At the signing of the Constitution, the federal government stood for slavery as the Founders thought that property rights were important. Many prominent Founding Fathers, George Washington among them, sought to free their slaves in their wills. Between the end of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, most Northern states had abolished slavery. In the South, there was fear of a slave revolt; in 1793, slaves revolted against their French masters in Haiti,...
At the signing of the Constitution, the federal government stood for slavery as the Founders thought that property rights were important. Many prominent Founding Fathers, George Washington among them, sought to free their slaves in their wills. Between the end of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, most Northern states had abolished slavery. In the South, there was fear of a slave revolt; in 1793, slaves revolted against their French masters in Haiti, and there was also the failed Nat Turner Rebellion in 1831. The threat of a slave rebellion made many in the South uneasy whether they owned slaves or not. This threat caused whites in the South to pass laws against both freed blacks and slaves. It was also against the law to teach a slave to read because Southerners feared that the slaves would organize.
There was too much money in the slave trade for the slaveowners to stop it. The development of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney made slaves more productive and allowed Southern planters to plant more cotton. Worldwide demand for cheap American cotton also fueled the slave trade. Without slaves, textile mills in the Northeast and all over Europe would have had to seek another cheap source of cotton. The cotton gin and ensuing cotton boom before the Civil War made the planters into millionaires. By the time of the Civil War, there would be more money in slaves than in all the railroads and banks in the United States combined. This made any attempts for the federal government to compensate slaveowners for their emancipated property difficult if not impossible.
Politically, slavery would become the key issue between 1820 and 1860. It would fuel the growing sectionalism that divided the country, and it would also result in the end of the Whig Party. The slavery issue was at the heart of the early Republican Party, which was initially made up of "conscience Whigs" who wanted to deny slavery in the new territories. The abolitionists claimed that a Southern slave conspiracy caused the Mexican War; the war was waged by a Southern president, and many Southerners enlisted in this conflict. Slavery was also at the heart of the "Bleeding Kansas" conflict, in which Stephen Douglas tried to solve the issue by allowing voters in Kansas to decide whether they wanted slavery through popular sovereignty.
Culturally and socially, many people had strong opinions about slavery. Abolitionists spoke out against the practice in William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper The Liberator and Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book was later made into a play, thus influencing an even greater number of people. Southerners such as John C. Calhoun called the practice a "necessary evil," but he softened these words after his fellow Congressmen from the North attacked the institution. The slaves themselves were not powerless in this struggle, as a minority of them escaped to the North via the Underground Railroad. Many slaves resisted by working slower and sabotaging work. Many in both the North and South were anxious about what emancipation meant. There were many colonization movements for freed slaves, and the nation of Liberia was the most successful.
While other nations did not fight a civil war to free their slaves, it would have been nearly impossible for the United States to end slavery before the Civil War. There was too much money involved in the system, and there was too many questions over what to do with the newly freed slaves.
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