Slavery in the Late 1700s and Early 1800s.

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During the period of time between 1789 and 1840, there were a lot of major changes occurring on the issue of slavery such as the impact it had towards the economy and the status of slaves in general. There were two types of African Americans slaves during the era, either doing hard cheap labor in a plantation usually owned by a white and being enslaved, or free. Undoubtedly, the enslaved African Americans worked vigorously receiving minimal pay, while on the other hand, the free ones had quite a different lifestyle. The free ones had more freedom, money, land/power, are healthier, younger and some even own plantations. In addition, in 1820 the Missouri compromise took into effect, which made it so states North of the 36°30′ parallel would be free and South would be slave and helped give way to new laws regarding the issue of slavery. Slavery had a big impact on the market, but most of it was centered on the main slave crop, cotton. Primarily, the south regulated the cotton distribution because it was the main source of income in the south and conditions were nearly perfect for growing it. Cheap slave labor made it that much more profitable and it grew quickly as well. Since the development in textile industry in the north and in Britain, cotton became high in demand all over the world. The south at one point, was responsible for producing “eighty percent of the world’s cotton”. Even though the South had a “labor force of eighty-four percent working, it only produced nine percent of the nations manufactured goods”, (Davidson 246). This statistic shows that the South had an complete advantage in manpower since slavery wasn’t prohibited. In the rural South, it was easy for plantation owners to hire slaves to gather cotton be... ... middle of paper ... ...ecause they feared that Slavery would soon be completely abolished. These tensions eventually led to the civil war where the North won and slavery was ended although there were still slave like laws in place after. The late 1700’s and early 1800’s can be mostly be tied to one issue, slavery. Slaves had huge impacts on the economy and early years of the United States. They impacted the market, were a major discussion of right and wrong in a lot of congressional meetings, and even though there were some free slaves they still didn’t have the right of other free people although they had much better conditions than those enslaved. With both the North and South having different viewpoints on the issue of slavery and rising tensions gave way to a war to finally determine whether slavery would be abolished or not. All these different factors helped give rise to democracy.

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