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The Abolition of Slavery
Introduction
Historians evaluate in several ways the distinctions and similarities of the North and South just before the Civil War. The North’s population was 50 percent more than the South’s. Blacks comprised just over one percent of the North’s population while about 95 percent of Southern blacks were slaves. The North emphasized manufacturing and commercial enterprises while the South focused on agricultural development, mostly with the labor of slaves (Pessen 1121).
This essay discusses topics related to the important issue of slavery in antebellum America: its evolution; treatment of and conditions for white workers, freed blacks and southern slaves; racial attitudes; and activities supporting slavery and its abolition.
Southern slavery in the United States was inhumane, immoral, damaging to the nation and needed to end unconditionally.
The Evolution of U.S. Slavery
Slavery was an important labor system during America’s early development. As early as the Jamestown, Virginia, settlement in 1619, slaves were used to produce marketable crops. This situation continued throughout the colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Some colonists linked oppression of black slaves to their own oppression by Great Britain; there were calls for slavery’s abolition. Blacks were approximately 35 percent of the 1790 colonial population. Slaves were imported to meet growing labor demands (“Slavery in America”).
Treatment and Living Conditions of Southern Slaves and Freed Slaves
Colonial settlers were accustomed to inequality and the mistreatment of those in lower classes. When the United States became an independent nation there was growing concern for humane treatment of lower class workers, including slaves. Eventually, a slave society developed in the South and became “the bedrock of the [South’s] economy and . . . social order.” Cruel and harsh punishment became common, especially on large plantations (Kolchin 30, 6-7, 29, 59-60).
Some archeologists and historians offer a moderate perspective on American slavery. After examining Georgia southern slave quarter ruins, Archeologists Otto and Burns determined most slaves received regular but limited issues of food, a few household items and some basic clothing. In many cases, slaves were allowed to sell their handicrafts, personal garden produce and domestic livestock for popular luxury items such as liquor, tobacco and herbal medicines; this extra income allowed slaves to almost match the white overseers’ salaries. Apparently, it was not uncommon to see slaves fishing and hunting with basic firearms since state laws did not prohibit their use (190, 193, 196). Pessen argued that despite the obvious brutality of slavery, many slaves “appear to have managed to maintain the integrity of their personalities, customs, values, and family ties” (1124).
In reality, most slaves’ lives were difficult and dominated by their owners. Restrictive codes controlled every part of their lives. They could not learn to read or write. Sexual liberties were commonplace. Sale or simply removal scattered families since their marriages had no legal standing. Compliant slaves were given favors while unruly ones were severely punished, often physically disgraced in front of other slaves. Masters wanted to keep slaves under control to prevent revolts and riots. Some riots and certainly escapes did occur but retribution for these actions was severe often ending in death (“Slavery in America”).
Harriet Beecher Stowe, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, dramatically described the sanitized and hypocritical display of a slave market warehouse in New Orleans and the reality slaves faced – inspection, mockery, separation from loved ones, mistreatment and oppressive behavior by owners and dealers (276-284; ch. XXX). No matter the conditions they experienced, slaves sustained a deep loss of personal freedom.
Slave revolts did occur but usually were unsuccessful. Nat Turner’s 1831 revolt strengthened the slave codes but also encouraged the early abolition movement. Although active by the 1780s, the Underground Railroad became more active by the 1830s and helped 40- to 100,000 slaves reach freedom in the north. This activity increased tensions on both sides of the issue (“Slavery in America”).
Freed blacks often fared worse than white workers. White workers viewed free blacks as “cheap labor” and their direct competition for current and future jobs (Bonacich 614-616). Regardless of whether they were slave or free or the amount of wealth and experience they had acquired, slaves and former slaves generally worked in the lowest levels of the antebellum social structure (Pessen 1129). The imposition of an abusive social caste system affected all blacks – free or slave (Bonacich 626).
Working and Living Conditions for Northern and Southern White Workers [1/4 page]
Working and living conditions for northern whites and southern blacks were not dissimilar. The obvious difference was the large number of southern enslaved blacks who were oppressed. Although northern white workers produced wealth for their employers, the lives of northern workers in the middle of the nineteenth century were insecure and precarious as they endured declining wages, devalued skills appreciation, reduced job security and austere living conditions (Pessen 1135, 1131, 1124).
