There was little industry in the South, and even if some industry could be established the South would not have been able to compete with the North’s reputable trade and industry market. Basically the South depended on plantations and the slaves to work them, as economic profit, but historians of today still debate whether this is true. Was slavery economically profitable for the Southern colonies? Stampp, Conrad and Meyer, and Fogel and Engelman all recent historians have argued that slavery was efficient and vibrant form of economic organisation, which did not deter Southern economic growth, but helped its economy to rapidly grow. The Southern three thirds of the British mainland colonies in America supplied cotton to factories in Britain that spun the cotton into clothes. Some could argue that Britain also economically profited from the plantations (mainly cotton) of the South, which enabled Britain to sustain its wealth and power.
After the Industrial Revolution, the demand of cotton from Britain increased, this led to a rise of prices and it increased the incentive to produce, as it was highly profitable to do so. The South was producing 2,000,000 bales per year by the 1830s, but by 1860 this had grown to near 5,000,000 bales. The cotton industry soon outstripped all other plantation crops of economical importance.
Slave labour did not only benefit the slave owners economically, but also the slave traders. During the 16th and 19th centuries according to the best current estimates a total of 10 to 11 million slaves crossed the Atlantic Ocean. This would of brought great profits to the slave traders who wouldn’t pay much to transport the Africans through the ‘Middle Passage’, as goods would also be transported.
Slave labour in the Southern colonies was reasonably socially based. African slaves served as warriors, government officials, wives, concubines, tutors, eunuchs, victims of ritual sacrifice, house servants, and of course agricultural labourers. They became a part of the Southern community, and they represented how rich one was. For example someone with ten or twelve slaves was called a ‘small planter’, a Southerner owning twenty or more slaves was referred to, as a ‘planter’, and finally someone with fifty slaves would have been called a ‘large planter’. Slaves emerged to fill gaps of population as the small existing Southern population was widely distributed. While slaves satisfied labour needs, Southerners had the chance to rise up the social ladder, to expand their plantations westwards and become economically stronger. The Southerners viewed slavery as traditional, and saw it as their way of life. America had always been dependent on coerced labour, and by the early 18th century slavery, was the dominant labour system of the Southern colonies. Most of the Founding Fathers were large-scale slave owners, including George Washington ‘Father of his country’, and Thomas Jefferson, who proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal’. Also eight of the United States’ first twelve presidents, in office for 49 of the new nation’s first 61 years, were slaveholders. This just shows how most Southerners were likely to of had an experience of slave labour, and the benefactors of it. Slavery in the U.S.A was portrayed as the most beneficial form of slavery that had ever existed. Abolitionists, (people who wanted to rid the U.S.A of slavery), were depicted as irresponsible revolutionaries, trying to destroy the American Republic, and were driven to the North.
A small reason why slavery was seen as acceptable in the Southern colonies was the political situation it created for the South. Most Southerners were totally committed to their peculiar institution, as they called slave labour. The Founding Fathers recognised this in 1787, and so while they avoided using the word ‘slave’, they accepted and acknowledged the existence of slavery. Slaves were accepted – for taxation and representation purposes – as three fifths of a free person, this meant more seats in the Lower House of Representatives.
Due to the fact slavery was absent in England, the slaves laws that developed in Britain’s overseas possessions was entirely a product of colonial legislation, with each colony passing it’s own slave laws. Therefore the timing and substance of these laws varied somewhat. But however in 1672 the slave-trading Royal African Company was established, and receipt of the royal Asiento (or right to supply the Spanish colonies with slaves) in 1713. The establishment of this company symbolised the British dominance of the African slave trade. By the middle of the 18th century, slavery was solidly deep-rooted, both in fact and in law, as the labour system of the Southern colonies, and well legally established in the Northern colonies also. Politicians such as JC Calloun spoke of slavery as being an intrinsic part of democracy; a civilised society with one group working for the benefit of another. This fundamentally summed up how the Southerners viewed the status of the particular institution.
Religion, played an important part in the life of many slaves, and also it gave Southerners the rights to keep slaves. Many Christian and Muslims traditionally believed that only heathens (non-Muslims and non-Christians) could be enslaved, slavery was featured in the bible. Fears grew concerning African emancipation, due to many Africans converting to Christianity. Such fears were put to rest during the last third of the 17th century, when one colony after another passed laws making it clear that ‘the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or ffreedome’; in other words, Christians could be held as slaves.
Many historians believe that African slaves brought their traditional values and beliefs with them to America, and that these were merged on to Christianity with the result that slaves evolved their own distinctive style of worship. By the 1850s black churches and black ministers were not uncommon, however, historians believe that slaves may have simply copied white Southern practices. The church can be claimed to be the most important institution for the Americanisation of the slaves; arguably in no other aspect of black cultural life, did the values and practices of the white so deeply penetrate.
Even though slavery was very much a part of the Southern way of life, many historians argued, and still argue that slavery was responsible for the economic decline of the South. This statement is very believable, seeing that in the 17th century the slave population failed to reproduce itself and had to be replenished, which would of lost plantation owner’s money. Contemporary writers such as Olmsted and Helper also argued that slavery was not profitable. In Helper’s influential book The Impending Crisis of the South he said that slavery, ‘has retarded the progress and prosperity of our portion of the Union’. Historians of the 20th century such as Phillips follow Helper’s line and also saw slavery as a burden to the economical growth of the South.
Most Southerners feared that an end to slavery would result in economic collapse, social disintegration and race war. Southerners feared this so much that they were prepared to wage a terrible 4-year war in an effort to maintain slavery. Even though after the war, and the end of slavery, the South didn’t collapse.
So overall I have concluded that the main reason slavery had become so important to the Southern way of life was that the Southerners didn’t know any other way of life. They had had slavery since the beginning and therefore thought it was the correct way of life. The Southerners saw no reason to change their way of life, and also I think they believed that their society would collapse without slave labour- this obviously wasn’t the case. Also the Southerners benefited from the slave population, which allowed more politicians into the Lower House of Representatives. The colonists of the South saw Africans as ‘savage’ and ‘uncivilised’, they thought that the Africans were better off enslaved in American, than a freeman in their country of origin. So basically American Southerners thought they were helping Africans, as well as helping themselves. I believe that there was really no need for slavery to exist at all. I’m sure that the early settlers would have been able to survive without slavery or forced labour. I think slavery was an excuse to show racial dominance, and power. What if slavery hadn’t existed would America still be the same as it is today?
