Slavery is something that was very important to American history and the making of America as a new nation. Without slavery the economy would not have worked in early America, there would have been no one to get tasks done for people so production and cultivation would have been very slow. Slavery in the North and the South differed greatly, in the south slaves worked on plantations and did hard labor activities. They also were maids and butlers in houses. Where as in the north there were many free slaves and the work that they were assigned to do was not hard labor. Slavery was its own brand in the north, yes people owned slaves but overall treatment was way higher than that of the south. The states in New England that had the largest amount of slave populations were Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Another factor that plays in to slavery in the north is that the two economies were different from one another. The south had many plantations and agriculture was the main part of economic life, whereas the north had things such as mills and textiles which had a whole different working aspect for slaves.
` The south was primarily an agriculturally focused group of states, and the way there economy worked was through cultivation of crops. Whereas the north, as well was somewhat agricultural but there was a change over into more of an industrial economy. So the jobs that slaves could hold were not laborious like the jobs that they had in the south and many were granted the right to be free slaves. Religion and Sex had a lot do with slavery as well in the north and the south because there was interweaving of Christianity and white supremacy mainly in the south but in the north as well this happened. The people of America believed that the Bible actually preached for slavery and made it okay. The North was just as much a part of the slave trade as the south just with a little more discretion.
The reason the north as well partook in slavery is because it was a very profitable industry and the northern merchants would benefit from the triangular trade of molasses, rum and slaves. At one point in time the north had 40,000 slaves in port cities and on small farms across the north. However, this trend faded leading up to the American Revolution when the Northern states passed a legislation that was for the abolition of slavery in the north. They also proposed that when a slave women gave birth to their child that the child would be born free and would never be a slave. The North had a bigger influence on slavery than it realized. The News Paper “The Liberator” who was written by William Lloyd Garrison made many attempts to sway people’s opinions on slavery and for the most part it started to work. It made people aware of what was going on and provided them with alternatives and reasons why this was unjust and ungodly. People in the north had very different views on slavery, there was almost two sides, people who supported it, and then people who hated it and wanted it to be gone.
As a result slowly but surely abolitionism gained support from more and more people in the north and started to link itself with other reform movements as well which led eventually to much of the north backing the anti-slavery movements. William Lloyd Garrisons “Liberator” newspaper was one of the biggest channels for the abolitionist movement in the Northern states. The Newspaper had an elaborate header picture that was uniquely designed to show the disgust that these people had toward slavery. Depicted in the middle of the picture is what seems to be Jesus and on both sides of him there is an African slave praying to him and on the other side a wealth white man is seeming to be getting scolded by Jesus. On the left side of the picture there is a slave auction that is going on and in the back the US capitol building. Whereas on the right side of the picture there is slaves pictured walking toward this arch way with the word “Emancipation” written on the top of it. This just shows how passionate these people were about the abolition of slavery and how actively they were trying to gain support for their cause. “The Liberator” was only printed in the north and was strictly banned from the southern states. This Newspaper quickly gained the attentions of many other abolitionists who were seeking more support in their campaigns against slavery, people such as Fredrick Douglass teamed up with Garrison to preach the wrong doing of slavery.
Slavery at this time was really at an all-time high in the south and more and more states wanted to adopt these slave laws that allowed slavery. These states were the result of westward expansion and the Missouri compromise. Half the country wanted the new states to be slave states so slavery could continue to grow and the other half of the country wanted the new states to be Free states. This created a big divide in our country at the time and forced tensions to rise between the two different regions of the US. By now more people in the North were on board for the abolition of slavery with the help of William Lloyd Garrison and the Liberator News Paper. People thought that slavery was a necessary evil to have, and that without it how would things get done? People in the north as well as other abolitionists soon dismissed the fact that this was necessary so the people of the south had to find a new way to argue their point of slavery.
They chose to argue that slavery was actually a good thing and that slaves actually liked the work that they were doing where as in reality that was not the case at all. Northern peoples were frustrated deliberate horrible actions towards other human beings that were created just the same way as them. The north said that no man should treat another man in these ways that the south was, it angered and disgusted people. A main reason that the north was so against this idea of slavery was that it was so morally wrong that they were astonished that people could do such a thing to others and that there really wasn’t a need for slaves in the North as much as there was in the south so it created a good rivalry between the two regions. No human being should have to go through being owned by someone else and forced to work and live in conditions that were the worst of the worst this was the norther abolitionist stance on slavery and it was a very good one. The only reason people thought that they were different was by the color of their skin, when in reality they are exactly like anyone else and this message is what was spread across the north by people like Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.
Northern slavery at the beginning was relevant but not as much as the south, the north had many jobs that slaves did but not to the extent that the south was using slaves. The north ended up having a great movement of abolitionists that really sparked controversy over the whole morality of slavery in general and it got people thinking that there was many other better alternatives than having a human being working for you doing vigorous manual labor. The influence of slavery on the north was able to open the eyes of many people there to start working toward a better America one where every member is respected and treated fairly and if it wasn’t for people like William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Tubman and Fredrick Douglass things may have never changed, but it was the courageous acts of these people that led Americans in the north to oppose slavery and ultimately get the issue resolved after the civil war because the Civil War was not a war on states’ rights it was a war on slavery.