Liberty Challenged in Nineteenth Century America Final Paper

Liberty Challenged in Nineteenth Century America Final Paper
Name
Institution
Liberty Challenged in Nineteenth Century America Final Paper
The issue of slavery in the United States is one of the most controversial topics, especially with regard to how it impacted economic growth. Further, besides the issue of economic growth, slavery has also been cited as the origin of racial discrimination in America. It raised many moral issues and was eventually abolished. However, slavery created one of the biggest political divides in American history and contributed greatly to the Civil War, yet it also cemented the economic strength of the United States.
Slavery has played a major role in shaping American politics, starting with the divide it created between the southern and northern states. Slavery was a source of political benefits for the South (Boyer, et al., 2018). This is because, through the apportionment of slaves, slaves started being considered as part of the population in determining Congressional representation. However, the North was against slavery and while it championed for the slaves to be counted as equal members of society, their target was on the taxes. As such, when the three-fifths compromise was passed, the North lost some political power due to limited Congressional representation in comparison to the South (Alexander, 2017). However, as revealed by Boyer, et al. (2018), the distribution of slaves in the South was unequal. This is because the Upper South produced more cotton than the Lower South, thus requiring more slaves. This also implies that they had different political representation in Congress. The Upper South region is sometimes referred to as the “Black Belt” and white people who resided in this region were and still are, to date, more conservative than any other white people in the entire South (Acharya, Blackwell, & Sen, 2016). Their political ideologies have affected the current South political playground. For instance, Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen (2016) posit that the current political attitude of the white people in the South towards race and affirmative action is a reflection of what has been passed down from generation to generation, since the era of slavery. It is common for people to pick up and identify with the beliefs of their elders, and this not different in politics. In addition, white people currently residing in the South are more likely to identify as Republicans than other white people (Acharya, Blackwell, &Sen, 2016). These are the remnants of slavery in the South. As such, it suffices to say that slavery has shaped the political ideologies and beliefs of the South.
Further, slavery played a significant role in instigating the American Civil War. The politics and disagreement arising from slavery contributed to the insecurities that eventually led to the eruption of the Civil War. According to Dew (2016), the North and the South shared different ideologies concerning labor. The North supported free-labor while the South supported slave-labor, which is understandabl...