During the years that led up to the Civil War, the economic system between the North and the South were completely incompatible. The South’s economy was based on agriculture, whereas, the North was depended on manufacturing. The difference between the economic systems significantly created a conflict between the North and the South such as Anti-slavery, pro-slavery, and political demand. The plantation system in the South had rapidly grown, especially with the invention of the cotton gin. The South significantly raised the value of slaves, because slaves were more profitable to work on plantations. Slaveholders usually used slaves as a machines, by sending them to work on cotton, tobacco, and corn fields (Sass 74). Even though the agriculture …show more content…
This made the price of slave extremely expensive, an average of a healthy men slave cost one thousand and eight hundred dollars which equivalent to forty-five thousand dollars in current money. This made slave-owners that did not grow much cotton to sell off their slaves and caused slaves to be separated from their family. (Berkin 255). As a matter of fact, slave owners not only caused dehumanization of the slaves, but mostly treated their slaves violently. Josiah Henson, in document six of “Agriculture Development and Slavery in the South”, describes the violence that had happened to his parents and other slaves. Henson claimed that he saw his dad was once beaten by his owner, another slave got his head thrust against the post, and his right ear fastened to it with a tack and it has been said that what they get if the slaves strikes a white man, this shows the violence that occurred during the slavery of white men have toward the slave. Consequently, in the eighth document of “Agriculture Development and Slavery in the South”, Harriet Jacobs was a former slave, describing the risk to the female slaves. She claimed that slaves are a property of their master and their master could do anything to them (Hoffman 371). As a result, slaves started to run away from their masters and refused to work, according to document four in the “Agriculture Development and …show more content…
He considered laborers earning insufficient wages “wage slaves”, because the laborers worked so hard and barely sufficient for their existence (Hoffman 333). Moreover, he claimed that if the slave has never been free man, we think, as general rule, his sufferings are less than those of the free laborer at wages. As can be seen above, these two document shows the definition of “Wage Slavery”, because people work so hard that they don’t have enough time for social interaction but still didn’t own enough money to support their life and family. Moreover, in the seventh document, George Templeton wrote his diary about the European immigrants, he claimed that there were Irish men and women were dragged out and lay on the ground where they had been working twelve feet below the street level. This document illustrates how European immigrants are moving to the North for the jobs, and they were extremely facing the danger during the work and also didn’t make lots of money either. Not to mention, most immigrants usually faced an extremely discrimination from the facts that they believe in different god, dressed differently and spoke different language. Furthermore, most children that work in the factory does not have opportunity to be educated just like slaves. For instance, Harriet Hanson Robinson a worker in a factory that has been mention above, quite school to work
Again, the slave owners of the American slave system saw their slaves as property and were known to discriminate against skin color, as mentioned in document 7. Also, they saw slaves less as people and more as “resources”. This “resource” was wanted by participants of the slave trade. This “resource” could be compared to gold during the Age of Exploration. Seeing the slaves were seen as nothing more than property, they were transported from place to place in horrible conditions and then, once they got to their destination, were put through the most strenuous work.
This went against the right, “Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. Slaves had nothing else to rely on other than to keep on working. Another way slaves were denied basic human
From the dawn of the United States, there were clear sectional differences in the county. The South had slaves and the North did not. The North had mercantilism and the South had agriculture. The founding fathers had the chance to vastly change these differences by abolishing slavery in the Constitution, but they feared the Constitution not being ratified by the Southern states. These differences, while at the time, may have seemed small, gave our country two unique economies.
At times slaves were giving little food and inadequate clothing or kept hungry and expected to work their backs off in return, “ …we were allowed less than half of a bushel of corn meal per week, and very little else…. We were therefore reduced to the wretched necessity of living at the expense of our neighbors. This we did by begging and stealing”(Douglass 42). Douglass also writes about how he was robbed of his wages by his master, “When I carried to him my weekly wages, he would after counting the money, looked at me in the face with a robber like fierceness, and ask, “is this all?””(Douglass 71). He also writes about what happened to his grandmother, and how she was sentenced to a lonely fate which was sealed by the death of her master, ”
Frederick Douglass was a former slave, journalist, author and a human rights activist. In his autobiography, the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave”, Frederick describes the inhumane and cruel practices of his masters, the conditions of the slaves’ clothing, food and sleep and their relationship with the slaves. Frederick’s first master was Captain Anthony. He draws him as a brutal man who brings pride and pleasure in beating his slaves.
