SLAVERY AND CIVIL WAR

Slavery and Civil War

Slavery and Civil War

Slavery is an ancient and complex social system that permits the control of and often the actual ownership of an individual and his or her labor by another. This institution often blends into other forms of forced labor, which include a vast array of relationships that extend from formal systems, such as serfdom, indentured servitude, and conscription, to informal systems of family labor and to even illegal control of labor and other services. This complex and constantly changing system of servitude has played a central role in many societies since before the agricultural revolution and still exists in informal and illegal manifestations today.

Racial slavery helped fuel a virulent racism that became and has remained a central theme in the history of the United States until this day. The institution also led to class tensions within the South between slave owners and poorer Whites and created sectional tensions that led to the U.S. Civil War (18611865). This system began with the Portuguese voyages down the African coast during the later 15th century. These early adventurers purchased slaves from Africans located along the coast and transported the slaves back to Portugal or began to use them to produce sugar on their Atlantic islands or a little later in Brazil. By 1600 a new form of racial, plantation based slavery had taken root in the Americas.

Slavery quickly spread throughout the Americas. During the early and mid-17th century, the British and other European powers moved into the West Indies and began producing sugar. In North America, Dutch and British colonists began to import slaves, and by the early 18th century, plantation based racial slavery had become well established in Maryland, Virginia, and Carolina.

Between 1810 and the Civil War, slavery played a central role in the economic, social, cultural, and eventually the political history of the United States. From the 1820s to the Civil War, slave-produced cotton alone accounted for around half of the value of all exports from the United States, and tobacco and other slave-produced commodities added another tenth. U.S. commercial and financial institutions became heavily involved in supporting the shipment of these products to Europe, and a rapidly developing textile industry in the northeast became dependent on Southern cotton. The U.S. merchant marine, the second largest in the world, transported most of the cotton to Liverpool and other ports in Britain and Europe. By ...