The Impact Of The Revolutionary War On Slavery

Revolutionary Changes (2017) stated the revolutionary war saw the most positive impact on slavery in the northern states. States north of Delaware outlawed slavery soon after the war. However, the emancipation laws took considerable time to actually take effect. Many of the states freed only the children of current slaves, and often only when the children were 25 years old. Laws in the North forbid slavery, but the "peculiar institution" existed into the 19th century. Many slaves won their freedom at the end of the Revolutionary war. However, the slaves that were not freed for fighting in the war became a valuable commodity, especially in the south. According to Shi and Tindall, (2016) “Slave Planters, explained a southerner, “care for nothing but to buy Negroes to raise cotton & raise cotton to buy Negroes.” The sole purpose for buying more slaves was to make profit. In the first part of the nineteenth century, “cotton became the main force driving the national economy and the controversial efforts to expand slavery into the western territories”. Cotton was known as “white gold because it created great wealth to southern planters. There is a long list of white men and women in history who are well known for the work they did to help slaves run …show more content…
Many of the white abolitionists still expected the free blacks to take a backseat in the abolition movement. Shi and Tindall (2016) stated free blacks were susceptible to the social status between slavery and freedom. Most lived in fear that they would be kidnapped and become slaves once again. Although, free blacks had more rights than slaves because they could enter into contracts, marry, and own property as well as pass their property to their children. Slaves were not viewed or treated as equal to whites. In most states, they could not vote, own weapons, attend white church services, or testify against whites in