Starting with the triangle trade in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, in which slaves were brutally transported in the middle passage to America, slavery had an important role in the American economy, differing in influence by region. However, as the colonies declared their independence in 1776, a gradual anti-slavery movement began in the North as many formed negative opinions about the Southern “Peculiar Institution” of a slavery-based economy. Various issues from 1776 to 1852 caused this gradual abolitionist movement. Political intervention, economic inabilities and threats, social abilities and anxieties and intervene, and fundamental moral ideas respectively reflect the thesis.
Political intervention between 1776 and 1852 helped establish state emancipation of slavery, thereby fostering the gradual anti-slavery movement. In 1785, as a result of winning the Revolutionary War and acquiring land up to the Mississippi river, the United States Congress of the Confederation established the Land Ordinance of 1785, in which settlers could buy the undeveloped Western farmland. Two years later, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 addressed the political needs of the earlier Land Ordinance. One of the many issues dealt with prohibited slavery in the Northwest region in the 6th article of the Northwest Ordinance (as seen in Document A), which even…show more content… Many Northerners in the early 19th century grew worried about the slavery-brought increasing African American population. Many believed, that despite their treatment as mere property, blacks were growing in population and the few who were becoming free were affecting the American culture and becoming fellow Americans. Therefore, as seen in Doc D, groups, such as the American Colonization Society, proposed shipping the blacks back to Africa which, in doing so, added to the opposition to slavery and the exploitation of blacks in
