American History

 In his book,  White Mans Burden,  Winthrop Jordan explored how slavery started in America and stopping his narrative short before the start of the civil war.  It can be seen here that it was not merely an issue of slavery, but an issue of racism as well, an issue which would survive the civil war and be rooted in some, if not a lot of of Americans then and even today.
    Africans arrived in Americas shores as slaves, more often than not, against their will.  They were forcibly taken from their homes in raids and sold in trading posts established by whites in Africa.  Slavery was seen as lucrative business since it had a huge market, particularly in the colonies in the New World which was then agricultural and these Africans served in plantations or acted as indentured servants for these colonists.  It was from here that the colonists (as well as their descendants) would start developing this attitude that blacks were inferior to them. This would go on until the American Revolution and beyond.
    Men like Thomas Jefferson regarded slavery as immoral, tyrannical and inhuman since slaves were not treated like people but like commodities.  They realized that slaves were also human beings and they felt it was not right to treat them that way.  Yet, despite this attitude, even these opponents to slavery still harbored racist tendencies in the sense that they regard the blacks as inferior to them.  This was what made those in the South continue to assert slavery besides being essential to their economy.  When this issue was left alone in the Constitutional Convention, the Founding Fathers thought this would keep the peace only to find out that the peace they bought by not resolving the issue was not enough and blood had to be paid in the civil war.
    All in all, slavery divided a young nation.  One side felt it was economically necessary and an assertion of their superiority while the other regarded it as morally wrong.  When the issue could not be resolved in a debate, war finally did.