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Slavery
No one debates that slavery in the Southern United States was a terrible and inhumane practice. It was clearly unconscionable and horrible and we, undoubtedly, continue to feel the effects of this terrible and horrible institution in multiple ways even up to this very day. The effects of the American Civil War, however, were certainly just as terrible and every bit as pronounced. More Americans died in the American Civil War than in any American war before or after ("American War Deaths"), and it terrible effects rocked the nation and brought it to the very brink of collapse. The terrible possibility to consider, then, is what if all of these lives could have been sparred? American slavery was an economic institution that, like any other one, was based on the laws of supply and demand. Southern American plantations were agricultural centers that could only turn a profit through intense labor that required many hands tilling the fields in order to raise cash crops like tobacco and cotton successful. The success of the industry depended on a steady pool of cheap labor that could work the land and deliver the product so that it could be sent to industrial centers for processing into a useful product. However, this system, which made slavery an institution that -- if it wasn't economically...
It is hardly surprising that the agricultural world would undergo such a revolution, considering that less than one hundred years before with Eli Whitney's creation of the cotton gin, the cotton industry in the south was born. Certainly, as time passed and the industrialization of the United States continued at an ever-faster pace, technology would have been developed that would make the Southern dependence on the cheap manual labor obsolete. Indeed, since new technology would have destroyed the need for the system of slavery within American agriculture, one wonders if the horrors of Civil War could have simply been avoided by waiting until such a time as technology developed that would make slavery useless.
It is important to remember that after the death of slavery in the legal sense, the basic practice of it still continued: "Although chattel slavery had been illegal for three decades by the 1890s, southern blacks often felt that a new kind of de facto slavery had taken its place" (Schultz). The process of "sharecropping" as it was known in the South, created a system of de fact servitude that continued to keep blacks in a depressed and terrible situation. Indeed, one can legitimately…
Bibliography
American War Deaths." Apr. 16, 2003. http://www.germantown.k12.il.us/html/deaths.html
The Great Migration." PBS Web Site. Apr. 16, 2003. http://afroamhistory.about.com/gi / dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2F www.pbs.org%2Fwnet%2Faaworld%2Freference%2Farticles%2Fgreat_migration.html
Schultz, Stanley K. "The Great Migration: Blacks in White America." American History
102. Apr. 16, 2003. http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture09.html
During this life, contemplation about life and the journey was also part of the plan toward the best life. Contemplation, for this type of philosophy, is an activity that refines and discovers virtue which, carried out continuously throughout one's life, allows one to reach a clear goal of self-actualization, and thus the potential within. And it this is true of the body, how much more just that a similar distinction
" (McPherson, 13) This is to illustrate that the abolition of slavery did not just threaten to dismantle the institution retaining blacks in bondage. Moreover, the modes of capitalism promised to dismantle the southern agrarian way of life which depended upon slavery. This was not simply because slavery was perceived as something which had to be abolished. Moreover, this was because the nature of the southern economy no longer corresponded with economic patterns defining the United States.
The relevant portion of the Article specified that "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States" by adding free Persons to three fifths of "all other Persons" (meaning slaves). The immediate effect of compromise increased the seats of the Southern states from 38% in the Continental Congress to 45% in the first U.S. Congress; it also helped to elect slave-owning presidents in 12 of the first
This information is important, because it shows how Northerners did not fully understand the way that they indirectly supported slavery. Where, the various raw material produced by slaves, would be used to help benefit the citizens in these areas and the country as whole (by increasing trade).Those who are claiming that slavery should be abolished, are showing their lack of understanding surrounding the various issues of economics. As a
Kennedy. The American Spirit. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. English Working Classes Cheer." (1863) Bailey, Thomas Andrew & David M. Kennedy. The American Spirit. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Slave is taken to Barbados," (1750). Bailey, Thomas Andrew & David M. Kennedy. The American Spirit. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. South Carolina Threatens Secession (1832) Bailey, Thomas Andrew & David M. Kennedy. The American Spirit. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Stowe, Harriet Beecher.
Slavery, The Civil War and the Preservation of the Union In the face of oppression and harsh treatment, slaves formed communities as a coping mechanism and to resist the belief that they were simply property. Members of these slave communities came together often to sing, talk, and even plan covert plots to runaway or sabotage the system in which they were living. Slaves married, had children and worked to keep their