1840-1860: Difference Between Proslavery Slavery And Free Labor System

Words: 1672
Pages: 7

Akankshya Shrestha
Professor Michael Hughes
HIST - 130 - 03
5/3/2018
History Paper 2
During the period of time between 1840-1860, America expanded its control and resources across the continent. The republic constantly expanded and Americans continued to migrate westward with the influence of the ideals of liberty, equality and democracy. They celebrated freedom, opportunity and commonwealth. Free Labour System was introduced which released human potential and made conceivable the era’s impressive economic growth and geographic extension. As the nation’s outskirts expanded in the Southwest and settlers filled in the Great Plains, Americans turned out to be progressively divided into opposing groups. The differences between proslavery and antislavery
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It was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African slaves helped build the new nation into an economic powerhouse through the production of lucrative crops such as tobacco and cotton. Even after plenty of years and decades, slavery still played a huge role. Slaves provided labor for plantations as well as being forced to do a wide variety of other tasks, ranging from cleaning house and minding children to building houses, sailing boats, dealing with the work of other slaves and engaging in sexual relations constrained upon them by whites and their slaveholders. In Chapter 11 of Reading the American Past and the 5th Document “David Walker Demands Emancipation”, David Walker, a free African American man writes an appeal to other people of color to work for the liberation of all the slaves. Walker rails at slaveholders, whites and christians for accepting slavery and oppressing individuals of African descent. His appeal alarmed many whites and alerted slaves to rise up to their masters. Walker himself …show more content…
As increasing number of lands were owned by people, more laborers were required constantly and this is how Walker makes his point in his appeal. Slavery brought a vast change in the sector of agriculture, business and trade in the American colonies and nations, because the physical labor of growing crops and trading items were assigned to the slaves. Their numbers increased, and so did the production of items. Due to this development in America, the free labor system was initiated. In the 13th chapter’s 1st document of the Reading American Past “Abraham Lincoln Explains the Free Labor System”, the prominent politician Abraham Lincoln explains, “They hold that labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed — that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior — greatly the superior — of