The Contours of American History by William Appleman Williams

Author:William Appleman Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844677740
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2013-04-17T16:00:00+00:00

THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUTHERN PREDICAMENT

The impact of these early moral, ideological, and political attacks by the abolitionists was increased because they hit the south during a critical juncture in the area’s development. The old seaboard south seemed to have entered the last stage of its decline as a center of commodity agriculture. Slave prices, for example, had fallen to $400 by 1828. This produced in Virginia, among other consequences, a new generation of leaders seriously interested in working out some program for ending slavery. Though largely upper-class conservatives, these men negotiated a tenuous alliance with western yeomen, a coalition that they hoped would give them the power to adjust Virginia’s economy to the new industrial and agricultural order. They were opposed by established planters who feared a wholesale assault on property rights as well as upon their existing position, and who were appalled by the prospect of a sizable plurality of free Negroes. In many respects, therefore, the situation can be understood as the moment of truth for Washington’s old idea that Virginia should diversify its economy and in that manner end slavery and maintain its position of national leadership.

The two groups clashed in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1830 in one of the crucial debates in American history. Erupting in the context of a depression in tobacco, cotton, and slave prices, the conflict seemed at first to veer in favor of those who proposed an institutional approach to emancipation. But entrenched in political and social power, and making effective use of the specter of abolitionism and a society dominated by free Negroes, as well as emphasizing the expense of compensated emancipation, the defenders of slavery finally won. The debate continued in the first sessions of the new legislature, however, both because of the continuing strength of the antislavery group and in response to the crisis provoked when a free Negro preacher named Nat Turner sparked a slave uprising in 1831. Pointing to the key role of the free Negro in all slave revolts, and to the free-wheeling operations of others like William Johnson of Natchez (a barber who became a model of laissez-faire entrepreneurship), the proslavery group overrode its critics.

Antislavery organizations all but vanished from the south within five years. Slavery’s victory was consolidated by the revival of commodity prices, the increasing intensity and vitriol of Garrison’s attacks, and the developing division of the west into northern and southern sections. A good many commentators have concluded that the combination of the Erie Canal and the cotton gin produced the Civil War, and in a highly generalized sense the observation has validity. But it overlooks the crucial role of foreign markets for cotton and for the food crops of northern farmers, and it neglects the simultaneous expansion of the home market. That revival and expansion of the market was the key to the rapidly divergent development within the west between 1825 and 1846.

Little more than a fort in 1833, Chicago exploded into a city within a decade. What had been wilderness became $15,000 lots along the Illinois-Michigan Canal.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.