Antebellum Era Slavery

Slavery has tremendously influenced the pathway of American history. During the Antebellum period, slavery provided a firm basis for the economy of the United States, governed politics, and eventually led to the war between the North and South. People in bondage were forced to work and live in unsanitary conditions, made to feel like livestock as they were bought and sold in the infamous slave market, and were scrutinized and ridiculed for their heritage. Slavery was implemented by the men and women of American colonization to take over the harvesting process of crops in the South, but caused the majority of American citizens to refocus their moral compass and choose whether or not to support this peculiar institution. Tension regarding the
subject of slavery continued to build up right to the cusp of the Civil War. After the abolition movement, the legacy left behind by slavery continued to influence the character of the nation. Slavery in the Antebellum South allowed a social and economic empire built on the degradation of black laborers and the idea of white supremacy to become prosperous and inflict suffering on millions of innocent men, woman, and children.
It is impossible to understand the South without dissecting the reasons for the introduction of slavery, which was rooted so deeply into traditional Southern culture that the two are often mistaken for each other. Upon arrival in America, Europeans had one specific goal in mind: to cultivate the foreign land for the purpose of making money and returning back to Europe to recreate a higher social status. With this motivation in mind, it is easier to understand why these settlers of the South were drawn to the chattel system. Planters, who believed that they were entirely unsuitable for this kind of backbreaking work, quickly realized the unparalleled profits to be had from utilizing cheap and easily manipulated labor. The mass production of the tobacco plant served as a major catalyst for the adoption of African slavery as the South’s labor system. Tobacco was a labor-intensive crop, requiring field workers to spend numerous hours a day tending to plants under the brutally hot sun. The Southerners believed that these black slaves were created by God to work and cultivate the new land for the whites. They argued that Africans had different muscle tones and capabilities than the white race that made them more beastly and uniquely fitted for bondage, far more than their captors. The truth is that the Negros did not thrive any better than the whites in these unfathomable conditions. In reality, there was no requirement for slavery to be established in the South. There was no specific crop that needed the tender hands of a slave to be cultivated that could not have been harvested by paid workers of some other non-objectifying form of labor. Slavery was a choice, and an unnecessary one in that. Also, despite the “need” of the plantation owners for servitude, the black slaves in the South were viewed as vile creatures that were registered as the property of the owner to do with as he pleased. They were seen as burdens that needed to become immersed in western white culture to become humane. The “race problems” that defined the Antebellum South can be directly traced back to the settlers’ obsession with the darker skin pigmentation of the slaves and the false notions about their intelligence, physical strength, and demeanors that were grossly perpetuated throughout the South.
Under the documentation credited for the establishment of the United States, like the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, slaves were seen as property. But, as the country progressed through the antebellum period, people began to divide over the issue of human bondage. A substantial number of Americans—mostly from the North but some from the South—reached the conclusion that slavery was morally wrong, and it was culturally and politically caustic. However, most white southerners were dependent on slavery and acutely convinced of its necessity and morality. Southern men of the past, like Charles Pinckney, aggressively safeguarded slavery: ‘If slavery be wrong, it is justified by the example of all the world. " During the pre-Civil war period, two US Supreme Court cases redefined slaves as property and were instrumental in creating more negativity towards people of color. The US Supreme Court case regarding The Antelope further illustrates the willingness of the government to view slaves as commodities. In 1820, the U.S. Coast Guard seized The Antelope, which was originally a Spanish vessel that was captured by pirates to raid other ships. This ship had an American captain, but over 250 slaves were found on this ship, although the U.S. had become more stringent on international slave trade. The Spanish argued that Spaniards legally enslaved the Africans, but there were deep suspicions that some of the slaves had been captured for American slaveholders. The case reached the US Supreme Court in 1825. There were various laws against American slave owners looking to the sea for more slaves, but Chief Justice John Marshall held that while the decision he was making was contrary to the law of nature, the trade could not be seen as piracy and the slaves could not be freed. Marshall upheld an assurance of freedom or captivity by the luck of the draw, without any regard for the claims of these enslaved Africans. Sadly, in similar cases, the US Supreme Court would accept the idea that slaves were to be bought and sold.
Secondly, the Dred Scott Decision, officially Scott v.
Sandford, was an 1857 Supreme Court case that ruled that Congress could not limit slavery in the United States, that people who were of African descent weren’t entitled to protection under the constitution or citizenship, and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. Dred Scott sued for his freedom from slavery on the basis that his master had taken him into Illinois, a free state, and the Wisconsin Territory, also a free territory. Chief Justice Taney ruled that slaves were not freed if they were taken into jurisdictions that banned slavery. The decision upset the balance between free and slave states, led to fears that slavery would be extended to free states, and contributed to the Civil War. Despite how long slaves stayed on American soil, antebellum sentiment, especially in the government, was never in their
favor.
The U.S.
government outlawed the African slave trade in the early 1800’s, so it was the domestic slave trade that thrived as the nation was on the cusp of the Civil War. The domestic slave trade in the U.S. allocated the African population throughout the South so efficiently that it greatly surpassed any trade that the U.S. received in the Atlantic Slave Trade. As the domestic trade flourished, the slave population nearly tripled. Slavery in the US was distinctive in this way because of the ability of the slave population to increase its numbers naturally. Unlike any other slave society, the U.S. had a continuous increase in the slave population for a more than half a century. Unfortunately, as a result, approximately 1.2 million men, women, and children were displaced throughout the country, the vast majority of whom were born in
America.