The Economics of the South and the Civil War

Introduction

Most people believe the Civil War was fought only over slavery and for abolition. Because of the speech Abraham Lincoln gave “The emancipation Proclamation,” it looks like the Civil War was a war about the morals of the nation. A war could not be stopped from happening once the Compromise of 1850 happened. The South was frantic to keep slavery going. Their whole economy was bases around the economics of slavery. The North did not realize that there was more than freeing the slaves to do with the war. The economics of the south was free labor caused by slavery. The black slave was a God sent for the Southern states in that it allowed them to make a great profit off their crops. William Freehling said, “Posterity thinks of slavery as the South’s leading economic interest” (239). The Northern states were against slavery but they did not realize what it would do to the South when slavery is abolished. “The Southern economy, however, was built on the labor of the African-American slave, who were oppressed into providing cheap labor.” (History Central, web) This paper will allow us to look at the complete economics side of slavery and what effect it would have on them.

History of Slaveries start in the South

The Dutch West India Company was commissioned “to supply the colonist with as many Blacks as they conveniently can.” (Morison 75) When the South started to be developed in 1625 when The Virginian Company said, “Any Englishmen who agrees to take out at least 250 people at his own expense was allowed to choose … 1250 acres or more” (Morison 54) This is how the Plymouth Colony was started. These men were not blue-collar workers, for they had money and position. They did not want to work with their...

... middle of paper ...

...nd the North blockaded the Southern ports the south was doomed. They needed money to live and pay for the war and without being able to export their only cash crop they could not keep going. Their whole economy was about slavery and the great economics it creates for the owners, and for the Southern States.

Works Cited

Allen, J. Michael Allen & James B. World History from 1500. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993, Print.

Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion, Volumn II. Vol. II. New York: Oxford university Press, 2007, print.

History Central. "Economics of the Civil war." 2008. History Central. Web 23 April 2011.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Oxford History of the American People. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965, print.

Readers Digest. The Story of America. New York: Readers Digest Assoc., 1975, Print.