Slavery: Not Just Something For The South

Slavery: Not Just Something For The South

Part V

The northern States would not abide with Article IV, Section 2, Paragraph 3; it reflected not a sense of humanity, of moral revulsion to slavery, but instead a growing anti-South hatred & prejudice.

Blacks did not matter to the north, but were pawns by which the north stuck it to the South. So, even when Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, the northern States, reflecting their ethnic-hatred for the South, refused to obey it, again, not because of right and wrong, but because of hatred towards the South. Even that reflected their perceived States Right to nullify any federal law they wanted to.

These sites prove very insightful as to the attitude of the North before the war.
http://www.slavenorth.com/denial.htm Here states are taken one by one so that you can see the attitudes that were held toward slavery and the South up to the point of war.

Now back to the North and their industries and their dependence on slavery at certain levels.

It's difficult to overstate the importance of molasses, or more, specifically, of rum, particularly to the New England states.

At different times, Massachusetts and Rhode Island together had nearly 70 distilleries for rum, and New York City had more than a dozen. The Africa trade, however, took only a fraction of the rivers of molasses and rum flowing into and out of the North.

In 1770, Massachusetts and Rhode Island together imported 3.5 million gallons of molasses, which their distilleries turned into 2.8 million gallons of rum. New Englanders drank up most of the rum themselves, but 1.3 million gallons was re-exported up and down the Atlantic coast, from Newfoundland to the Deep South. New England distilled more rum than all the rest of North America. The volume drunk was astonishing- an average of 1.5 quarts a week for every adult male! So was the amount of molasses smuggled past customs agents --probably more than 1.5 million gallons in 1770. (On that one and a half quarts a week of rum I don't believe that qualifies for medicinal purposes....but that's just my opinion.)

The hogsheads of molasses and rum were transported by water like almost everything the North traded in, and the revenue from shipping rivaled the value of West Indian exports.

Shipbuilding became a major industry both in New York City and in New England. John Winthrop himself financed the construction of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's first ship, The Blessing of the Bay, launched in 1631.

By 1700, Boston and nearby towns were turning out 70 ships a year -- the most in number and tonnage in the Western Hemisphere.This industry employed hundreds of shipwrights, carpenters, sailsmakers, and ironworkers, not to mention lumbermen. Two thousand trees, mainly oak and pine, were cut to build a single decent-sized ship. The ships were sold, often to West Indian buyers, or kept for Massachusetts's own fleet. In the early 1700's, Boston's adult male population had risen to only about 1800. Incredibly, though, nearly one-third of Boston's men owned shares in at least one oceangoing vessel.