The Civil War was a conflict between two different societies over which one would control the political, economic, and social destiny of the nation. This paper addresses the politics of democrats toward Lincoln and the Republican Party. Southerners accepted slavery as a necessary part of southern society for the following reasons: l) Slavery was a profitable institution. Southern capital was primarily invested in slaves and land. By 1860, the average price of a field hand was around $1,000. In 1860 the South grew over a billion pounds of cotton -- it was 2/3 of all U.S. exports; 2) the ownership of slaves determined one's social status; 3) slavery was a method of race control. By 1860, there were 3.5 million black slaves in the South out of a total population of 10.6 million. Southerners feared that emancipation would bring about black equality or even black retaliation against whites. 4) slavery insured the labor force necessary for a plantation economy.
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