History Case

  The planters' goal was to make the West into a "slave society" similar to those their fathers and grandfathers had built in Virginia and South Carolina (Henretta, 2009).The Planters worked as well as the thousands of slaves that they had to bring millions of acres of land into cultivation. A big majority of the cotton that was produced came from region. Cotton was the number one crop. Even though they sold a lot of cotton, their living conditions were downgraded. The farmers' main goal was to make as much cotton as possible to sell so that they could buy more slaves.  The living conditions became known as the "dreary waste" which means unremitting toil, unrelieved poverty and profound sadness (Henretta, 2009). The Planters were very greedy, they forced slaves to work every day, all day on the cotton plantations. As the tobacco and sugar plantations developed in the south, more and more slaves were brought in to work the lands. By 1850 there were fifteen slave states. Louisiana became known "as a place of slaughter" (Henretta, 2009).Many slaves died from diseases and brutal treatment. The slave traders would put the black children in wagons and they would tie the adults together with chains, so that they wouldn't try to escape. They went from village to village selling the slaves, as if they were selling watermelons. When the Planters got in debt they would sell some of their slaves. The southern economy sky rocketed because of the slave trade. They were sold like real state.  In the south, masters whipped their slaves if they were disobedient. Many slave families were torn by the masters selling family members. Children were sold by the age of seventeen and took from their parents before the age of fourteen. Even though a lot of the families were separated from one another they continued to hold a strong bond for the family. Many of the slaves had soon to be dead then to go through the awful life under the Planter's

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