Slavery and its Downfall in America

The United States, particularly the southern states, employed the institution of slavery for nearly 300 years. This practice of capturing, holding and trading of people for the purposes of involuntary labour was initiated by the growing American cotton and tobacco industries in 1616. British slavers sailed to Africa to procure slaves and sold them in America for goodly sums of money. With this profit, they brought back cotton and tobacco to sell in England for an even greater profit. This circuit, in many ways an economic microcosm boosted both America's industry and Britain's finances. However, in the late 1800's slavery was abolished as a direct result of the concluded Civil War, started to prevent the states from seceding from a United States ruled by an Abolitionist.

When America was a newly established colony of England it was an exploited land with tobacco and cotton growing freely. The Americans could make a great deal of money from trading these much sought after products. With this new untapped land the Americans needed cheap and plentiful labour. In the 16th and 17th centuries, slaves were used to harvest sugar in Brazil and the Caribbean so the view of the inferiority and sub-humanity of black Africans was already widespread, so slavery could be used to support this labour shortage. England realised that the amount of money that would flowing into England would be astronomical and would justify the colonisation of America financially.

And so, with the formation of the Royal African Society in 1663, businessmen in England hired the men necessary to capture, transport and trade the Africans that would now become their income. Additionally, the slave ships could not only capture the slaves and sell them in America, but also purchase the wares that the slave industries produced and sell them back in England. The ships became the means of a circuit of commerce, the end result being riches of the businessmen, the traders, the plantation owners and the government of England. Even after independence in 1776, the Southern States still supported slavery because they had become reliant on the free labour it provided their industries.

Slavery was not an ethically sound trade, however most people turned a blind eye towards the moral degradation that was inherent in the system. The people who did not were called the Abolitionists. Both black and white Americans joined this movement in their fight to free the slaves and rid America from forced labour. The Abolitionists cited many reasons why slavery should not exist in a civilised society, from religious to moral grounds, and presented their views in diverse forms, from William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator newspaper to John Brown's fanatical attempt to distribute weapons to the slaves.

The force of industrialisation swept America and irrevocably changed the North, making slavery a non-necessity. Once the North was converted and slavery was no-longer needed they recognised the terrible and nationally damaging consequences of slavery. The Southerners were becoming more and more reliant upon slavery, ignoring the rush for industrialisation, and began losing and forgetting skills now performed by Africans. The almost universal cruelty to the slaves also made America as a society more tolerant towards cruelty among others and blind to the punishment they forced their slaves through.

This conflict of ideals came to a head when America elected Abraham Lincoln in 1860, an active abolitionist. The Southern states feared that this would mean the end of the Southern way of life, and a month later, North Carolina and ten other states announced they would secede from the USA and form a new nation called the Confederate States of America. Lincoln could not allow this to happen, so the Civil War began.

After one of the bloodiest wars in history, the slaves were declared free by Lincoln in 1863, who was shot six days after. Slavery could not exist in an industrial society, and a divided nation could not function.

The practice of Slavery comprised of the capture, holding and trading of people, in the USA's case Africans, for the purposes of forced labour. It was implemented in the USA, through slave ships, to support growing primary industries in the southern states. As the North industrialised, slavery became more and more unfeasible there which resulted in a schism of ideals and morals between the Southern and Northern states, resulting in the Civil War. At the conclusion of this conflict, President Abraham Lincoln declared slavery illegal, but its effects of racial hatred and discrimination are still visible in the United States of America today.