The Institution of American Slavery

America, the country founded on the principle that, “all men are created equal”, quickly found an exception to this statement by introducing Native Americans and later Africans to tend the farms (Declaration of Independence). These men, women, and children had virtually no rights and were at the mercy of their masters. The South being more of an agricultural region, evolved into what became known as the “slave states” of America, while the North and it’s industry used many more wage laborers instead. As time passed and the abolitionist movements became more popular, the South was criticized for continuing their brutal practice of slavery, however, Southerners argued that the “peculiar institution” of slavery was beneficial economically, socially, and politically and therefore, superior to Northern “wage slavery”.

The cotton crop in the South evolved into an agricultural monopoly, known as King Cotton, because of the nominal costs required to man the fields and to run Eli Whitney’s newly invented cotton gin. It was due to this huge crop that the Southern states were able to export cotton to both the North and Europe, creating a huge trade surplus in the South. Since Northerners paid their employees, products had to be far more expensive than those produced in the South because employers would have to account for more overhead costs. In addition, Northern wage employees were free to join unions, which encouraged and defended strikes. A labor strike was extremely detrimental to a Northern proprietor because it caused them to cease their operations until the strike was over and more times than not, the only way to end a strike was by increasing the salary of the workers. Southern slave owners had a guaranteed work force, that could not form or enter unions, and could never quit. Also, without slaves, there were no guidelines on working conditions for the slaves, such as minimum salary or maximum number of hours that could be worked per day. The absence of unions gave slave owners total freedom in the way the ran their plantations and their slaves. The onetime purchase of a slave from anywhere between $500 and $800 secured a lifetime of arduous, uninterrupted work for the owner, producing between $50 and $100 per year per slave (New perspectives on slavery, 33.0). Finally, the offspring of slaves became the property of their parents’ master. The purchase of a set of slaves could last an owner many generations making the original procurement even more cost efficient. Northern workers were bound to quit their jobs, making it hard for business owners to find a constant work force. Economically, slave labor created uncomplicated managing conditions for Southern landowners and also allowed for the Southern farms to run between 20 and 40% more efficiently than the Northern farms (New perspectives on slavery, 33.6).