The Civil War

The economy of the South was the most influential aspect of the compromise on westward expansion because the invention of the cotton gin increased production and the South did not have the influx of immigrants that the North had and, therefore, did not have a readily available and inexpensive workforce. This created a sense of panic among the southern states as the Missouri Compromise came into effect, with the fear that the balance of power would fall to the North and the South would collapse into economic despair. While several individuals wrote and spoke about how African Americans needed to be protected as children need to be kept, the underlying reason was to minimize the humanity of the slaves for economic reasons. 

The Missouri Compromise was created to act as a panacea for the South and maintain the balance of power in Congressional representation between non-slave and slaveholding states and, therefore, defend their right to keep the slaves with any argument they could grasp. When Westward expansion introduced territories that would shift the balance of power; either by forcing states to adopt slavery or by banning slavery, the South began to panic and try to find alternative excuses of why African Americans should be kept as slaves. For some, such as Dr. Cartwright’s “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race” he discusses the need for slave owners to ensure that their slaves are “‘submissive knee bender(s)’” to avoid certain illnesses that slaves are prone to, such as running away. In the closing, he informs the reader that the only way to keep slaves is to ensure that, “They have only to be kept in that state and treated like children, with care, kindness, attention, and humanity.”  While this is an improvement of treatment for slaves in many Southern plantations, the concept that slaves must be treated as children shows that the common belief was that slaves were being kept as slaves for their own good. This logic may have been used to convince non-abolitionist Northerners to support the slave owners, however, the main reason the slaves suffered from “The Disease-Causing Negroes to Run Away” was because few people enjoy the tyrannical control of slavery.

The true purpose behind trying to convince U.S. citizens to support slavery was because without the free labor the South would fall economically, even if Southern writers and speakers rarely addressed this directly. David Atchison focused his speech on encouraging the soldiers to perform “a glorious duty” and show their nature as “true sons of the noble South”  because the soldiers were fighting to keep the South alive. While there are many things that the South encompasses, it is a symbol of an economy that is built upon the forced labor of other human beings, such as what occurred on the Parchman Farm. So while these men may feel they are fighting to protect their way of life, they are actually promoting financial stability and luxury. His speech to whip the men into a frenzy has no real logos and simply feeds into the pathos of pride.   James Dunwoody Brownson DeBow, on the other hand, attacked the argument with only the Southern economy and society in mind. In his “Destiny of the Slave States,” he approaches the subject saying that America has the opportunity to become one of the greatest and richest nations on the planet if they continue to use slaves as a sort of necessary evil. In his closing argument, DeBow argues that “the three millions of bags of cotton the slave labor annually throws upon the world for the poor and naked”  does more help for humanity than it does negatively impact the slaves. While both Atchison and Debow have very different arguments; one for pride and one for money, both men want to keep the institution of slavery because their own personal comfort relies on slaves. 

While there were many aspects of society that lead to Southern enmity of the Missouri Compromise, the strongest force was the fear of how abolishing slavery would impact the economic health of the South. After the American Revolution and  Civil War, the fears of the South did come true, the Antebellum South was dead and the economy was weak and struggling. In the end, however, the result was freedom for all people of America.

Bibliography

Atchison, David. "Copy of David R. Atchison Speech to Pro-Slavery Forces." Territorial Kansas Online, n.d., http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=show_transcript&document_id=103035 (accessed July 20, 2013).

Cartwright, Dr. "Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race." PBS: Public Broadcasting Service, n.d., http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3106t.html (accessed July 20, 2013).

DeBow, James Dunwoody Brownson. "Destiny Slave States." Causes of the Civil War, n.d., http://civilwarcauses.org/debow3.htm (accessed July 20, 2013).