The plantation crops and slavery system changed between 1800 and 1860 because cotton and sugar became a huge deal and they were expanding it immensely. Originally slaves mostly worked on tobacco farms and rice fields but sugar and cotton began to expand so slavery expanded. Because the South was expanding so much they wanted more and more and even imported slaves illegally. Slave trading increased to match the increase of the expanding cotton and sugar plantations. The trading of slaves began to break apart slave families because the slaves were sold and traded individually. Which meant they were being taken from their families to work somewhere else possibly very far away. Eventually there was way too many slaves going around and
Between 1800 and 1850, the North and South had grown distinctively different, but they also had some similarities. Some of the differences & similarities between the North and South included the economy, social attitudes & structures, and daily life. The North and the South had farmers and everyone including children worked on the family farms. As time went by, the North became more industrialized and manufacturing became the center point of their economy rather than agriculture. Factories popped up all along the east coast and the inland waterways.
Before the 19th century, farming was done by hand and by using small tools. The Market and Industrial Revolutions brought about lots of new inventions that benefitted agriculture. Very few people changed American agriculture more than Cyrus McCormick did in the 1800’s. His invention, the McCormick mechanical reaper, revolutionized farming by putting together many parts involved in harvesting crops into one machine. The mechanical reaper was a revolutionary farming tool that saved effort and time for farmers by allowing them to more efficiently harvest and cut
They worked as indentured servants at first and later became slaves in the
In the 1800, 6 to 7 million black slave came to be used for plantation and help them build their new nation. They helped grow two main things tobacco and cotton they had about 4 million slaves for the tobacco and for cotton they had about 2 million slaves. They said that were going to be used for labor source and the colonists became slaves to. It all started when 20 African Americans got brought into the poorer slavery they didn’t have enough people to grow the cotton and tobacco so they had to get more that’s when they brought a whole bunch of black people across the Atlantic Ocean.
These people were usually war prisoners or criminals who were seen as the “outsiders” in a class hierarchy. Even though some of these slaves were brutally treated and forced to work until death, some however, enjoyed a more filling and successful life. For example, some slaves worked for the state or in the households of their masters while others worked dreadfully in the mines. Also, some masters retired their slaves when they got too elderly to work efficiently. Also, others were granted their freedom after they had paid off a debt or could purchase their freedom.
Throughout the development of the colonies in America, slave trade grew to be a significant source of labor in primarily southern plantations within the late seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. During the era, with slaves being condemned to be considered socially inferior by law, and the increase in demand of goods such as rice and indigo, the slave labor force became a notable source for southern plantations in the eighteenth century. Slaves and people of color had always been considered to be socially inferior even before the colonies existed. With a sense of paternalism in Great Britain, people have always believed that those considered slaves,or servants rather, were second class citizens, and these people needed to be suppressed for their own best interests.
After slavery was abolished in the North, it became a peculiar institution of the South, which meant that it was an institution unique of southern society. Slavery was a system of labor in which the slaves suffered very difficult life conditions, violent punishments, and injustices. Most slaves lived on plantations or farms. Most slaves were field workers, while a small percentage worked on the industry. Usually, the slaves who worked in urban areas had more autonomy than those who worked in rural areas.
Slavery was also increasing because you never had to pay the slaves that you owned and the plantations required a lot of labor, so slaves were a lot cheaper than the indentured servants. The profits from tobacco and rice led planters to import enslaved Africans, which made the economy depend on slavery. Although slavery was a morally
The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South takes a profound look into slavery in America from the beginning. The author, Kenneth Stampp, tells the story after doing a lot of research of how the entire South operated with slavery and in the individual states. The author uses many examples from actual plantations and uses a lot of statistics to tell the story of the south. The author’s examples in his work explains what slavery was like, why it existed and what it done to the American people.
The increase in profits led to the demand for more slaves to help plant and harvest the cotton. The slaves were no longer needed in the removal of seeds from cotton but were needed in increase numbers for planting and harvesting. There was a direct correlation between the increase in cotton production and the increase in slave populations
There were small groups of elite citizens who owned slave plantations. Only slaves could work there, whereas free peasants were limited in working in those places. This forced people to seek work in other
The Industrial Revolution caused tension between the North and the South. The north mostly concentrated on manufacturing products and south grew the raw materials used to make those products. Since the north concentrated on manufacturing, there wasn’t a high demand for slaves. Meanwhile, the south grew for example cotton, and many other raw materials so there was a high demand for slavery since white people did not want to do low-paying, unskilled and hard labor. On January 1808, the north and a few southern congressmen, voted to abolish the slave trade.
With the rise in the production of cotton, the south needed more slaves in order to control and to work the cotton production. This invention increased the demand for slave labor. The invention of The Cotton Gin led to a prosperity in the Southern economy creating a one-crop economy for the South. There was a pressure put on the relationship between the North and the South and their different perceptions of slavery
Lastly, with the expansion of the country to the west and into what we now know as Texas drove the need for more slaves to work the land. With the decrease of demand for tobacco and rice, plantations turned to the new crop cotton. In 1800 less than half a million bales of cotton
At first they experimented with different and cheaper forms of labor such as indentured servitude, and Native American labor. All other forms failed, while slavery succeeded. It became a staple in southern farms. A key thing to recall is that slaves were not cheap, many small farmers just had the goal to be able to own at least one slave. The cycle of slavery and profit is a never ending cycle.