. Thus, the South became a slave state. However, the Northern colonies such as Rhode Island and New York did not rely on slaves as much as the South. As a result, the North set up less strict laws because the economy was not as reliant on slaves. However, in all colonies, new slave codes made slavery an inherited and permanent status. Slave owners could pass on slaves to the next generation

How did the abolitionists' proposals and methods differ from those of earlier antislavery movements (see Chapter 8)?

Though the majority of Southerners didn’t own slaves, slaves were used in the South to keep the revenue up, and slavery was very much a part of the agricultural lifestyle.

An approximate of three thousand slaves escaped from their masters in 1781 when the British invaded Virginia (Blumrosen & Blumrosen, 2006). About five thousand and twenty thousand slaves in Georgia and South Carolina, respectively, were freed from bondage as a result of the American Revolution (Clifford, 2005). The Revolution’s natural rights philosophy inspired the freed blacks to request the state legislatures to get rid of slavery and Congress to terminate the slave trade (Waldstreicher, 2004). Many of the freed slaves moved to the North because they believed that living conditions were better in the North than in the South. Unfortunately, they experienced many problems in the North, such as lack of jobs, insufficient food, and lack of housing, which forced many of them to go back to the south to work on the cotton plantations for wages (Clifford, 2005). In the South, the freed slaves were assured of food and housing.

Aside from social benefits, geographical aspects made slavery seem more appealing. Average food crops were not compatible with the southern soil, so southern farmers turned to rice, cotton, and tobacco. Cotton and tobacco were the South’s most important and profitable crops (green). Tobacco became the main source of revenue for the southern colonists (yellow). It requires eleven months of intense labor on the plantations (pink). This gave plantation owners another reason to dislike indentured servitude; they

The most important crops were cotton and tobacco. Most of the agriculture in the South was cotton, which was grown own large plantations by forced black slave labor. Slavery expanded pretty fast throughout the United States. The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney helped efficiently separate the seeds from the fiber, cotton farming spread rapidly across the west. Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana formed the heart of the new cotton kingdom, producing more than half of the country’s crop. The great bulk of this cotton was harvested by slaves. Life on the plantation varied from a large plantation to a small farm and from region to region and from master to master. Slavery meant hard labor, ignorance, and oppression. The slaves both men and women worked from dawn till dusk in the fields under the watchful eye of the overseers. Overseers on horseback equipped with whips monitoring the workers, always threatening to punish with a flogging. Floggings were common, it substituted for the wage-incentive system. A majority of slaves lived on large plantations that had communities of twenty or more slaves. Slaves in the Deep South accounted for than 75% of the population. The lives on these plantations seemed to be relatively stable, and distinctive African American slave culture prevailed. Large plantations operated like self-sustaining villages and sometimes were isolated from the rest of the outside world. Large plantations acted as its

Later, many questions arose regarding if the newly acquired territory should allow slavery. In the attempt to solve this, Henry Clay led the Missouri Compromise which admitted Missouri as a slave state, and Maine as a free state creating a balance in Congress. This led to the belief that later in the future slavery be prohibited north of the southern border of Missouri in the remaining of the Louisiana Purchase. The issue of slavery continued to be an issue as the nation expanded because the Missouri Compromise didn’t apply to new territories that were not part of the Louisiana Purchase. By the new land acquired, the Southern economy increased because of the “Cotton King”, which also increased the labor in order to maintain the newly achieved economy. One the other hand, the North believed that the expansion of slavery was very small because they didn’t depend on slavery for their economic survival. The North relied on on textile industry on southern crops was increased by the creation of the cotton gin. Many Americans kept migrating to the west despite after the Missouri Compromise was adopted. Many would cross to the Oregon Territory, which belonged to the British and many more settled in Mexican territory

Robert, I agree with you. It is disturbing to know that all these poor girls were not only victims of the slavery, but also of sexual abuse by their masters. This is much like the sexual slave trade that we see happening today in many countries in the world. Slavery was a condition of total submission to a master and his family, with no rights for the slaves, and harsh, violent, punishments. Adding the fact that slave girls were used for sexual pleasure by their masters, makes it all even harder to swallow. These girl were reminded by their masters that they were their property, and as a consequence, they could be used as they pleased. The saddest thing is that after bearing children with the master, many mothers would later on be separated

The majority of the land in the South was plantations, apart from rice, sugar and tobacco, cotton had become on of the leading plantations in the area. Nearly twelve million Americans were living the in the South by the year 1860 and almost one quarter of them were slaves. Due to the rise in cotton plantations, the number of slaves in the area was rapidly increasing. Though working on a plantation may not have been the most ideal of jobs, there were many differences in the types of plantations and the role of each owner as well as what was required of the slaves.

The citizens of the Southern Colonies such as Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina were mainly successful with lots of crops; mostly tobacco and rice, which in turn gained a lot of money for them. These large plantations usually were farmed by forced labor of