Why Is Slavery Important In American History?

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One of the topics we may not like to discuss in full depth about American history is slavery. Slavery is not something that America is exactly proud of and was quite honestly a horrible thing. The fact that people were even enslaved is just stomach churning but what makes that even worse is how many slaves were treated daily and how they were viewed as less than human. In the 19th century in the south, slavery was a common thing and was not really frowned upon by southern people compared to how northerners were appalled by slavery. This may have been so because slavery was in a way apart of their system.
In the south, they made profit from farming and crops and were not very heavily industrialized. They receive quite a bit of rain and it can be very hot down in the south since they …show more content…
Statistics show though, that 75% of people in the south did not own a slave. This may have been because of the economic system in the 19th century though. You could divide the different classes of people into a pyramid in which black people were at the bottom, then there were the ‘plain folk’ or poor white people, then there was the middle class, and finally the planter class. The middle and planter class can be referred to what we call now as the 1%, the wealthiest people who could easily afford 20+ slaves. The ‘plain folk’ lived in very similar conditions as slaves or black people. Even though they may have lived in similar conditions to slaves, the ‘plain folk’ were still much higher in the social ranking then African Americans. Now even with the economic system that way the wealthier people still held the political power. There were laws that would not allow you to run for a position of power without a certain number of ‘property’ and since they were poor they could not afford proper education so the wealthier people with 100-200 slaves held most of the power in the

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