USA: North and South

The cotton industry

Cotton was the main crop in the South and the first industry in Georgia. Georgia planters exported their cotton to England but it was not treated.

Thanks to Whitney’s invention, the “Cotton Gin” (Cotton Engine – 1793), which separated the seeds from the fibres, a huge increase in the amount of cotton produced was made possible. In 1820, the output was 8,000 times higher than in 1791.

The increase was achieved by bringing in more slaves to pick the cotton. The prosperity of the planters depended more and more on slavery and Southerners broke away from the US.

Slavery is the root of Southern wealth and industry. It is an institution in the South, as well as their peculiar way of life. The “Cotton Gin” brought about slavery and the Civil War.

In 1810, there were 7,2 million people in the USA and among those people 1,2 million black slaves.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, owned slaves himself and had a black mistress with whom he had children. Georges Washington, as a land owner, owned slaves too.

Southerners defending the right of slavery asked an unanswerable question: how could they cultivate their fields of tobacco, rice, and cotton without slave workers?

The situation was different in the North: the climate was cooler and the farms were smaller so there was no need for slaves. Many Northerners were abolitionists.

By the 19th century, many Northern states had passed their laws to abolish slavery inside their boundaries. In 1808, they persuaded Congress to make it illegal to bring in new slaves from Africa. Gradually, North and South opposed each other.

The Missouri Compromise

In the 1830s, Northern and Southern politicians kept arguing: is slavery permitted in the new territories being settled in the West? The discussion focused on Missouri, which was part of the Louisiana Purchase.

Southerners argued that slaves should be allowed (will to expand slavery). Northerners objected strongly to it for moral and economic reasons: competition would be unfair between Northern and Southern farmers (easier with slaves).

They finally reached a compromise – the Missouri Compromise:

• slavery was permitted in Missouri and Arkansas territories
• but banned in the West and North of Missouri

It did not end the dispute. The South began denying the right of slaves to own land and the threats of secession on both sides foreshadowed the secession of the South, prefiguring the Civil War.

Import duties and the States’ rights doctrine

In the early 1830s, another argument was going on about import duties, the North standing for it and the South opposing it because they were afraid of competition (it would raise the price of Southern goods).

The Southern politician J. C. Calhoun claimed that a “state had the right to disobey any federal law if the state believed the law should harm his interests”. This was supported by the Southerners and it became known as the “States’ rights doctrine”.

That claim was strongly denied by the North and by Webster, senator of Massachusetts who answered that “the power to decide if the federal authority is right or wrong belongs to Supreme Court and not to independent states”.

Webster warned the Americans that the States’ rights doctrine could be a serious threat to the unity of the USA.

In the 20 years afterwards, the USA grew much bigger. In 1846, it divided the Oregon territory with Britain and in 1848, it took vast areas in the southwest from Mexico.

Obtaining these new lands, raised again the question already asked during the Missouri Compromise of 1820: should slavery be allowed on new American territories? The North refused, and the South agreed.

The Fugitive Slave Act

In 1850, Congress voted in favour of another compromise:

1. California was admitted to the US as a free state
2. people living in Utah and Mexico had the right to decide by themselves whether or not to allow slavery

To persuade the South to agree to these arrangements, Congress passed a law: the Fugitive Slave Act. That new law made it easier for Southerners to recapture slaves who escaped and fled for safety in free states.

The new law called for “severe penalties for anyone assisting Negroes to escape from bondage. Slave owners had long offered rewards to get their slaves back. This created a group of men called bounty hunters, who searched for escaped slaves in free states.

This law angered many Northerners and some northern judges refused to enforce it. Some Northerners provided hiding places for fugitives, mapped out routes, and moved runaway slaves by night from one secret hiding place to another.

The final stop was Canada where fugitives could be pursued neither by federal laws nor by bounty hunters.

As the railway was the modern way of travelling at that time, they modelled their vocabulary on it: the “underground railroad” represented the people, people providing money were “stockholders”, guides were “conductors” and hiding places were “depots”.

Many conductors were former slaves and they often traveled deep into slave states to get in touch with runaways. If captured, they ended up as slaves again or dead. the number of slaves increased.

In 1854, Senator Steven Douglas persuaded Congress to end the Missouri Compromise. There was no slavery in the West of Missouri and Kansas, people were free to decide whether to permit or not slavery.

A “race” between pro-slavery and anti-slavery began: pro-slavery immigrants poured from the South and anti-slavery immigrants poured from the North to outnumber the other group. Result: fightings and killings.

Pro-slavery raiders from Missouri burnt a town called Lawrence and killed part of the population. In reply, the abolitionist John Brown led a raid in which supporters of slavery were killed. We were in 1859.

Some said that Brown was a madman. A Virginia Court tried Brown for treason: he was hanged with 5 other men. The South was horrified by the threat of a slave revolt and blamed the North for it by calling the North “Black Republicans”.

Americans began referring to it as “Bleeding Kansas”. Neither side controlled Kansas and Congress delayed its admission in the US.

The Dred Scott case

In 1858, the pro-slavery won a victory of another sort, the Dred Scott decision. Dred Scott was a slave who had been taken by his master to live in a free state. He asked the Supreme Court to declare this had made him legally free. The Supreme Court refused because:

• Black slaves had no rights as American citizens
• Congress had gone beyond its constitutional powers in claiming the right to prohibit slavery in the Western territories

This was quite a stir in the US: the South was delighted and the anti-slavery were horrified.

The Supreme Court seemed to say that free states had no right to forbid slavery within their boundaries: slaveowners could put their slaves to work anywhere.

The anti-slavery created a party: the Republican Party.