Order your essay today — written by real experts, guaranteed plagiarism-free, and ready to impress your professor!
HIST 135 Complicity
Northern Complicity in Slave Trade
The Northern states owned and trafficked in slaves, as well as benefited from the connections of slaves with the southern plantations. Slavery drove the commercial economy of all New England states (Farrow, Lang, and Frank 118). The North’s antebellum economy was reliant upon the slave trade fruits – economically reliant on cotton-related textile industries for its livelihood. Northern empires were built on benefits generated from cotton, rum, and ivory. Connecticut and Rhodes Island plantation systems grew out of slavery (Farrow et al 121). Plantation slavery produced vast wealth for Northern empires (Farrow et al 121). As Farrow, Lange and Franke write, the “North shared in the wealth slavery created and in the oppression it required” (xxvi). Consequently, it struck a compromise to condone slavery. Southern cotton, which was slave-picked and grinned, formed the mainstay of North’s economy, including New England and New York (Farrow et al 121). These states established strong links with the South by providing transportation and market for Southern cotton and slaveholders to its towns. Even the North’s growing industrialization was based on cotton mills. Though cotton production is associated with slave labor system that is considered barbaric, it formed the foundation of North’s antebellum economy. This is the reason the North agreed to live with slavery and to forge a compromised bargain with the South that enabled Underground Railroad.
New England states established strong ties to international slave trade. The New England towns of Bristol, Rhode Island and Newport became major slave trade centers of North American colonies. Belief in black inferiority and white superiority contributed to tolerance for slavery. Northern intellectuals like Samuel Morton, Louise Agassiz and Josiah Nott studied the science of race and concluded that blacks and whites are permanently different. These race scientists gave rationales to justify slavery in the North. The race science helped justify and legitimize the North’s participation in slavery to support its way of life and economic stability.
There are several accounts of Northern industrialists, businesspersons and even abolitionists who profited from slavery. Those who condemned slavery and called for its abolition faced violence and harassment. People like John Brown, Samuel May, Lloyd Garrison, and Elijah Lovejoy faced institutional and public harassment for fighting to end the institution of slavery.
Many Americans rarely hear about slavery in the North because the truth regarding it does not fit the present agenda. As a result, it mostly gets ignored or covered up. Due to striking a compromise with the South, the Northerners opted to bury their earlier history –slavery- into the deepest shades of repression. This truth has been buried as a result of the moral dilemma of covering slavery and f………
