Antebellum America was a time of tremendous turmoil and oppression. The ever growing country was in great debate over slavery and the effects that expansion would have on slavery. The south agricultural economy was based almost entirely on slave labor and the north,a industrial economy was fighting for abolishing slavery. The northern states wanted to abolish slavery because it contradicted the Christian way of life. Separation of marriages and families in slave trade, sexual abuse of slave women, and the harsh treatment of the slaves in the fields, were just a few ways that slaves were mistreated. The arguments grew thicker as America began to move west in the 1840's and 50's. The country was split in half on the issue of slavery. The events of and undertones of the mid 1800's would foreshadow the Civil War. .
The southern states relied on an agriculture economy of growing cotton, rice, tobacco and sugar. Slaves were used as cheap and effective labor on plantations. Of the fifteen slave states in the south about one third of the population was made up of African American slaves. Most farmers in the south had no more than the twenty slaves on there plantation, these farms were only about 150-200 acres large. The owners of these plantation were not of great wealth, they lived modest lives and provided for there family, man did not even live in very nice homes at all. There was about 10,000 families that owned anywhere from fifty to a hundred slaves that worked hundreds of acres of land. These slave owners mad up only one percent of the population in the south but controlled over 90 percent of the wealth. This was the aristocracy in the south, plantation owners of this size were business men that had overseer's to look after their plantation because they were more often than not away on business. .
It was a much different way if life in the north, the large cities were centered on factories that employed .
