Slavery Dbq

Slavery had been around in the United States for hundreds of years; it had even been protected by the constitution at one point. Every race has been enslaved at some time in history, although African-Americans were targeted in the United States. Slavery was a huge reason of the Civil War, but there is often a misconception that it is the only reason.

Slavery was first introduced to the United States in the 1600s, but it did not become prominent until the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was an uprising in technology replacing simple tools, which began in the late 1700s. Due to the War of 1812 and Tariff of 1816, America became self-sufficient and made their own goods. One of these goods was cloth, which led to the invention

For cotton to be used for cloth, there was a time-consuming array of steps that needed to be followed. First the cotton had to be picked, and then the seeds had to be removed. It took one day for a worker to remove seeds from one pound of cotton, whereas a small cotton gin could clean ten pounds a day.

Eli Whitney, creator of the cotton gin, inadvertently caused an uprising in the slave system. His cotton gin caused there to be more cotton to be cleaned, which had farmers interested in buying more cotton gins. Although, cotton gins and seeds were expensive, which made it so plantation owners could not afford to pay workers, so they bought slaves instead. Eventually, more people decided to buy slaves to increase their profit from cotton.

In the United States, the economy flourished in different ways. The North had factories, and the South had agriculture. Either way, both the North and South benefited from the growth of slavery in its businesses.

In southern United States, the economy was based on agriculture. The main export was cotton, with Great Britain being the United States’ highest buyer. A tariff was placed in the United States, which angered the South. Most of the South was plantation owners, whom barely had enough money to live comfortably. The tariff made it harder for farmers to pay for

The main cause of the war was slavery, but there were an ample amount of other reasons too. Some reasons include the Missouri Compromise and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

When territories applied for statehood, the United States had a very important question: would they be free states or slave states? Obviously, the South wanted them to be slave states, and the North disagreed. The United States was starting to divide because of this debate, but then Henry Clay proposes an idea to settle the unbalance: the Missouri Compromise.

The Missouri Compromise stated that there is an imaginary line drawn across the Louisiana purchase territory. If a state was north of the line, it was free. If it was south, it was a slave state. This compromise restored the country’s peacefulness, until a novel was published by a Northerner.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was written in 1852, thirty-two years after the Missouri Compromise. The novel was about a slave, Uncle Tom, who was badly abused by his owner. The novel sparked a tremendous amount of controversy, with 300,000 copies sold within the first year of being published. Southerners were enraged, they believed that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was biased and inaccurate. This, too, caused the United States to divide before the Civil