![]() ![]() The more populous North had come to dominate the House of Representatives and the South now sought to redress the balance. Since the beginning of the nineteenth-century, the political balance between North and South had been maintained by admitting alternately slave and free states. The internal trade grows as Northern owners sell their slaves, creating what historians have labelled a ‘Second Middle Passage’ within America. Northern states begin a gradual process of ending slavery, but the institution strengthens in the South as cotton production expands. ![]() The United States bans the import and export of slaves, one year after Great Britain abolished the slave trade. Several decades of debate and compromise over slavery’s expansion westwards follow. The western territories, a vast expanse of land stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific, are acquired by the United States from France for over eleven million dollars. ![]() In approving the Declaration, Congress set a precedent that outlined the rights of a people to abandon their former political allegiances and 'to institute new government.'Įli Whitney’s invention revolutionises cotton production in the South, eventually leading to cotton succeeding tobacco as the most profitable trade commodity in the United States. ![]() Thomas Jefferson draws up the Declaration of Independence to assert the sovereign rights of the American colonists. Rhode Island becomes the first of the original Thirteen Colonies to introduce anti-slavery laws that would accentuate the divide between Northern and Southern states. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |