Pre-Civil War Context

As America's north underwent industrialization, surpassing the innovations and productivity of Great Britain, the south lagged behind.  Many attributed this to the presence of slave labor rather than wage-labor.  By the mid-nineteenth century, abolitionists and antislavery advocates brought their causes to the fore of their politics, pressuring for the complete abolishment of slavery or the denial of further advancement of slavery into other territories admitted to the union.  In addition to the south's economic dependence on slave labor, many southerners (slave-owning, and non slave-owning) favored slavery due to beliefs of racial superiority or as an attempt to ensure continued racial subjugation.  Sentiment grew in the north, especially amongst the New England Protestants, that slavery was a moral sin against God, and a symbol of an unrefined, uneducated, backward society.  The politics of slavery continued to brew great controversies and power struggles during the 1840's and 1850's.