Slavery had been around in the United States for hundreds of years; it had even been protected by the constitution at one point. Every race has been enslaved at some time in history, although African-Americans were targeted in the United States. Slavery was a huge reason of the Civil War, but there is often a misconception that it is the only reason. Slavery was first introduced to the United States in the 1600s, but it did not become prominent until the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was an uprising in technology replacing simple tools, which began in the late 1700s. Due to the War of 1812 and Tariff of 1816, America became self-sufficient and made their own goods. One of these goods was cloth, which led to the invention …show more content…
For cotton to be used for cloth, there was a time-consuming array of steps that needed to be followed. First the cotton had to be picked, and then the seeds had to be removed. It took one day for a worker to remove seeds from one pound of cotton, whereas a small cotton gin could clean ten pounds a day. Eli Whitney, creator of the cotton gin, inadvertently caused an uprising in the slave system. His cotton gin caused there to be more cotton to be cleaned, which had farmers interested in buying more cotton gins. Although, cotton gins and seeds were expensive, which made it so plantation owners could not afford to pay workers, so they bought slaves instead. Eventually, more people decided to buy slaves to increase their profit from cotton. In the United States, the economy flourished in different ways. The North had factories, and the South had agriculture. Either way, both the North and South benefited from the growth of slavery in its businesses. In southern United States, the economy was based on agriculture. The main export was cotton, with Great Britain being the United States’ highest buyer. A tariff was placed in the United States, which angered the South. Most of the South was plantation owners, whom barely had enough money to live comfortably. The tariff made it harder for farmers to pay for …show more content…
The main cause of the war was slavery, but there were an ample amount of other reasons too. Some reasons include the Missouri Compromise and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. When territories applied for statehood, the United States had a very important question: would they be free states or slave states? Obviously, the South wanted them to be slave states, and the North disagreed. The United States was starting to divide because of this debate, but then Henry Clay proposes an idea to settle the unbalance: the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise stated that there is an imaginary line drawn across the Louisiana purchase territory. If a state was north of the line, it was free. If it was south, it was a slave state. This compromise restored the country’s peacefulness, until a novel was published by a Northerner. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was written in 1852, thirty-two years after the Missouri Compromise. The novel was about a slave, Uncle Tom, who was badly abused by his owner. The novel sparked a tremendous amount of controversy, with 300,000 copies sold within the first year of being published. Southerners were enraged, they believed that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was biased and inaccurate. This, too, caused the United States to divide before the Civil
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Show MoreHarriet Beecher Stowe publishes “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1852. This anti-slavery book was the most popular book of the 19th century, and the 2nd most sold book in the century, following only the Bible. It was said that this novel “led to the civil war”, or “the straw that broke the camel’s back”. After one year, 300,000 copies were sold in the U.S., and over 1 million were sold in Britain.
Published in the early 1850’s, Uncle Tom’s Cabin had a huge impact on our nation and contributed to the tension over slavery. It was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a woman who was involved in religious and feminist causes. Stowe’s influence on the northern states was remarkable. Her fictional novel about slave life of her current time has been thought to be one of the main things that led up to the Civil War. The purpose of writing it, as is often said, was to expose the evils of slavery to the North where many were unaware of just what went on in the rest of the country. The book was remarkably successful and sold 300,000 copies by the end of its first year. It is even rumored that upon President Lincoln’s meeting Stowe, Lincoln said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war.”
Industrialization was a big part of the economy in the North. Workers made most goods one item at a time. During the first phase of industrialization employes divided jobs so that each person would specialize in a certain job. In the second phase entrepreneurs built factories to bring specialized workers to work together to make goods all under one roof. During the third and final phase workers used machines to complete tasks. Goods were finished much faster by machine than by hand. They were able to mass produce. Factories made at least two thirds of the country's manufactured goods. Things developed slower in the South. Agriculture, especially the production of cotton, produced great profits. Building new industry meant planters would have to begin selling their slaves. So instead they chose to invest in agriculture and enslaved Africans. The market for manufactured goods was extremely small. Some southerners did not want industry.
Correspondly, the senate passed the Missouri Compromise in February 1820, which allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state and Maine to enter as a free state, making the free and slave states balanced once again. Another amendment was passed to prohibit slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern border of Missouri. This event envisioned a possible threat to the relationship between the North and South. Moreover, the United States began to believe in a manifest destiny, a god-given right to expand its territory until it had absorbed all of North America, including Canada and Mexico.... ...
The novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and published in the United States in 1852. The novel depicted slavery as a moral evil and was the cause of much controversy at the time and long after. Uncle Tom's Cabin outraged the South and received praise in the North. The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin was a major turning point for the United States which helped bring about the Civil War.
