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The Antebellum Period: An Analysis

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The Antebellum period was the time in America starting from the 1800’s to the Civil War. During this time slavery was at an all time high in the South. Many more slaves were traded domestically and internationally with a whole social class revolving around them. In the North, industrialization began and factories were created with a new Northern labor force. Many workers were immigrants or male Americans, but more recently women began to join the workforce. Conditions for both working parties, North and South, were diminishing to say the least. Escaped slaves went to the North and tried to rally people to go against the horrors of slavery and slowly they began to amass a following and eventually lead to the Civil War. The views of the Southern …show more content…

In their eyes, these escapees should have been hunted down and dragged back to the South. Also, they tried to end the major source of economy for the South which they did appreciate. Southerners noticed that abolitionists were a major minority even in the North and capitalized on this. They wrote articles about the “positive good” of slavery and how the North needed it to survive. Some essays even argued that the South could easily function without slavery while the North couldn’t. The South had to attempt to fix this issue or their economy and way of life would drastically changed. Though the South tried and did accomplish some success with this, they were only slowed down the inevitable that the North rallied against slavery and the South. These essays worried many factory owners and factory workers in the North that originally did not have an opinion on the slavery issue. So, Northerners united and went against these outspoken people who were against slavery. These rioters attacked all kinds of abolitionists from escaped slaves to white reverends. One man named Elijah Lovejoy was a reverend from Missouri who was an outspoken abolitionist and in his article about the rioters he …show more content…

The South gained its workforce through the African slave trade and once that ended in 1808 then it was domestic trade along with illegal smuggling. Also, a more gruesome way that slaves were produced was by breeding slaves like cattle. This was a common practice done by plantation owners, such as Mr. Covey, who “boasted that he bought her simply “as a breeder.” The “her” in this quote referred to a female slave that Mr. Covey had recently purchased and it was evident that she could not work to a great extent, so he knew that she would be used for something else, such as a “breeder”. This inhumane action allowed slave owners to keep slaves circulating throughout the South. Without this practice many would have either lost slaves or would have had to import more illegally from Africa. The realm of slavery would continue to grow with this even after the slave trade ended in 1808. Southern elites never hired an immigrant or local American for a job on the farm. All forms of labor were done by the slaves so that they did not have to pay for labor. Interestingly, the North had its own form of slavery called ‘wage slavery’ that was used to amass a large enough workforce to work in the factories. The people who had this job were called ‘slavers’ and one particular slaver for the Lowell factories rode in a “long, low, black’ wagon” that was “paid a dollar a head for all

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