The Role Of Slavery In American History

Slavery has been of significant importance in American history. During the Antebellum period, slavery undergirded the economy of the United States, dominated politics and eventually led to the war between the North and South. People in bondage were forced to work and live in unsanitary conditions, made to feel like livestock as they were bought and sold in the infamous slave market, and were scrutinized and ridiculed for their heritage. Slavery was implemented by the men and women of American colonization to take over the harvesting process of crops in the South, but caused the majority of American citizens to refocus their moral compass and choose whether or not to support this peculiar institution. Tension regarding the subject of slavery
It is impossible to understand the South without dissecting the reasons for the introduction of slavery, which was rooted so deeply into traditional Southern culture that the two are often mistaken for each other. Upon arrival in America, Europeans had one specific goal in mind: to cultivate the foreign land for the purpose of making money and returning back to Europe to recreate a higher social status. With this motivation in mind, it is easier to understand why these settlers of the South were drawn to the chattel system. Planters, who believed that they were entirely unsuitable for this kind of backbreaking work, quickly realized the unparalleled profits to be had from utilizing cheap and easily manipulated labor. The mass production of the tobacco plant served as a major catalyst for the adoption of African slavery as the South’s labor system. Tobacco was a labor-intensive crop, requiring field workers to spend numerous hours a day tending to plants under the brutally hot sun. The Southerners believed that these black slaves were created by God to work and cultivate the new land for the whites. They argued that Africans
government outlawed the African slave trade in the early 1800’s, so it was the domestic slave trade that thrived as the nation was on the cusp of the Civil War. The domestic slave trade in the U.S. allocated the African population throughout the South so efficiently that it greatly surpassed any trade that the U.S. received in the Atlantic Slave Trade. As the domestic trade flourished, the slave population nearly tripled. Slavery in the US was distinctive in this way because of the ability of the slave population to increase its numbers naturally. Unlike any other slave society, the U.S. had a continuous increase in the slave population for a more than half a century. Unfortunately, as a result, approximately 1.2 million men, women, and children were displaced throughout the country, the vast majority of whom were born in America. One of the most dreaded possibilities for slave on the market was to be sold to plantation owners in the Deep South. Some destinations, particularly on Louisiana farms harvesting sugar, had especially repulsive reputations. These slaves were often put on display in wealthy slave merchants’ homes to be examined by prospective owners, sometimes wearing as little clothing as loin clothes. But what made the slave trade so alarming was how destructive it was towards families. Generally, mothers and children were separated due to their difference in maturity and overall physical strength. Most severed families never reconnected,