Before the war, most of the southern states like South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana were large producers of various crops, but the main crop was the plantations of cotton that would be transported to the North to be finished into fine goods (Martin). These plantations needed many workers to plant and harvest cotton for the reason that the process was very complex and required a lot of labor. At this time, African Americans were shipped to the states from European countries and sold at very inexpensive prices. Slaves weren’t needed in the North because they didn't have as many large farms as the South did, and were mainly about industries and factories. For the low cost and needs of workers, Southerners bought these Africans (which were referred to as slaves) to...
Southern society mirrored European society in many ways, one such example is that of a lavish lifestyle. When slavery originated it was made up of indentured servants, yeomen, and the wealthy plantation owners. Indentured servants were mostly from England and came over to America in the 17th century. The wealthy plantation owners were families that were slave owners. They made their money by making slaves complete tasks in which returned great profits. The turned wealthy plantation owners were using this for their benefit; they were able to pay the slaves very little in exchange for the mass amount of crops they could produce. This being said the numbers of slaves in demand were rapidly increasing because of the rise of cotton in the lower south. The cotton area of the lower south were using slaves and depending on them much more than the upper south with the tobacco industry. To keep up with the lower south, the upper south starting focusing more slave trade to help build their framings. The slave prices were increasing and due to high demands in the lower south, the upper south had a decline in the tobacco industry. Since the upper south was failing with Tobacco, slave trade took off.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, a northern abolitionist, published her best-selling novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. Uncle Tom’s Cabin contracts the many different attitudes that southerners as well as northerners shared towards slavery. Generally, it shows the evils of slavery and the cruelty and inhumanity of the peculiar institution, in particular how masters treat their slaves and how families are torn apart because of slavery.
Many would argue that tobacco or cotton was main profits for Southern states, but we can all agree that without slavery there would be no gatherings of both products. The Southern states would believe that slavery is acceptable; they would do so by scaring people into believing that “Defenders of slavery argued that the sudden end to the slave economy would have had a profound and killing economic impact in the South where reliance on slave labor was the foundation of their economy. The cotton economy would collapse. The tobacco crop would dry in the fields. Rice would cease being profitable.” Slave owners were looking for a way to maximize the use of slaves, in doing so Eli Whitney created the cotton gin1. Since this revolutionary machine was increasing the production of cotton it required for more slaves to be put to work in fields.
States in the North were more industrialized than states in the South. In the South, cotton and tobacco provided the economy. These plantation crops created an economic situation based entirely upon agriculture. This was in stark contrast too the heavily industrialized Northern cities in America. Slave labor provided the workforce on the Southern plantations and along with crops were the backbone of Southern economic power.
In the beginning of the 1800s, economic diversities between the two different regions had also grown. By the year 1860, cotton was the chief crop for the South; it also represented fifty-seven percent of all American exports. The prosperity of cotton fulfilled the South's reliance on the plantation system and its crucial elementslavery.
The North dominated the manufacturing industry and the South dominated the agricultural industry. The North contained half of the “manufacturing establishments in the country in 1860” and “produced more than two-thirds of the manufactured goods.” The South had “cotton production [booming] in the lower South” and “cotton constituted nearly two-thirds of the total export of trade in the United States.” The amount of labor required to keep up with southern agriculture would require a continuous workforce. The North had a continuous cheap workforce themselves: immigrants. About 2.5 million immigrants from Europe came to America in the 1850s. Because “few immigrants settled in the South,” the South didn’t have a continuous workforce. The South had to depend on slaves for their workforce.
Although slavery was an important component of the growing Americas, many African Americans were emotionally, spiritually, and physically abused by the dehumanizing slavery. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, slavery was widely practiced in the American colonies. The production of the cotton gin in the early 1800s made slavery a very important aspect of Southern agriculture. Many slaves worked in harsh conditions to help maintain the fields, “sunup to sundown”. Although there were many arguments for and against slavery over the years, most of the information did not come directly from the African American slaves themselves. Through different anecdotes, stories, and songs, we learn how different slaves viewed slavery in America. What did
Slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War. It was an issue that the North hemisphere of the United States and the South hemisphere of the United States had polar opposite political stances on. The South utilized slavery to its benefit and were firm believers in slavery and believed that having slaves was their right; whereas, the North believed the complete opposite. When the right to slavery was being reviewed and attempted to be revoked, this caused a rebellion of the South and led the nation to the Civil War. The Civil War is a pivotal war that greatly affected America.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a well-known anti-slavery novel written in 1852. The story shows readers the reality of slavery while also asserting the theme that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as slavery. The main point of this book, along with exposing the true evil behind slavery, was to also spark an anti-slavery movement, for Stowe herself was an abolitionist. She wanted to reveal, mainly to the northerners, the ghastly points of slavery, including the whippings, beatings, and forced sexual encounters brought upon slaves by their masters. Through the events and actions that happened with the characters in Stowe’s novel, she hoped to enlighten the public and eventually sway people against slavery.