The Civil War and Slaves in America

Federal laws against slavery were not proposed, as they already existed. The further spread of slavery needed to be controlled. The south part feared that it would lose the control of the federal government to antislavery forces and the northern feared that the slave powers already controlled the government. There was sectional disagreement over the morality of slavery, the scope of democracy and the economic merit of free labor versus the slave plantation caused conflict. Almost all inter -regional crises involved slavery.

The religion threatened to undermine the European authority because it involved secret night rituals and individual consultations with an Obeah man or woman, which could not always be controlled by the white slave masters. The white perceived this night rituals as a threat and they felt the religion gave the slaves power something which they did not want the slaves to have.

The population of the southern whites living in families that owned slaves was thirty six percent in the lower south and twenty five percent in the upper south. Ninety five percent of the black lived in the south comprising one third of the population there as compared to one percent of the population of the north. As a result of this the fears of eventual emancipation were much greater in the south than in the north.

The question of slavery at the time was more important than any other at that time. It was so important that there was no other question that could get a hearing at that time. As James McPherson wrote in his book Ordeal by fire, the slavery issue was related to sectional competition for control of territories and the southern demand for a slave code for the territories was the issue that the southern politician used to split the Democratic Party into two. Even though President Lincoln had no plans to out law slavery where it existed, the southerners through out the south expressed fears fore the future of slavery. The southerners not only feared the economic loss they would undergo from the free labor they got from the slaves but also the racial equity which would have to be practiced once slave trade was ended.