"The Hard Hand of War: Civilians and Irregulars in..." Topic

… the Civil War

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Amicalement
Armand

Slavery in the US was a cash crop agricultural industry. The major crops were cotton, tobacco, sugar and indigo?(saw that on a history show). With the Mason/Dixon (Dixie) line all states south of that line were slave states. All was OK till you hit Texas/Arkansas. Going any further west and you run into states where those cash crops just couldn't be grown. Give a slave a horse and gun to ride the range for cattle and the slave would be in Mexico in about one week learning his new name. The slave states needed to go north.

The politicians came up with a new idea called the Missouri Compromise where Missouri and Kansas would decide if they were slave or free when they came into the Union (the states were North of the Mason/Dixon line). This scared the family farm owners (in days before farm automation labor was human powered) who could not compete with slave farms (need more labor – buy it or make it). It also scared the local business men (slaves have no money – slaves can't buy things). This is what formed the basis of the Republican party and convinced the southern Democrats that they couldn't stay in the union if there were more free then slave states (as long as same number of free and slave states then anti slave legislation could be stopped in Senate).

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand