why was slavery an American institution and not just a southern one?

Answer 1

I am so tired of reading, particularly in this forum, about how the Civil War was not about slavery. You would do well to disregard the answers given by willys56cj5 and Randy, because they are simply not historically correct. I would be happy to debate this with them, or anyone else (see email address below), but this is not the proper place for that.

Slavery was an American institution because it existed in virtually all parts of the United States at one time, at least up until the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

Having said that, however, it is important to point out that slavery was never as important to the northern economy as it was to the southern. By at least the early 19th Century, the southern economy had become completely wedded to the slave system. The South had become a slave society, as opposed to a society with slaves, as had existed in the North. That may seem like a hair-splitting distinction, but in fact it is vital to understanding why the Civil War came about. There had been slaves in the North, but they were never vital to the economy. In the South, slavery was essential to the economy.

But it wasn't just the value of the slave labor that was at stake, but the value of the slaves themselves. It has been estimated that the value of all the slaves in the South in 1860 amounted to three billion dollars, in 1860 dollars. That's equivalent to about 65 billion dollars today, and was equal to the value of all the farms and factories that existed in the North at the time. That is real weatlh, like ships to a trader or machines to a manufacturer. If slavery were abolished, all that wealth would disappear at a stroke; the now-freed slaves would cease to be assets and would become instead liabilities.

However, as the 19th Century progressed, more and more people, particularly in the North, but even in the South, came to see slavery as an evil that must be eliminated. Many, including Lincoln, believed that, since the Constitution protected slavery (yes, it does; read the First, Fourth, and Fifth Articles), it was not possible to simply abolish it (at least before the War). They believed that if slavery were simply contained within the states where it already existed that the institution would eventually wither away.

Southerners understood this, as well, which is precisely why they pushed so hard for new states entering the Union to be allowed to decided for themselves whether to be slave or free. This idea was echoed in Stephen Douglas's "Popular Sovereignty" policy.

The problem with this idea, as Lincoln brilliantly pointed out in his so-called "House Divided" speech, was that the country simply could not permanently remain half-slave and half-free. It would eventually go either all one way or all the other. Because of the concessions made to the slave-owning states in the Compromise of 1850, the Dred Scott decision, and the Fugitive Slave law, it was obvious to Lincoln, and many others, that the country was headed down the all-slave road.

Before you say that that could never happen, stop and think about it. If one slave owner could take one slave into a free state or territory, and that slave remain a slave, as was decided in the Dred Scott case, then what was to stop a hundred slave owners, each with a hundred slaves, from settling in a free state. Now that state has 10,000 slaves in it, and any state with 10,000 slaves in it could hardly call itself a free state. So a mere 100 slave owners could subvert the wishes of the tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of people in that state who do not want to their state to be a slave state.

It is true that the proximate cause of the Civil War was the attempt by the Southern states to secede from the Union, and the attempt by the North to prevent that seccession. But you have to ask yourself why the South seceded, what was the problem that was so intractable that the southern states felt there was no longer any room for compromise with the northern states? The answer to that question, unequivocally, was slavery.

The South seceded because they wanted to be able to maintain their slave-based economy, which they were becoming increasingly convinced, correctly so, that they would not be able to do as a part of the United States. Had they succeeded in establishing their new nation, they would have competed with the now smaller United States in expanding into the West, bringing slavery with them. Confederate leaders had also expressed the intent to expand into Mexico, which they probably could have done, and even Central and South America, which may have been more problematic.

Anyway, I am getting far afield from your original question, which I really answered back in my second paragraph. The slavery-as-cause-of-the-Civil-War question is really beyond the scope of this response, and probably beyond the ability of the Answers forum to address because of it's "one response allowed" format.

Answer 2

willys56cj5 has provided a good answer to what is a clearly stated question.

Slavery was legal in all States and territories of the Union until the ratification of the XIII Amendment on 6 December 1865, after the end of the Civil War. Conversely, with the ratification the Constitution of the Confederacy the importation of slaves into any member State of the Confederacy was illegal. The Northern States of the Union were economically tied into institution of slavery through the cotton trade and the shipping.

This is one more element in the conclusion that slavery was not the cause of the war, rather it was the seceding of the Southern States into their own country and the loss of taxes to the federal union government.

Answer 3

VERY good question! Because history is traditionally written by the victors, there is a false perception that the American Civil War was over slavery and that the south was the only region that enslaved blacks. In actuality, the north region had far more factories that employed slaves than any southern plantation. Conditions in these factories were extreme and in most cases, far more dangerous than picking cotton in a field.

The real reason for the civil war was over the amount of power the federal government had over the states. The South succeeded from the Union in favor of stronger state rights and less federal intervention in state affairs.

Your question points correctly to the fact that slavery was indeed a national issue and not confined geographically to the southern region.

Answer 4

Because America as a country profited from the institution of slavery.

Answer 5

Because the North didn't try to stop it until 1861. Also, the North originally had slaves too, but because they became industrial instead of agricultural they didn't have as much need for slaves as the South did, so it died out in the North.

Answer 6

woah woah ur question is confusing? hard to understand make it clearer...