Question

What was the system of chattel slavery in english colonies in north america?

Answer 1

The spread of slavery to new states ignited a “fire bell in the night,” according to the elderly Thomas Jefferson in 1820. Jefferson in the 1770s had attempted to put slavery on a course of destruction. However, by the first decades of the 19th century, Jefferson, like other leading Southern statesmen, proclaimed the need to protect the institution to save the Southern way of life. Indeed, slavery became the most abiding and powerful symbol of that way of life.

Increasingly, Northern and Southern politicians came to view each other as members of a hostile camp, representing two opposing images of American life: one based on free labor and the other based on slave labor. As a result, the issue ofadmitting new states that either prohibited slavery or allowed it emerged as one of vital political significance. Southerners saw the admission of a free state as a visible sign of growing Northern political power, and vice versa. The advent of a vocal and controversial abolition movement in the North only heightened Southern fears of a plot to destroy slavery and the South’s political power.


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