Civil War and Slavery

Paper Summary:

This paper debates whether the Civil War really effectively liberated blacks in anything more than name. It discusses the consequences of the Civil War on the Southern agricultural industry - showing that the institution of slavery may have been abolished but was still necessary in practice to continue farming in the pre-war manner.

From the Paper:

"No one debates that slavery in the Southern United States was a terrible and inhumane practice. It was clearly unconscionable and horrible and we, undoubtedly, continue to feel the effects of this terrible and horrible institution in multiple ways even up to this very day. The effects of the American Civil War, however, were certainly just as terrible and every bit as pronounced. More Americans died in the American Civil War than in any American war before or after ("American War Deaths"), and it terrible effects rocked the nation and brought it to the very brink of collapse. The terrible possibility to consider, then, is what if all of these lives could have been sparred? American slavery was an economic institution that, like any other one, was based on the laws of supply and demand. Southern American plantations were agricultural centers that could only turn a profit through intense labor that required many hands tilling the fields in order to raise cash crops like tobacco and cotton successful."

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• Term Paper # 95152 : "The Civil War & Slavery"

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