Understand the process of American history, especially about slavery. Thank you.

(A) due to different religious concepts and values, as well as the different direction of economic development.

The economy in the south is in sharp contrast with that in the north.

If the north belongs to a modern new industrial society, then the south belongs to a traditional conservative agricultural society.

"In slave-holding states, rural areas and agriculture still dominate.

The economy there has also grown, but a decent business and industrial sector has not yet been established.

1860 south china agriculture is labor-intensive, the same as 1800.

It is impossible for slaves, who make up half of the southern labor force, to improve their social status.

Compared with the north, where education is booming and literacy is almost universal, the efforts to promote education in the south are minimal, and illiteracy accounts for nearly half of the population.

Most mass associations, reform movements and self-improvement associations that flourished in free States did not touch the south.

Slave-holding States attach importance to tradition and stability, but despise change and progress.

Since Virginia began to try to grow tobacco leaves in 16 10, the raw materials supplied to the world market have always dominated the economic life of the south.

Before 1776, the exports of southern colonies to Britain accounted for four-fifths of the total: Virginia and Maryland exported tobacco leaves, while Carolina and Georgia exported rice and indigo raw materials.

After the war of independence, indigo crops basically stopped production, and the output of tobacco leaves also dropped a lot.

However, the rise of cotton spinning industry in Britain and New England has created a huge new demand for cotton.

During the period of 1800-1860, the cotton output of southern manors and farms doubled every ten years.

18 15-1860, cotton exports account for more than half of the total exports of the United States.

Southerners like to flaunt themselves as country gentlemen. They are honest, modest, hospitable, carefree, good at riding and hunting, chivalrous to women, respectful to peers and kind to inferior people.

In their eyes, New Englanders are a group of shopkeepers who are greedy for money: smart but without dignity, diligent but lacking the elegance of a laid-back class.

A mississippian said, "northerners love to make money, while southerners love to spend money." Writer George Cary Eggleston recalled that after the Civil War, he went from Indiana to Virginia to take over the inheritance. He said, "I bid farewell to the rapid development, internationalization and kaleidoscope of the west and went to Virginia, where I had no sense of pressure or urgency and no worries about the future. What I will do tomorrow is exactly the same as today. "

Many southern leading figures in the 1850 s agreed with Thomas Jefferson's praise of farmers, saying that they were "a special treasure house of truly pure virtues"; I also agree with his warning against urban industrialists, saying that they are abscesses in the national political system.

An Alabama politician declared on the eve of the Civil War: "We don't have a city, we don't need a city.

..... We don't want industry, trade, machinery or manufacturing class.

As long as we have rice, sugar cane, tobacco and cotton, we have money to buy everything we want. "1857, Virginia Governor Henry Wise praised the gentlemanly manners of the slave owners, saying that they were" civilized in a distant country; Happiness in life will not forget kindness; Be steady and elegant in social activities, ... have leisure time to improve your morality, behavior, philosophy and political accomplishment. "A planter in South Carolina is very opposed to the progressive concepts of commerce, industry, internal improvement, cities and reform movements used in the North.

He warned that if the goal of these "creaking and noisy progressives" is to be achieved in the south, "only the entire manor class can be eliminated."

Defenders of slavery and the south believe that the cotton king rules the American economy.

Slavery is the foundation of the unique social system in the South.

Although some historians believe that the basic system of the southern economy is plantation agriculture, not slavery itself, there is not much difference between the two statements.

Slavery and plantations have been inextricably linked since17th century.

/kloc-in the 1950s, slaves engaged in mining, transportation, construction, logging and manufacturing only accounted for10% of the total number of slaves; Domestic slaves and slaves engaged in other non-agricultural work account for 15%, accounting for about 75%. Most of the slaves are engaged in agricultural work: 55% grow cotton, almost all rice, sugarcane and marijuana, and a large part of food crops are produced by slave labor.

Only one third of southern white families own slaves, but the proportion is still quite high because slaves are expensive.

By contrast, at 1950, only 2% of American families own company shares with the same value as slaves a century ago.

In the1850s, nearly half of the slave owners owned less than five slaves; And it accounts for 65,438+02% of the total, and slave owners with 20 or more slaves (this number is usually different from the standard of plantations or farms) account for more than half of the slaves.

"

Undeniably, this economic form and ideology in the south is essentially a counter-change to tradition.

This is very similar to China at that time. On the one hand, based on the relatively independent agricultural economy, agricultural productivity is high, and it can win huge profits as a raw material market.

On the other hand, it can be said that any agricultural society is opposed to innovation and change.

They refuse to accept anything new, and they pay more attention to their self-cultivation than the competition for profits.

At the same time, as that kind of raw material market, the economic development model will inevitably make its economic development single.

In addition, slavery can't adapt to the long-term development of the southern economy.

These reasons directly led to the independence of the southern economy and the backwardness of social and cultural modernization.

"The fundamental reason why the South cannot achieve modernization and economic independence is that it has not established a diversified economy, that is, it relies too much on one crop-cotton.

This problem became more prominent in the1850s, because the demand for cotton increased.

After the national economy gradually recovered from the crisis of 1837-1843, the cotton price gradually rose from the lowest point 1844 to a dime in the 1960s.

Plantation owners then use every inch of land to plant cotton by hook or by crook, and cotton production sets a new record almost every year.

This in turn led to an increase in the price of slaves.

Although South China, which is rich in cotton, enjoyed unprecedented prosperity in the 1850' s, its economy was more confined to agriculture with a single crop.

