Author Question: Was slavery a profitable institution for the South? Explain why or why not. What will be an ideal ... (Read 62 times)

clippers! · **on:** Sep 21, 2019

Question 1

You are a slave field hand in Louisiana during the 1840s. Your wife and daughter are house servants on the same large plantation. Describe your family's health, security, and typical workday.

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Increasingly attacked as immoral, southerners felt compelled to justify the institution of slavery. How and why did their defense of slavery change during the antebellum era?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 3

Since the vast majority of southern whites owned few or no slaves, why did they support the peculiar institution?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 4

Was slavery a profitable institution for the South? Explain why or why not.

What will be an ideal response?

rosiehomeworddo · **Reply #1 on:** Sep 21, 2019

Answer 1

Answer: Although conditions for slaves varied widely, the daily work schedule for most was long and demanding. House servants generally faced lighter tasks but enjoyed less privacy. Hard work, epidemic diseases, and poor diets contributed to poor health. As both persons and property, slaves suffered from a legal ambiguity with little official protection of rights. Although slaveholders had both moral and economic reasons to maintain slave families, they were often separated.

Answer 2

Answer: Prior to the 1830s, southerners accepted slavery as a necessary evil and even made limited moves to eradicate the problem, primarily through manumission and colonization efforts. After the abolitionists stepped up their attacks, however, southern justification shifted toward defending slavery as a positive good, using biblical, historical, constitutional, scientific, and sociological grounds for argument. Such justifications emphasized racism to avoid potential class antagonisms among whites.

Answer 3

Answer: Slavery as an institution served social as well as economic purposes. Slaveholding represented a path for some and a hope for many of upward economic mobility, social prestige, and political influence. The institution also offered poor whites a sense of superiority over at least one group and a sense of kinship, if not quite equality, with wealthier whites.

Answer 4

Answer: Slaves were used as workers in all types of economic enterprises, but overwhelmingly in cash crop agriculture. A slave generally proved to be a profitable investment for a slaveholder in terms of profit and cost calculations. Most southerners, however, were not slaveholders. The heavy capital investment in land and labor blocked the diversification of agriculture, the development of industry, and improvements in the transportation system, thus limiting overall economic opportunities.