SLO #2 For What Reason?

So it seems that during the American revolution, the revolt of the Americas from the British king, this was the time where anti-slavery was actively starting to be pushed for. In the are article titled The Impact of Slavery, ushistory.org states "The world's first ANTISLAVERY SOCIETY was founded in 1775 by Quakers in Philadelphia, the year the Revolution began" (The Impact of Slavery). A movement was being started within in the colonies that was never seen before. The same article then expresses, "Some Northern states banned slavery outright, and some provided for the gradual end of slavery. At any rate, the climate of the Revolution made the institution unacceptable in the minds of many Northerners, who did not rely on forced labor as part of the economic system". Then I began to question how did the ban of slavery effect the economic growth for the colonies. Rosemarie Zagarri obtaining her PHD from Yale reveals, "by the time of the American Revolution, slaves comprised about 60% of South Carolina's total population and 40% of Virginia's (Zagarri)". Whereas in the urban North it ranged from 2-25%. The majority of the South's slaves lived on large plantations and that meant that the majority of  white people did not own slaves. It was a smaller population of people who were involved with slave labor but they had large involvement.  The South was definitely more invested than the North in the slave trade. "Since Eli Whitney's 1793 invention of the cotton 'gin, the cotton industry became a lucrative field for Southern planters and farmers"(Mark Schulman). The industry made up for a majority of the South's revenues. The plantation owners were of course opposed to losing the main source of income. They felt a strong push from the North for doing with out slavery. What reasons did the North have against slavery? I thought of course it was them finally coming to their senses of the unjustness of slavery. However when researching, I came to a cross road as why the North wanted to abolish slavery. From The Gilder Lehman Institute of American History, article titled Was Slavery the Engine of American Economic Growth?, "Despite clear evidence that slavery was profitable, abolitionists--and many people who were not abolitionists--felt strongly that slavery degraded labor, inhibited urbanization and mechanization, thwarted industrialization, and stifled progress, and associated slavery with economic backwardness, inefficiency, indebtedness, and economic and social stagnation. When the North waged war on slavery, it was not because it had overcome racism; rather, it was because Northerners in increasing numbers identified their society with progress and viewed slavery as an intolerable obstacle to innovation, moral improvement, free labor, and commercial and economic growth(Was Slavery the Engine of American Economic Growth)". And then for a reason similar to what it was I was originally thinking, Zagarri expresses, "The widespread ownership of slaves had significant implications. During the battles with Britain during the 1760s and 1770s, American Patriots argued that taxing the colonies without their consent reduced the colonists to the status of slaves. Since individuals in all the colonies owned slaves, this rhetoric had enormous emotional resonance throughout the colonies and helped turn the colonists against the mother county. Moreover, once colonists started protesting against their own enslavement, it was hard to deny the fundamental contradiction that slavery established: enslavement for black people and freedom for white people. Awareness of this contradiction forced white Americans to look at slavery in a new light. If Americans chose to continue to enslave black people, they would have to devise new arguments to justify slavery. It was at this time that arguments about blacks' inherent racial inferiority emerged to rationalize the institution" (Zagarri). So what was it, were the colonist having empathy for the slaves because they felt that they too were not being treated fair? Or was if pure selfishness that slavery was hindering the growth for the colonies?

"Was Slavery the Engine of American Economic Growth?" The Gilder Lehman Institute of American History. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2016. 

Zagarri, Rosemarie, PHD. "Slavery in Colonial British North America." Teaching History.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2016. 

Schulman, Mark. "Economics and the Civil War." History Central. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2016.