In modern society, people's status is related to their origins and personal achievements.

But the status of slaves is entirely determined by birth.

For the vast majority of slaves, the scope of improving their status is extremely small: for example, from working in the fields to driving cars or indoor slaves.

Even those slaves who paid the price for freedom were bound by racism and various laws that restricted free blacks.

Slavery also destroyed the labor ethics of southern whites.

Because manual labor is associated with slaves, labor becomes low and disgraceful.

George Mason, a politician in Virginia, admitted that "slavery is not conducive to the development of technology and manufacturing.

The poor despise the work done by slaves. William Gregg, an industrialist in South Carolina, complained that his state "lacks all the characteristics that hardworking people should have." Due to the lack of employment opportunities and disrespect for the white labor force, only one in eight American immigrants settled in the south.

White people who moved from slave state to free state were twice as many as those who moved from free state to slave state.

What makes slavery run counter to modernization is the prohibition of slave culture.

At least 90% of slaves are illiterate.

Although slaves created rich oral literature, their illiteracy prevented them from exchanging knowledge, ideas and culture in modern society.

Low level of education is the biggest difference between slaves and freemen, and it is also the biggest difference between north and south (see table 2.5).

Abolitionists believe that this is also one of the main reasons why the South is "backward" and slavery is extremely immoral.

"

In fact, we can see that slavery itself has also brought great obstacles to the economic development of the South.

Even if the civil war did not abolish slavery, it was only a matter of time, because slavery made those immigrants reluctant to move to the south, and at the same time, there was a shortage of manpower in the United States from the beginning (which also helped us understand why Americans today attach so much importance to human life), coupled with the prohibition of human trafficking in various countries.

It is only a matter of time before slavery is abolished.

However, northerners have no patience to wait for the natural abolition of slavery.

Or the abolition of slavery is only one of the reasons for their anti-slavery, not even the root cause.

Second, a part of the American civil rights movement, the African-American civil rights movement (also translated as "African-American civil rights movement", 1955- 1968), rose in the 1950 s and was fought for by African-Americans until the 1970 s.

1954, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the segregated schools of the Board of Education were illegal. In Montgomery, Alabama, 1955, black citizens opposed the black-and-white segregation measures on buses. 1963, 250,000 people gathered in Lincoln Memorial Square in Washington to oppose apartheid. Dr. Martin Luther King, the leader of the American civil rights movement, delivered a famous speech "I!

The incident originated from the fact that African blacks were first introduced to the United States, mainly working as serfs on southern farms to make up for the shortage of local labor.

Theoretically, President Lincoln liberated them in the Emancipation Manifesto of 1863.

After the end of the civil war, during the occupation of the south by the federal army (the so-called reconstruction period of 1865- 1877), blacks were given equal rights by the Liberation Declaration.

However, due to poverty and low education, blacks have to rely on white people for employment again in order to survive economically. Especially after the withdrawal of federal troops from the south, blacks lost the protection of federal laws and fell into a situation similar to that before the American Civil War.

1896, the Supreme Court of the United States made a judgment in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the legality of taking "separate but equal" measures against blacks, which was a serious blow to the human rights of blacks in the south. The part about "segregation" in the Supreme Court's judgment was thoroughly implemented, but the part about "equality" was not, which led to more racial segregation in the South.

1954, the federal supreme court ruled in the case of "Brown v. Board of Education" that segregated schools did not provide fair education for black students, so public schools should be mixed.

Fifty-eight years later, this legal concept was overthrown and a series of African-American civil rights movements officially began.

[Editor] Dr. Martin Luther King, the soul figure leading the black civil rights movement, was born in Atlanta, Georgia. His father is a church pastor, well-off, middle-class and able to receive a good education.

Jin received his doctorate from Boston University on 1955. Seeing the racial inequality in the south, he took an active part in the civil rights movement as an adult.

[Editor] Event Evolution Montgomery, Alabama was the capital of the American Civil War and one of the representative cities of apartheid.

Dr. Martin Luther King went to this city as a pastor in 1954, and successfully led the black citizens in this city in 1955, in order to thoroughly crack down on the black-and-white segregation measures on buses.

After a year's long struggle, Montgomery's buses were finally forced to cancel the apartheid measures.

Although the effect of this bus strike movement is limited, although apartheid has not been completely abolished, it has inspired blacks all over the United States and inspired them to start the wave of civil rights movement.

The peak of sports is in August, 1963. Dr King gathered 250,000 people in the square in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and delivered a famous speech "I have a dream". The public pressure generated by this * * * finally forced Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act the following year, declaring the policy of apartheid and discrimination illegal, which became a key event in the history of the American civil rights movement.

Although Lincoln liberated black slaves a hundred years ago, the equal civil rights of black people were never implemented in the south, and it was not until Dr. King led the civil rights movement that he succeeded. The American civil rights movement rose in the 1960 s, which had a great influence on its society and overseas students. At that time, paying attention to the rights of ethnic minorities and women opened up new horizons, and Dr. Jin was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

It was not until 1967 that Dr. King deeply realized that most of the discrimination suffered by black people in American society was caused by economic inequality, economic rights were the essence and the fundamental reason, and civil rights were just a decoration.

As a result, he turned the struggle for civil rights into the struggle for economic rights and launched the "poor people's movement".

Unfortunately,1On April 4th, 968, Dr. King was shot dead in Memphis, Tennessee, when he was planning to lead a group of comrades to participate in the * * * activities in the city.

The African-American civil rights movement also came to an end that year.

[Editor] See Brown v. Topeka Education Bureau.