ABSTRACT
Raw cotton supply could hardly keep up with the demand or with the capacity of water- and steam-driven spinners and looms in Great Britain and New England. Cotton quickly became “king” – not only America’s principal export of the antebellum period, but more valuable than all other American exports combined. Most Indian nations went to lands that were to be reserved for them forever – but which later became states within which Native Americans lacked citizenship rights. Northern states gradually ended slavery but many Northerners accepted the ideology and practices of white supremacy, ranging from school segregation to the exclusion of black workers from many types of work. Northern states enacted “personal liberty laws” that were intended in part to protect free black Northerners from being kidnapped and consigned to slavery without an opportunity to defend themselves. Some argued that the Northern political system was inherently unstable because political stability required class domination of an exploited subordinate class.
