Analysis Of James Oakes The Ruling Race

Slavery was also seen as a threat to democracy; Northerners believed that a corrupt oligarchy of rich planters, the Slave Power, dominated Southern politics, and national politics as well. Northerners also objected on moral grounds to being legally required to enforce fugitive slave laws. [edit] Abolitionism as a cause of the war By the 1830s, a small but outspoken abolitionist movement arose, led by New Englanders and free blacks, including William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Lucretia Mott. Many people North and South considered slavery an undesirable institution, but by the 1840s the militant abolitionists went much further and declared that owning a slave was a terrible sin, and that the institution should be immediately abolished. Southerners bitterly resented this moralistic attack, and also the stereotypical presentation of slave owners as heartless Simon Legrees in the overwhelmingly popular (in the North) book and play by Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852).

Where America failed in Mercantilism was in not providing enough slaves to generate a sufficient profit margin and by becoming a divided nation over the issue of slavery. Southern slaves were viewed in economic terms of labor to capital. While the ownership of slaves was a source of pride in plantation owners, this interdependence of slave on master and master to slave created a vicious cycle of rashness that caused slave owners to often become irrational. In the south, slaveholdings varied according to size, location, and crops produced. Slavery in cities differed substantially from th... ... middle of paper ... ...er to the problem of slavery.

The South was built politically, culturally, and economically on slavery. In the Antebellum South, the most important factor was not wealth but power. One theme of the Antebellum South was white supremacy and slavery ensured this through the control of labor which also worked as a system of racial adjustment and social order. Slave ownership elevated the status of the wealthy planters and this allowed the institution of slavery to be accepted due to the paternalistic culture of the South. This paternalistic master-slave relationship was important for slaveholders to maintain their power.

Overspecialization occurs when an economic actor is so excessively-concentrated to a single function that when change arises, it is unable to adapt. The Southern United States experienced, firsthand, the destruction that results from such change. But how could the entire southern half of the United States find themselves trapped in overspecialization? The rising demand of cotton attracted Southern capitalists. African slaves were the laborers of the cotton fields, thus, the Southern capitalists increased their investment in the trading of slaves.

Through the 16th to the 19th century, slavery was closely intertwined on a global scale on the basis of economics. Slavery, especially in the Americas, became a colonial and empirical institution, which then made those societies dependent on coerced, forced labor for many economical activities based on racial hatred and violence. At each stage in the transatlantic slave trade, African people experienced systematic violence and oppression, shaped by racist capitalistic ideas that white opportunists profited from. Slavery was never an inevitable outcome of African and European encounters, but it developed in this way because of the search for wealth and money, combined with severe white supremacy and ethnocentrism. As slavery continued to develop, and many countries, such as the emerging United States in the late 18th century, had slaves as a major part of their economic model.

Douglass’ narratives revealed the severity of the consequences of slavery. After his death the exclusion of marginalized groups in order to gain political and economic gain continued causing more hardships for African Americans. Douglass substantiated to the United States that the humans were considered substandard had the potential just not the opportunity. He represents the dogged strength and the double visions of African Americans have that allows them to see the world with the eyes of two cultures.

Slavery was merely one of the causes of the Civil War. Some historians argue that the political difference between the North and the South is a more influential cause of the Civil War while some insist that economic is the main cause. In fact, the political division between the North and the South was affected by the differences in the economic system of both. The North and the South had had different economic backgrounds that were established since the American colonial period. These economic differences from the colonial period brought about the political division that was based on preserving each other’s own wealth or property and eventually caused the Civil War.

The balance of power was beginning to shift as the antebellum South’s dependence on free labor economically tied their existence to the heinous practice of owning slaves. Slavery was in many ways a dream come true for southern culture in its ability to relieve the issue of finding labor and keeping costs low, but this inhumane practice became the downfall of the antebellum South in how its practice became so common in its culture that it became more of an economic addiction. Their entire economy was seemingly tied to this need for free labor under the impression that slavery was there to stay, shamefully allowing the gruesome, inhumane, nature of slavery to transcend societal values to the point of widespread acceptance. This accepting culture marked the downfall of the antebellum South.

Once Congress outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, and thus the import of slave labor, planters created the domestic slave trade by looking to the Upper South and Eastern seaboard regions for slaves. The mania for buying slaves resulted in a massive forced migration. By 1860, more than one million African Americans were ripped from their communities where their families had lived for three or four generations, and were forced to migrate South.2 These slaves did not have a say in... ... middle of paper ... ... soldiers from committing criminal military acts against black soldiers, mistreatment against blacks still occurred. Many strides in the African American journey towards freedom and equality came about in the mid-nineteenth century. The domestic slave trade separated families and created an even greater hatred toward slave owners by blacks.

In the 17th century the basis of the work force, in mainly the Southern colonies were Europeans labourers, who as indentured servants, offered landowners a solution to their labour shortage. Beginning in the 1680s, the mainland colonies underwent a massive shift, from indentured servants to slave labour, due to requirement of labour in the South. From the early 17th century Africans were shipped to North America to be sold as slaves, against their freewill. Slavery continued to expand even after 1808, when it was declared illegal. African slave trading became the main problem dividing Americans, and could even of been a factor of many, which led to the American Civil War.