Even though some got away your owner you catch you and bring you back. You had to work out on searing hot days. If you don’t work you don’t get paid and you get beaten. Blacks and whites were paid different white got more blacks got less. No matter how hard blacks worked white still got more.
The distribution of slave males grew from the eighteen-fifties to the 1870’s. Part of slave incomes they worked hard for was expropriated by their owner. Even though this was true it wasn’t a high percentage that was generally assumed. During his lifetime on the slave field, he would receive 90 percent of his income. Some men would even buy their freedom then work on freeing their whole family.
Slaves in the old south also produced hemp, corn, wheat, oats, rye, white potatoes and sweet potatoes. On a plantation slaves were either house servants or skilled slaves. Those who did not have to work on the fields were seen as an elite group. House servants did not want to work on the field because of the grueling job, but field workers did not want to be house servants either because they felt that they would be under surveillance by their white master. Skilled slaves were more elite than house slaves.
Owners for years were able to maintain slavery through consistent importation/trading of slaves, mental tricks and a plethora of slave codes that kept slaves/negroes(free blacks) inferior to white counterparts. With the value of cash crops increasing throughout the nation, owners wanted to make the most money possible. In
Before the Civil War, the south depended on slavery to sustain its economy. Slaves provided free labor in which they were responsible for tending to the planters land. This included planting, growing, and yielding cash crops to be able to deliver a profit for the plantation owner. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relationship between the planter and the laborer, as well as deliberating on the interactions amongst mill owners and mill employees to be able to explain how the shared theme of why labor had to change in the south was prevalent in both articles.
During the nineteenth century, slaves were used as a great part of the workforce in Southern states in America. Many of the men worked hard labor and the women were used mostly as nurses or housekeepers. Slave-owners were often strict on their slaves because they were looked at as property rather than people. Slave owners often had rules on their plantation of how their slaves must act under their ownership. One southern slaveholder, named Bennet H. Barrow, published a listed of rules on how slaves should be treated.
While working conditions played a factor the livelihoods of workers, so did the discrimination and resentment towards immigrant and African Americans laborers. With these factors playing a significant role in their working conditions it also introduced the daily realities and hardships of being a working American or immigrant in an ever evolving working force in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. One major factor that contributed to the hardship and daily realities that faced the unskilled and semiskilled American laborer like Thomas O’Donnell and others was racism. As stated in the text, “...Racism relegated them to poor jobs and substandard living conditions...” [The American Promise, 511], racism in the north was more of a widespread persecution of anyone who was not “white” in American standards.
Slavery in the south was the spine of the workforce at the time, binding the slaveholder to a certain amount of profit that was possible. As shown “Rain or shine, work or no work, at the end of each week the money must be forthcoming, or I must give up my privilege”(Douglass 104). Even though slavery was a system that seemed profitable, instead it was a system that reduced the industrial and economic power of the south and of the slaveholder. Consequently the slave was paid in basic human needs. For example “Here,too, the slaves of all other farms received their monthly allowance of food, and their yearly clothing”(Douglass 9).
Throughout history one thing has always played a role in starting conflicts, and in a sense is one of the base things that drives us: Needs. The thing with needs is that there is a limited amount of solutions to those needs. This is the base principle of economics, and similarly to this concept of needs, the Civil War had many economic implications. More specifically the economic differences between the North and the South caused the Civil War. The biggest factor that contributed to this was the Confederacies one-commodity system.
Furthermore, Douglass 's early unhappiness childhood reflected an indictment of slavery, which exposed psychologically to physical impacted of slavery to slave children who lack of love of family. Although, Douglass was separate from his mother, he was raised and has been protected and raised by his grandmother, who took the parenthood responsibility to take care slave’s children whom parents were sold by the slave-owner in the slavery, his childhood not directly experienced the everyday violence of adult slaves. This shaped him was able to go beyond other slaves understand the different between a real person and slave. Douglass recalled the witness of his first slave masters, Captain Anthony, who was whipping Douglass’s Aunt Hester until “the