Slavery True Picture of the Relationship Between Term Paper

Slavery [...] true picture of the relationship between slavery and Americans of both regions, including the impact of racism on the thinking of all white Americans of this era. While slavery was dominant in the South, and less dominant in the North and West, slavery was not entirely a regional issue. Beliefs and ideals differed in the North and South, and not all residents of either area exhibited only one view of slavery.

While it is common to believe that the South and all southerners supported slavery, and the North and all northerners were abolitionists, this is not the case. Throughout the North, there were many slave owners, and throughout the South, there were many people who did not believe in slavery. In addition, it is clear from the racial inequities that continued after the Civil War, that there was an overwhelming belief in the country that blacks, free or not, were inferior to whites. The South continued to persecute blacks, and the North continued to allow it to happen until 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was finally passed, nearly 100 years after the end of the Civil War. Many northerners may have disliked slavery, but that did not stop them from doing profitable business with southern slave owners, and even keeping slaves in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C. One historian notes, "Initially in Washington, slavery and the slave trade likewise flourished out of the public eye" (Davis). However, it did flourish right up until the Civil War began. It seems incongruous that slavery existed in the capital of the nation that ended up broken in two over the issue, but this illustrates that slavery was not just a southern issue, slaves were held in the North, too. In fact, many slaves lived and worked in northern towns such as New York and Boston in the 18th century. For example, the black American poet, Phyllis Wheatley, was a slave in Boston who eventually gained her freedom. In the earliest days of slavery, both North and South held slaves, and slavery was abolished in the North, but it was still a volatile issue.

Northern and southern Democrats advocated slavery. In fact, many of them simply ignored slavery in the South, and tried to see both sides of the slavery issue. Historian Davis continues, "Until the outbreak of war, they attempted to forge a middle path, representing slavery as benign so long as adequate restraints were in place to prevent individual cases of abuse" (Davis). In addition, many other people lived in the South besides native southerners, and many of these people did not hold slaves, or agree with slaveholding. Another historian notes, "A close examination of diaries, letter collections, and memoirs written by both native and adoptive southerners of the period indicates that those born and reared outside the South were, in fact, likelier to harbor antislavery feelings" (Rousey). Thus, newcomers to the South were not necessarily slaveholders, and so, the entire southern population did not support and condone slavery.

However, simply because a majority of transplants in the South did not support slavery, there were many other northerners who did not have a…