Slavery in the United States: Unjustified on Economic Grounds

1339 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Slavery effect on the colonization of America

Slavery has existed in numerous forms throughout the world for as long as there has been recorded history. Although slavery continues to exist on a smaller scale modernly, the mass enslavements seen across the globe have been eradicated, such as the ending of the enslavement of Africans in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For many countries, these slave-holding pasts are a source of shame and embarrassment in that such actions could occur by their ancestors, as the modern world now accepts that slavery is a horribly unethical and immoral institution. In addition to slavery being unjustified on these grounds, the practice of slavery in the United States, particularly in the South, can furthermore be unjustified due to the economic damage it caused to the region. The forced maritime diaspora of individuals from Africa to the Untied States as slaves was not only unjustified ethically and morally, it was also unjustified economically in its fostering of agricultural dependence, industrial retardation, and ultimate economic crippling of the American South.
The transatlantic slave trade resulted in the collection and distribution of a huge quantity of individuals from Africa to various other places around the world, especially to the Americas, Europe, and European-controlled lands. To the Americas alone, nearly eleven million slaves were delivered in total from Africa (Eltis, 2008). Of these nearly eleven million, the thirteen colonies of the United States received between three and six percent of the slaves, which was at most, 600,000 imported persons (Eltis, 2008). However, these figured do not represent the total number of persons enslaved due to the reproduction of slaves after arrival (Ulrich, 1...

... middle of paper ...

...urnal of Political Economy, 66(2), 95-130.
Eltis, D. (2008). The U.S. transatlantic slave trade, 1644-1867: An assessment. Civil War History, 54(4), 347-378.
Engerman, S. L. (1982). Economic adjustments to emancipation in the United States and British West Indies. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 13(2), 191-220.
Fogel, R.W., & Engerman, S. L. (1971). The relative efficiency of slavery: A comparison of Northern and Southern agriculture. Explorations in Economic History. 8(3), 353-367.
Genovese, E. D. (1962). The significance of the slave plantation for southern economic development. The Journal of Southern History, 28(4), 422-437.
Phillips, U. B. (1905). The economic cost of slaveholding in the Cotton Belt. Political Science Quarterly, 20(2), 257-275.
Slavin, S. L. (2001). A brief economic history of the United States. In Economics (1-4).

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Slavery In Ordeal By Fire

    1393 Words  | 3 Pages

    Slavery is an issue that continues to be discussed today, and for most Americans, the main reason that sparked the Civil War. Both authors agree that slavery was morally wrong, and it almost brought the Union to its knees while trying to rid the nation of it. However, both authors have very distinct thoughts and reasons for it. While Stanley Elkins’ Slavery has a more personal and opinionated version, James McPherson’s interpretation in Ordeal by Fire is based on facts. McPherson employs the use of graphics and charts to illustrate and quantify the findings about slavery in his book. His writings are based on the economic factors that made slavery the main force for prosperity in the South. Cotton production had become the main source

    Read More

  • Differing Perspectives of the American Civil War

    910 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the South, however, the economy was predominantly agricultural. Cotton and tobacco plantations relied heavily on the free labor of slaves for their economic prosperity. They saw the urbanization and industrialization of the North, and the economic connection between the North a...

    Read More

  • The History of Slavery in the United States

    1435 Words  | 3 Pages

    An estimated 8 to 15 million Africans reached the Americas between the 16th and 19th century. Only the youngest and healthiest slaves were taken for what was called the middle passage of the triangle trade, partly because they would be worth more in the Americas, and they were also the most likely to reach their destination alive. Conditions aboard the ship were very gruesome; slaves were chained to one anoth...

    Read More

  • Slavery in America between 1800 and 1860

    724 Words  | 2 Pages

    Within the economy a great development had been achieved when the upper south handed its power to the lower south all due to the rise of an agricultural production. This expansion was led by the excessive growth of cotton in the southern areas. It spread rapidly throughout America and especially in the South. During these times it gave another reason to keep the slavery at its all time high. Many wealthy planters started a ‘business’ by having their slaves work the cotton plantations, which this was one of a few ways slavery was still in full effect. Not only were there wealthy planters, at this time even if you were a small slave-holder you were still making money. While all of this had been put into the works, Americans had approximately 410,000 slaves move from the upper south to the ‘cotton states’. This in turn created a sale of slaves in the economy to boom throughout the Southwest. If there is a question as to ‘why’, then lets break it d...

    Read More

  • Southern Pro-Slavery Rhetoric

    1613 Words  | 4 Pages

    Of all the areas with which the southerners contended, the socio-political arena was probably their strongest. It is in this area that they had history and law to support their assertions. With the recent exception of the British, the slave trade had been an integral part of the economies of many nations and the slaves were the labor by which many nations and empires attained greatness. Souther...