White workers in both the north and south felt oppression in several ways. In the north, they labored at a lower class level with very limited employment rights. In the south, in regions producing cash crops, there tended to be more social unity and interaction with landowners; importantly, they were free and could not be sold, beaten or restricted in their actions in which they generally prolonged the slave system (Otto and Burns 197).
Racial Attitudes and Events Supporting Slavery
Although importation of African slaves was outlawed by federal law in 1808, the number and usefulness of slaves grew. Their numbers tripled in the first half of the 18th century. By the middle of the 19th century, four million blacks were trapped in slavery in a country divided over this turbulent issue. Mechanization of the textile industry created a demand for more cotton, a major crop in southern states. Once Eli Whitney’s cotton gin was available, production of cotton and the resultant number of slaves were destined to increase in the U.S. (“Slavery in America”).
The “peculiar institution” that characterized the South in mid-century had little effect on life in the North. In post-Colonial times, blacks worked with whites under generally equitable conditions. As the nineteenth century progressed, northern citizens hated whites who railed against slavery mostly because it would have negatively impacted their industrial cotton and crop production. Northern business leaders continued doing business with slave-owning merchants in the South (Kolchin 30; Pessen 1123).
Arguments Supporting Abolition
Some opposed slavery because it was unjust free labor that was “regressive, inefficient and made little economic sense” (“Slavery in America”). White supporters such as publisher William Lloyd Garrison and author Harriet Beecher Stowe believed slavery was a sin and needed to be abolished completely. Garrison cited rights protected by God and the Declaration of Independence to defend his viewpoint that freedom and slavery were incompatible. He denounced the slave code and argued God created all people who have a right to seek immortality and to be free from their human bondage. Garrett criticized the North’s ultimate objective of preserving the union, even at the cost of supporting slavery in the southern states. A southern gentleman in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells newly-purchased slaves that many southern planters treat their slaves reasonably well. A young man standing nearby blames such mild-mannered southerners who tolerate and sanction the continued brutality of slaves (276-284; ch. XXX).
Key Documents, Decisions and Abolition Actions
Expansion westward provided more fuel for the abolition issue. Congressional actions (e.g., the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act), court rulings (especially the Dred Scott decision), and violent riots (such as Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry) gave each side of the abolition issue reason to press forward. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed about 3 million slaves in southern states. Over 185,000 black soldiers served heroically in the Union Army (“Slavery in America”).
Conclusion
Slavery in the United States was officially abolished with the 13th Amendment in 1865. However, remnants of the bitter abolition controversy lingered through the Reconstruction period and beyond despite free blacks receiving suffrage and constitutional protections. New restrictions and the rise of supremacy groups caused racism and discrimination to linger beyond the 20th century (“Slavery in America”).
This brief essay discussed topics related to slavery in antebellum America: its evolution; treatment and conditions for white workers, freed blacks and southern slaves; racial attitudes; and activities supporting slavery and its abolition.
Works Cited
Bonacich, Edna. “Abolition, the Extension of Slavery, and the Position of Free Blacks: A Study
of Split Labor Markets in the United States, 1830-1863.” American Journal of Sociology 81. 3 (1975): 601-628. JSTOR. Web. 19 Apr 2016.
Garrison, William Lloyd. “No Compromise with the Evil of Slavery,” Speech, 1854.
etc.usf.edu. Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida, 2016. Web. 18 Apr 2016. <http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/185/civil-rights-and-conflict-in-the-united-states-selected-speeches/5061/no-compromise-with-the-evil-of-slavery-speech-1854/>.
Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery: 1619-1877. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003. Print.
Otto, John Solomon, and Augustus Marion Burns. “Black Folks and Poor
Buckras: Archeological Evidence of Slave and Overseer Living Conditions on an Antebellum Plantation.” Journal of Black Studies 14.2 (1983): 185–200. JSTOR.
Web. 19 Apr 2016.
Pessen, Edward. “How Different from Each Other Were the Antebellum North and South?”
The American Historical Review 85.5 (1980): 1119-1149. JSTOR. Web. 18 Apr 2016. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1853242>.
“Slavery in America.” history.com. HISTORY.com, n.d. Web. 19 Apr
2016. <http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery>.
Stowe, Harrier Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 1852. Mineola, NY: Dover Publishing, 2005. Print.
