Slavery and Capitalism in Nineteenth

Slavery and Capitalism in Nineteenth Century United States

Development of Capitalism in the North

In the period between 1800 and 1850, the North and the South developed two separate and distinct economies. Spurred by the British naval blockade during the War of 1812, America was forced to develop an industrial base. Foodstuffs for the war economy and munitions to supply the army lead to the formation of capitalism. Following the war, there was a great demand for American agricultural products in war-torn Europe. In 1816, a tariff on imports helped further spur industrialization and the market economy. Capitalism developed in America because of the war and the shift to industrialization. It developed in the North, because it could not develop in the South.

By 1820, a major shift was underway in the labor pool. Property ownership and the economic independence it brought had always been an American virtue but increasingly, workers were needed to fuel the industrial base. A class of workers emerged who sold their services for pay. As immigration increased, more and more of these new Americans found their way into the factories of the North, increasing the population base.

In the South, the economy was quite different. There was no true market economy where workers competed with one another and sold their services in the open market. Almost all white citizens were landowners, or worked on rented land. The slaves provided the labor force for the plantations, as the South became an economy based almost entirely upon a single product - cotton. New immigrants tended to settle in the North, as they felt quite unwelcome in the pro-slavery South and the jobs were in the North. In the South, there was no large class of workers toiling in factories because there were few factories. The capitalist economy of the North did not develop in the South because slavery was particularly unsuited for providing a labor pool for industry, unlike its use in agriculture.

Slavery's Contradiction with Capitalism Leads to the Civil War

The North and the South were two different economies. In the North, an industrial base had developed, fueled by demand for American goods in Europe, high import tariffs and the War of 1812. New immigrants increasingly provided the labor pool for this economy. As a result, a class of citizens developed who sold their services for compensation, as opposed to owning their own land.

In the South, there was no labor class. The economy was based almost entirely on cotton and there was little industry. Slaves provided the labor pool on these cotton plantations. As long as slavery existed, the South could not develop a labor pool. This led to antagonism between workers and slave owners. The South had the attitude of, "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free" with regard to employing workers. This was in conflict with the worker class whose status would be diminished should they be forced to complete with slaves.

Prior to 1830, the United States had been able to manage the issue of slavery through a combination of compromise and avoidance. This issue had been a contentious one from the early days of the republic, almost threatening to derail the Constitutional Convention. The issue was tabled by providing a twenty year period in which Congress could not ban slavery. The Missouri Compromise in 1820 again allowed the nation to manage the issue without confronting it. New states coming into the Union were admitted two at a time - one Slave and one Free.

A decade later, however, this management strategy began to unravel. North and South were at odds over import tariffs. The North favored them to protect their industrial base and the South opposed them because they had no industrial base and were consumers of many of these goods. They were reluctant to pay for protection of the North's economy.

In the 1840s the United States started on a path of expansion, fueled by the concept of Manifest Destiny, and spurred primarily by the American victory in the Mexican War. As part of the settlement with Mexico, the United States had acquired a huge amount of territory which would later become New Mexico, Arizona and California. Because of the nature of the land and the climate in this area, cotton would be impractical and slavery would never take hold. In the Northwest, the Oregon territory was acquired, providing further land for new states.

In the South, these new states were seen as a threat to the way of life should they come into the Union as Free states. Slavery needed to expand to new territory if it was to continue to survive. In the North, people of all classes wanted no new Slave states. Potential settlers saw this new land as an opportunity to obtain land of their own and workers did not want to compete with slaves. Business owners and industrialists saw the west as markets for their goods and they also wanted Free states in the West to support them in increasing the power of the federal government to promote the national economy.

As the national economy developed, the North began to promote the expansion of the power of the federal government. When the economy had been primarily agrarian, the individual states could provide all the support necessary. However, as the economy in the North became increasingly industrial, the services needed were different, and could only be provided by a strong central government. By the 1850s, most in the North were demanding federal subsidies to railroads, a new national banking system, a homestead act, federal subsidies for establishment of agricultural and technical colleges, and high tariffs. This was an agenda in which the South had no interest and no need. It would impose a severe burden on the South in the form of taxes and would further propel the North ahead of the South, both politically and economically.

As the country expanded, the South continued to become more and more isolated. The Kansas-Nebraska Act had been an attempt to expand slavery into these new states, by allowing the new states to decide for themselves whether they would be Free or Slave. Despite an attempt by the South to fix the vote in Kansas by moving pro-slavery settlers into the territory, the sentiment proved to be overwhelmingly anti-slavery. Most of the land west of Texas and North of Missouri was unsuitable for growing cotton, and without cotton there was virtually no need for slavery. The South was in the position of trying to create Slave states that would support the South in Congress, but in which there would be no slavery.

In the 1850s, distrust between the North and the South increased. This made compromise impossible. The South saw an abolitionist plot in every action by the North. They were frustrated by the North's unwillingness to cooperate on the issue of returning runaway slaves. The raids by John Brown contributed to their paranoia. In the North, the Dred Scott decision confirmed that the United States Supreme Court was on the side of the South. Democrats occupied the White House from 1853 to 1861 and the South dominated the Democratic Party. Anti-slavery forces in the North looked to Congress as their only ally.

The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act destroyed the Second Party system of Whigs and Democrats that had existed from the mid 1830s through 1854. Congress, in passing this legislation, had divided not along party lines, but by North and South, with southern Whigs and Democrats supporting it and northern Whigs and Democrats opposed. In the Presidential election of 1856, a new party emerged - the Republican Party. This new party identified itself with an anti-slavery platform and although it did not elect its candidate, John Fremont, to the Presidency, it made the election close by capturing most of the northern states. In the 1860 election, the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln and the Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas. However, the southern Democrats, meeting in Richmond, nominated John Breckinridge, a states rights proponent and adopted a pro-slavery platform. This effectively left two parties, Republican and Democrat.

How Slavery Thrived in the United States

In spite of the fact that slavery was dying out in the Western Hemisphere, it continued to thrive in the South. This was due to two reasons. First, the slaves in the United States, by the middle of the nineteenth century, were mostly Creoles, who had been born in the United States. The ban on importation of slaves in 1808 had forced the South to develop practices to ensure that the slave population propagated on its own, rather than rely on new stock, as had been the case in most of the Western Hemisphere. Thus the slave population became self-perpetuating and did not need to rely on new imports.

Second, the concept of Paternalism served to bolster the institution of slavery. Paternalism is the term used to describe the attitude that slaveholders developed toward their slaves. It was a racist view of the black man as an inferior being that needed the protection of the white man. The slaveholder was the "father" who needed to take care of his slaves spiritual and material needs, and to protect him or her.

Early in the nineteenth century, slaveholders began to view their slaves as property that needed protecting. Conditions improved slightly and slaves were given better food, clothing and housing. This was not done out of kindness, but because of a need to protect their property. Eventually laws were passed in southern states that limited the physical punishment that slaveholders could inflict upon slaves, and set the age at which slaves could be separated from their mothers.

Slavery needed to be protected from capitalism and democracy because these forces were inherently in opposition to slavery. Democracy declared all men equal before the law, but Paternalism provided the basis for a justification by saying these were not men, but some inferior being that needed to be ruled by whites. Slavery could develop and prosper in capitalistic America because the South was not a capitalistic society. It was a separate economy with very little wage labor.