Impacts of Slavery on the Civil War Essay Example

A slave is someone who is kept by somebody else so that he or she can do hard jobs and without getting paid. Slavery is whereby a person is controlled by someone where you are forced to work for someone else. A slave can be considered as an asset of someone else as the one who is directing them is the one who buys them. Slavery is described as forced labor. The cotton gin was invented by a man called Eli Whitney in 1973 and this machine affected the history of the United States. The production of cotton changed the world because the Northern parts of the US were able to build more mills for textiles. The Sothern States were unable to establish the textile mills because they used slaves so much and their capital was tied up, but the slaves were employed in cotton plantations, and hence the Southern States produced a lot cotton. Domestic slave trade increased in the Southern States because of the increased cotton production.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

When the civil war began, the Southern States was much disadvantaged than the northern Part because many of the people that lived there were slaves and they were uneducated. Cotton later became a marketable and profitable cash crop, and in the years 1790 - 1810, around 100,000 slaves were moved to the South and west where there were large cotton plantations. The colonies operated the plants that were being produced in the farms. When the slave trade became too much, the leaders from the Northern parts formed a group antislavery political movement, and they tried to stop the Southern leaders from engaging in the slave trade, but the leaders of the Southern States resisted this movement and hence the civil war in America begun.

The slaves were divided into two main parts; these are the field slaves and the home slaves. The field slaves began their work from sunrise till sunset every day, and they used to work very hard. The home slaves did not have a lot of pressure because their job was to clean the house and cook and thus, they worked for fewer hours than the field slaves. The Antislavery forces of the Northern also tried to block the expansion of the slave trade to the west and the leaders of the Southern states were not happy with the antislavery political forces of the North. Those who defended slavery said that if the slave trade were ended abruptly, the economy of the Southern would as come to a halt because they depended mainly on slave labor to cultivate their cotton lands.

The southern leaders were worried that if the slave trade were stopped, the economy of cotton would collapse and hence they would become destitute. The slavery defenders were afraid that if the slaves were released, they spread chaos and violence like the French Revolution. According to Historians, they believed that the person who owned many slaves at that time was declared to be the leader in his local area. They thought that slaves would come back to revenge because of how the people of the Southern States were mistreating them. Since the Southern States of America ventured into farming of many cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, and sugarcane they depended on slave labor to accomplish their tasks. Due to the shortage of energy, the landowners purchased slaves from Africa to work in their large farms, and the small-scale farmers were also allowed to use slaves as their form labor by the southern political leaders.

After Eli invented the cotton Gin machine, people thought that the demand for human labor would be reduced but in reality, the market of cotton became so high, and this also increased the need of slaves in the cotton plantations that they could pick the cotton because the gin could not pick up the cotton from the fields. The improved processing of cotton forced the South state to increase its cotton production. The prices of land and slaves also, and they led to the growth of many industries and cities. This the leaders of the South to expand their plantations to the west and also to increase human labor, so they had to import more slaves mostly from Africa. According to Ken Burn's documentary, He says that the West of America hard the power to protect themselves. The slaves benefited many countries because of the labor they provided and mostly they were not paid. The industries expanded to the beyond, and the cotton mills in Great Britain and the Northern Parts of America developed rapidly because of large cotton productions. The London and New York banks also provided money to the Southern States so that they could purchase more slaves and expand the plantations.

The more the slaves increased in the Southern States, the culture of the Americans was being divided, and civil war began because of the differences of the between the Americans and the slaves. The landowners made lots of money due to the profits they made from their farms, but the slaves continued to suffer because they earned little or no money at times. The white settlers of the southern argued that the black people could not care for themselves and they could not be able to feed their families on their own so by working on the plantations, they could be able to feed their families. Because of the law the slaves could not freely control or rule themselves because they were considered as labor providers and they were supposed to be working on the plantations all day long. As the revolutionary war continued, the slaves were impacted by the rebellion.

Conclusion

In 1775 the British recruited the first black slaves as Dunmore's Proclamation in Virginia. This act promised the slaves that they would be free from the Southern States if they would join the British army. During the war, around 30,000 to 100,000 slaves freed away from their masters when Salem was released, and he was told to enter the war by Washington who was a slaveholder. The liberated slaves hoped that the commanders of the British military would build a new home for them in another empire. The treaty that was signed in Parish ended the war commanded the British Army to go back to their country and leave the slaves that had freed themselves. The commanders of the military troops did not obey the Parish treaty, and they moved thousands of slaves to Great Britain, Canada, and the Caribbean. The Black Loyalists decided to stay back, and they continued to face economic and social marginalization as they restricted on owning lands.