    Read More

  • The Road to the American Civil War

    1339 Words  | 3 Pages

    The North and South were forming completely different economies, and therefore completely different geographies, from one another during the period of the Industrial Revolution and right before the Civil War. The North’s economy was based mainly upon industrialization from the formation of the American System, which was producing large quantities of goods in factories. The North was becoming much more urbanized due to factories being located in cities, near the major railroad systems for transportation of the goods, along with the movement of large groups of factory workers to the cities to be closer to their jobs. With the North’s increased rate of job opportunities, many different people of different ethnic groups and classes ended up working together. This ignited the demise of the North’s social order. The South was not as rapidly urbanizing as the North, and therefore social order was still in existence; the South’s economy was based upon the production of cotton after Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin. Large cotton plantations’ production made up the bulk of America’s...

    Read More

  • The American Civil War Was Inevitable

    1627 Words  | 4 Pages

    Roark, J.L., Johnson, M.P., Cohen, P.C., Stage, S., Lawson, A., Hartmann, S.M. (2009). The american promise: A history of the united states (4th ed.), The New West and Free North 1840-1860, The slave south, 1820-1860, The house divided 1846-1861 (Vol. 1, pp. 279-354).

    Read More

  • Slavery in Colonial America

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    Slavery became of fundamental importance in the early modern Atlantic world when Europeans decided to transport thousands of Africans to the Western Hemisphere to provide labor in place of indentured servants and with the rapid expansion of new lands in the mid-west there was increasing need for more laborers. The first Africans to have been imported as laborers to the first thirteen colonies were purchased by English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 from a Dutch warship. Later in 1624, the Dutch East India Company brought the first enslaved Africans in Dutch New Amsterdam.

    Read More

  • Understanding the Importance of the American Civil War

    1514 Words  | 4 Pages

    2.Gunderson, Gerald, ?The Origins of the American Civil War? The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Dec., 1974): 916. Accessed on: http://www.jstor.org/ 03-04-02.

    Read More

  • the development of slavery in America

    1202 Words  | 3 Pages

    Slavery was the main resource used in the Chesapeake tobacco plantations. The conditions in the Chesapeake region were difficult, which lead to malnutrition, disease, and even death. Slaves were a cheap and an abundant resource, which could be easily replaced at any time. The Chesapeake region’s tobacco industries grew and flourished on the intolerable and inhumane acts of slavery.

    Read More

  • Slavery In North America

    1374 Words  | 3 Pages

    The development of slavery in the Americas began as early as 1500, after the arrival of the Spanish, and first centered around the Caribbean. However, a lucrative triangle trading system between England, Africa and North America greatly increased the slave trade during the 1600’s (Foner, 38). At the time, slavery was driven by market forces, and largely defined by geographical necessity. Landowners had large plantations, located in areas with small populations and did not have access to the cheap labor necessary to cultivate lucrative crops like tobacco and sugar. They needed slaves to economically survive and prosper. Later, in the American colonies of the south, the entire economic and social structure

    Read More

  • The Thirteenth Amendment

    730 Words  | 2 Pages

    By the mid-1850s the North had begun an Industrial Revolution that employed many people into factories. The South, who had rema...

    Read More

  • Slavery Synthesis Essay

    1347 Words  | 3 Pages

    When one thinks of slavery, they may consider chains holding captives, beaten into submission, and forced to work indefinitely for no money. The other thing that often comes to mind? Stereotypical African slaves, shipped to America in the seventeenth century. The kind of slavery that was outlawed by the 18th amendment, nearly a century and a half ago. As author of Modern Slavery: The Secret World of 27 Million People, Kevin Bales, states, the stereotypes surrounding slavery often confuse and blur the reality of slavery. Although slavery surely consists of physical chains, beatings, and forced labor, there is much more depth to the issue, making slavery much more complex today than ever before.

    Read More

  • Slavery as the Cause of the American Civil War

    1746 Words  | 4 Pages

    Slavery was the core of the North and South’s conflict. Slavery has existed in the New World since the seventeenth century prior to it being exclusive to race. During those times there were few social and political concerns about slavery. Initially, slaves were considered indentured servants who will eventually be set free after paying their debt(s) to the owner. In some cases, the owners were African with white servants. However, over time the slavery became exclusive to Africans and was no limited to a specific timeframe, but life. In addition, the treatment of slaves worsens from the Atlantic Slave trade to th...

    Read More

  • Modern Day Slavery Essay

    1371 Words  | 3 Pages

    The word “slavery” brings back horrific memories of human beings. Bought and sold as property, and dehumanized with the risk and implementation of violence, at times nearly inhumane. The majority of people in the United States assumes and assures that slavery was eliminated during the nineteenth century with the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth; rather, slavery and the global slave trade continue to thrive till this day. In fact, it is likely that more individuals are becoming victims of human trafficking across borders against their will compared to the vast number of slaves that we know in earlier times. Slavery is no longer about legal ownership asserted, but instead legal ownership avoided, the thought provoking idea that with old slavery, slaves were maintained, compared to modern day slavery in which slaves are nearly disposable, under the same institutionalized systems in which violence and economic control over the disadvantaged is the common way of life. Modern day slavery is insidious to the public but still detrimental if not more than old American slavery.

    Read More

More about Slavery in the United States: Unjustified on Economic Grounds

Open Document