Though the issue of slavery was, for the most part, left on the political backburner from 1776 until about 1840, it remained hotly contested in the minds of a large number of Americans and would eventually intensify to the point of launching the nation into a Civil War. These economic, social, and political developments between Northern and Southern states planted the seeds of what would eventually become the single bloodiest war in American history. In 1619, a Dutch trade ship arrived at Jamestown, Virginia carrying the English colony’s first shipment of African slaves. For years, upper-class colonists used indentured servitude to harvest their fields of tobacco (the cash-cow of colonial America at the time), but after a while, they became
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Well, they were a permanent dependent labor force, who could be defined as a people set apart. They were racially set apart. They were outsiders. They were strangers and in many ways throughout the world, slavery has taken root, especially where people are considered outsiders and can be put in a permanent status of slavery” (Document 2). Slavery continued to evolve into the early 19th century, as Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793 changed American agriculture forever(!). Cotton growing was concentrated primarily in a region in the Deep South called the ‘black belt’ characterized by rich, black, fertile soil. A map of the concentration of cotton farming in the 1840s can be seen in Document 8. Between 1800 and 1860, a massive number of slaves were forced to move from the homes they knew – and often from their families too – to new cotton-growing lands in states such as Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. Document 9 shows the relationship between the number of slaves in the black belt region and the number of bales of cotton produced. This created a much higher sense of dependence between the …show more content…
One of the first examples of abolitionist sentiment was the questioning of the morally dubious nature of this excerpt, or in more specific terms, the questioning of the ethics behind claiming that one is a “slave” to Britain while owning slaves, and assuming that slaves are not endowed any certain “unalienable Rights”. In 1791, Benjamin Banneker, a free African-American whose parents had been slaves, wrote to Thomas Jefferson, then Washington’s secretary of state, reminding him that in 1776 he had written of these “certain unalienable Rights”. Banneker illustrated his indignation by telling him that he should be “found most guilty of that most criminal act [slavery], which you professedly detested in others [the British], with respect to yourselves”. This recognition of the hypocrisy of slavery given the groundworks of American ideals shaped the issue of slavery for decades, and this method of thinking resulted in the abolition of slavery in Northern states until the dawn of the Civil War. Later, after the creation of the Articles of Confederation, the issue of free states vs. slave states would be introduced to American legislature. One of
Well, they were a permanent dependent labor force, who could be defined as a people set apart. They were racially set apart. They were outsiders. They were strangers and in many ways throughout the world, slavery has taken root, especially where people are considered outsiders and can be put in a permanent status of slavery” (Document 2). Slavery continued to evolve into the early 19th century, as Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793 changed American agriculture forever(!). Cotton growing was concentrated primarily in a region in the Deep South called the ‘black belt’ characterized by rich, black, fertile soil. A map of the concentration of cotton farming in the 1840s can be seen in Document 8. Between 1800 and 1860, a massive number of slaves were forced to move from the homes they knew – and often from their families too – to new cotton-growing lands in states such as Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. Document 9 shows the relationship between the number of slaves in the black belt region and the number of bales of cotton produced. This created a much higher sense of dependence between the …show more content…
One of the first examples of abolitionist sentiment was the questioning of the morally dubious nature of this excerpt, or in more specific terms, the questioning of the ethics behind claiming that one is a “slave” to Britain while owning slaves, and assuming that slaves are not endowed any certain “unalienable Rights”. In 1791, Benjamin Banneker, a free African-American whose parents had been slaves, wrote to Thomas Jefferson, then Washington’s secretary of state, reminding him that in 1776 he had written of these “certain unalienable Rights”. Banneker illustrated his indignation by telling him that he should be “found most guilty of that most criminal act [slavery], which you professedly detested in others [the British], with respect to yourselves”. This recognition of the hypocrisy of slavery given the groundworks of American ideals shaped the issue of slavery for decades, and this method of thinking resulted in the abolition of slavery in Northern states until the dawn of the Civil War. Later, after the creation of the Articles of Confederation, the issue of free states vs. slave states would be introduced to American legislature. One of