In theory, making a profit from cotton was easy to do, and the more land you put into production, the more profit you made. The invention of the cotton gin, a ridiculously simple machine that easily separated seeds from the cotton boll, allowed raw cotton to be processed in unlimited quantities. The growing and harvesting of cotton, however, required the labor of many people. From the time the seed is put into the ground until the time the cotton boll is picked, run through a gin, and baled, the crop required almost constant attention. To produce any sizable cotton crop, a large pool of labor available year-round was essential. Slaves, once seen as an unnecessary burden, now became the essential source of labor in the rapidly expanding cotton economy. Slaves, who had largely populated the coastal states of the South, were now imported into the interior to work in the cotton fields. Competition for acquiring labor made slaves more and more valuable. As prices rose, fewer and fewer people could afford to own them.
By the 1850s, cotton was the raw material that powered the world economy and slavery was the engine. Whoever could put the most land into production, plowing the profits into more land and more slaves, would reap enormous profits. Slave owning became the road to status and success for all ambitious Southerners, including free Blacks and Indians. A small farmer, if he was so inclined (and many were not), could make enough money from a small cotton farm to buy one or two slaves. With this extra manpower, he could put more land into production, make more profit in the booming cotton market, and buy more slaves. With 20 slaves, he could become a planter, and rise to social and political influence. The father of Jefferson Davis, the future president of the Confederacy, began this way and became one of the richest and most powerful men in Mississippi.
The rarified air of highly sophisticated historical minds harbors many intricate pet theories to account for the South’s connection with slavery, but let’s keep it simple. Wealthy slave owners were men of high social status and held political power. They were the ones who ran the state legislatures and elected men of their kind to Congress. Not surprisingly, they enjoyed great influence over Southern society and their attachment to, and defense of, slavery represented a broad consensus. Although Southern society was highly stratified, there was — in the often rough and violent Southern frontier, regardless of social position or wealth — a sense of rough equality where a white man demanded equal treatment and respect from other white men. Because it was an integral part of the landscape of the South, the institution of slavery bound slaveholders and non-slaveholders together politically, culturally, and economically. When questions arose about the future direction of the country after the Mexican-American War, slaveholders and non-slaveholders, sharing the same outlook and interests, united to defend the institution to prevent any limitation.
The North, during this same time period, was setting the stage for the industrial revolution that would transform the nation in the next hundred years. Technology harnessed to both agriculture and industry, plus a huge influx of immigrants to serve as a ready labor force, created a new dynamic economy. Textile mills (run on Southern cotton), steam engines, railroads and canals, and iron and steel factories came to dominate the landscape of New England, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. In 1860, the North held about 140,000 factories, which employed nearly a million and a half workers, who produced almost $2 billion worth of goods. New cities in the northwest such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee became the engines of change in the national economy. St. Louis and New Orleans became the centers of a dynamic interregional trade. Within this atmosphere of economic change and readjustment between 1850 and 1860, the North and South were becoming more disparate, confidently moving, it seemed, in two different directions.
The Opposing Sides
The North and the South agreed on one thing: that the future of America lay in the vast open territory of the West. The troubling question was which section of the country would determine the nation’s destiny? Most of this territory had been won from Mexico after the Mexican-American War in 1846, and Northerners and Southerners disagreed over the future organization of this territory into states. The road to war began with a political struggle between the North and the South over how the western territories would be organized into states and enter the Union. This political struggle had its origins in the extensive social changes influencing the North after 1830. A religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening swept from New England into the new states of the Midwest with a message of moral revival and striving for individual perfection. Adherents believed that not only should men and women seek spiritual and personal purity through hard work and personal rectitude, but the whole of society must also be purged of unwholesome elements. Two of the most prominent threats to achieving this perfection in society were the moral evils of liquor and of slavery. Prohibition movements sprang up throughout the North, as did a movement to abolish slavery. Although these movements were not entirely popular in the North, they gained wider and deeper influence in the realm of politics.
Another powerful idea that shaped attitudes of Northerners was the notion of free labor. The future of America was a land of free white men who would move west and build happy and prosperous lives from their own efforts. This powerful vision also gained influence within Northern political circles, even to the extent of creating a new sectional political party, the Free Soil Party. Increasingly, the South was perceived as being a barrier to the limitless potential that a morally perfect country of free individuals could enjoy. Many in the North perceived Southerners as morally unfit, tainted by slavery, an institution that degraded small farmer and planter alike, making them listless, dull-witted, cruel, and violent. For Southerners, the writing was on the wall. In their vision of the future of America, the prosperity of the cotton economy would naturally expand westward. Cotton depleted the soil, requiring expansion westward to put more land into production. Without this expansion, the Southern economy would be condemned to a slow death. Of course, the westward expansion of the cotton economy meant that Southerners expected to bring slaves into the new territories.
WILMOT’S PROVISO
The Wilmot Proviso was a resolution made by an obscure Pennsylvania Congressman, David Wilmot, who, in 1846, attached the proviso (a conditional clause inserted into legislation or a contract) to an appropriations bill. Wilmot’s proviso stated that any territory acquired in the war with Mexico would not be open to slavery. The bill passed the House of Representatives, where the North had a majority, but it died in the Senate, where the South held the balance of power. The controversy over the Wilmot Proviso illustrated to both sections how important political control in Congress was to furthering their interests. The proviso became the basis of the increasingly bitter political struggle throughout the 1850s.
The political battle lines were drawn in 1846 with the Wilmot Proviso, which reflected the increasingly dominant opinions of Northerners who desired to bring about their vision of
