The Southerners were more and more conscious to insist on slavery as the basis of civilized life which made them reject the materialism and lack of togetherness in the Northern community. Northerners viewed slavery as the direct opposite of good society and also as a danger to their own essential interests and values. The existing political system could not restrain these two conflicting ideologies and this led to the breakup of the two societies to form the Northern and the Southern societies.
The Republicans valued the ideology of free labor which did not only involve an approach towards work but a validation of the ante-bellum of the southern society. The Northern republican thus extensively criticized the Southern society which appeared equally different and inferior to theirs. Republicans did not believe in the reality of slave power which had taken control of the federal government in the South.
The Republican ideology spread over a long distance because of its multifaceted nature, thus most people embraced it as an overwhelmingly successful combination of values and interests. This ideology appealed in many diverse ways to a range of groups within the party. It gave the northerners of divergent social and political backgrounds a basis for collective action. It provided the moral agreement which permitted the north for the first time in history, to assemble an entire society in modern welfare.
On May 26, 1960, one of the Republican Party leading orators, Carl Schurz of Wisconsin addressed an audience which had gathered to endorse the nomination of Abraham Lincoln. He encouraged the Republicans to stand before the country, not as the anti- slavery party but as the party of free labor. Many republican orators emphasized that the greatest idea and the basis of the Republican Party is free labor. The main aim and objective of the Republican Party was to make labor honorable.
The dignity of labor was a constant theme of the northern culture and politics. In America people did not just work, but worked specifically to gain money. This was considered very honorable labor was the source of every value. Many leaders reiterated that labor is prior to and independent to capital, indeed capital is the fruit of labor. The belief in the dignity of labor was not restricted to the Republican Party it has been part of the American culture from the start. Most Americans come from a protestant background in which the decency of labor was an item of faith. Each man had an occupation or calling to which he was divinely appointed and to succeed in ones calling serves to glorify God. There are moral qualities that ensure success in ones calling, which include honesty, prudence, diligence, punctuality and sobriety.
In the free labor perspective, the objective of social mobility was not great wealth, but economic independence. Free labor meant labor with economic choices, the ability to quit the wage earning group. One who lived all his life depending on wages was considered as still in bondage. As a Southern slave there was nothing wrong with working to acquire enough wealth to start a business. Thus a successful laborer was one who achieved self employment and owned capital, a business or a shop.
The Republicans regarded slavery as morally unjust, politically imprudent and socially destructive. They were therefore opposed to it and criticized the Southern community which exercised slavery. The free labor attitude gave republicans a model of good society and provided them with a standard for judging other social systems. The values of free labor that were mostly cherished by the republicans i.e. economic development, social mobility and political democracy were greatly violated in the south. The south appeared to republicans as a strange and intimidating society because their values and interests were in deep conflict with those of the North.
The economy of the southern community was backward and stagnant. Slavery was to blame for all this as it hindered regional and national development. There was immense poverty in the south, the soil was exhausted, decaying town, wretchedly neglected roads and there was an absence of enterprise and improvement. Slavery had impaired all aspects of economic development in this region. Commerce, political power as well as military strength can never permanently reside in a community where slavery exists. The southern states were well known for their intellectual, moral and political darkness which covered the land.
Despite all these problems the Southern born settlers seemed content with their status in life and seemed to lack the desire to improve their condition. The Northerners feared the issue of slavery in their territories.
They wanted to keep their territories free from this primitive act. Many enterprising men from the Northern state were migrating to the territories with the desire to posses land. This is because they did not want their territories to be occupied fully by the Southerners, who they feared could import their ill values into the North. They believed by doing so they will be able to exclude slavery from the territories. Free white laborers of the North though did not migrate to the South where there was no free labor and social mobility was non existence. They did not also want to work in close proximity with black slaves. In his book Roediger, clearly states that the white labourers did not in any way want to be associated with the blacks.
This made it difficult for both the black and white laborers to form a union to fight for their rights.
The slaves were mostly black men or Negros as they used to call them. They were denied every right including voting. They were always beaten, exiled and killed if they defied anything that their masters wanted a sure way of killing any attempts of Negro domination. The Negro was killed for disputing over the terms of contract with their employers. If there was any dispute between a colored man and a white man the colored man had to die either in the hands of the white man there and then or later through a mob which gathered speedily. If any man showed a spirit of courageous manhood he was hanged for his pains. Colored women were also murdered for refusing to tell the mob where their relatives could be found for lynching.
The black men came up with anti-lynching bureau of the National Afro-American Council to have every lynching investigated and to publish the facts to the world. This was the beginning of the end of lynching because no lynching was allowed before proper investigations. There started to be big changes between the two states and it is during Abraham Lincolns leadership that the two states started to unite. It was then that so many voters from the slave state of Louisiana joined the union and accepted it as the rightful political power of the state. They adopted a Free State constitution and allowed public schools to be attended equally by black and white scholars. They also agreed to have the constitution amended to allow slavery to be abolished throughout the nation.
Although not everybody from the Southern state agreed to these changes those who joined the union represented a good number which could not just be overlooked. They included a good number of white men who felt that they needed to change from the previous unfair way of life. These people vowed to adhere to the new changes, fight for it until it ripens to a complete success. They believed the colored man, in seeing all America united for him, is motivated with vigilance and energy and daring to the same end.
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