USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Slavery was very cruel to most black slaves, especially the field hands. Slaves were beaten, whipped, castrated, branded, pierced, had limbs amputated, and killed in various ways. Slave women were often sexually abused by white masters, their sons, and overseers.

Detailed explanation-2: -Defenders of slavery argued that the sudden end to the slave economy would have had a profound and killing economic impact in the South where reliance on slave labor was the foundation of their economy. The cotton economy would collapse. The tobacco crop would dry in the fields. Rice would cease being profitable.

Detailed explanation-3: -Thomas Jefferson called slavery a “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot, ” but continued to hold human beings as property his entire adult life.

Detailed explanation-4: -The war began because a compromise did not exist that could solve the difference between the free and slave states regarding the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in territories that had not yet become states.