What was slavery like in the west

Though the majority of Americans were involved in agriculture production of some form throughout the 19th century, the southern economy was uniquely specialized in the business. Southern agriculture itself also differed from that of the North as it was built mostly on specific cash crops like cotton, tobacco, sugar and rice instead of food production.

Those first three crops were extremely labor intensive, and so the use of unpaid, forced labor helped make their production far more profitable than it otherwise would have been.

A little less than half of white southerners owned slaves, and only a small percentage of slave owners themselves ran the enormous plantations where these crops were grown, but since they, especially cotton, was in such high demand in the North and Europe, these men and their families became fabulously wealthy, enough to completely dominate Southern social and political life, as well as the representation of Southern states in Washington. The racialized aspect of slavery also gave poorer whites enough incentive to support slavery as well, as even the poorest white man possessed more dignity than any slave.

And as the Northern economy began turning away from farms and towards factories, the South, outside of a few large cities, further entrenched itself in these specialized exports as well as the system of chattel slavery that supported it. But that entrenchment presented a problem for Southern elites, as it did not leave much room for the same kind of dynamic economic growth as the North was experiencing through industrialization. The South was convinced that the survival of their economic system, which intersected with almost every aspect of Southern life, lay exclusively in the ability to create new plantations in the western territories, which meant that slavery had to be kept safe in those same territories, especially as Southerners increasingly saw more and more hostility towards the practice.

Was the South right to view the North as conspiring against them to destroy slavery? Many Northern figures did have an entirely separate vision for the new territories. As Northern states and cities became more crowded, many sought refuge in the west away from the urban clamor, but because they planned to practice the same kind of agriculture practiced elsewhere the north, typically subsistence farming by small, independent or yeoman planters, they dreaded the thought of competing with cotton farming and slave labor over land and resources.

The desire to protect these settlers from such overwhelming competition formed the basis of the Free Labor movement, which sought to restrict slavery from the new territories as much as possible. It should be said of course, that this movement existed for the potential benefit of white Americans and white immigrants from Europe seeking a new life in the west, although many in the Labor movement did deem slavery to be morally wrong on its own. A vocal percentage of that group went on to join the growing Abolitionist movement that wanted to end slavery for good, but at no point did they form the majority of slavery's opponents.

It is worth noting that many Northerners had their own conspiracy theories about the reach of Southern domination of American society.

The first slave voyage direct from Africa to the Americas probably sailed in The volume of slaves carried off from Africa reached 30, per year in the s and 85, per year a century later. More than eight out of ten Africans forced into the slave trade crossed the Atlantic between and The decade to saw more than 80, people a year leaving Africa in slave ships.

Well over a million more—one tenth of the volume carried off in the slave trade era—followed within the next twenty years.

By , nearly four Africans for every one European had crossed the Atlantic; about four out of every five women who crossed the Atlantic were from Africa. The majority of enslaved Africans brought to British North America arrived between and Africans carried to Brazil came overwhelmingly from Angola. Well over 90 percent of enslaved Africans were imported into the Caribbean and South America. Only about 6 percent of African captives were sent directly to British North America.

Yet by , the US population included about one quarter of the people of African descent in the New World. The Middle Passage was dangerous and horrific for African slaves.

The sexes were separated; men, women, and children were kept naked, packed close together; and the men were chained for long periods. And today, Californians tout their reputation for cosmopolitan liberalism and cultural pluralism. Slavery has little place in the stories Americans tell about the west. Scratch beneath the veneer of this mythology, however, and a much darker history emerges. California may have been the far end of the board, but it was still in play.

Black chattel slavery came to California with the gold rush in the s, but it persisted long after the rush had passed. Through most of the s, enslaved African Americans could be found working in the gold fields and domestic spaces of California. They toiled alongside thousands of captive Native Americans. That law, however, required active enforcement by antislavery activists. And, as Givens and others discovered, such activists were in short supply, especially in the remote mining districts where slaveholders often clustered and forced their enslaved labourers to dig for gold.

More often than not, California slaveholders had the agents of the law on their side. Five of the seven justices who sat on the California Supreme Court between and hailed from the slave states. These second slavery staple commodities were the building blocks of domestic and foreign industrial production. The flexibility and adaptability shown by slaveowners translated into other areas of American society such as new business practices.

This entrepreneurial spirit, so lauded in the American DNA and chiefly extolled among the white settlers in the West, rested on the developments and demands placed upon the system of slavery exported west of the Mississippi in the antebellum period. The expansion of slavery did not take place without much debate and controversy. Slavery and western expansion became the national crisis by the s. The Kansas Nebraska Act of opened slavery to popular vote in the plains territories. The rush to populate Kansas Territory by abolitionists and pro-slavery supporters turned westward migration into a political battle over the future of the United States; as a result Bleeding Kansas, a guerrilla war in that territory lasted over a decade.