What was the purpose of slavery during civil war?

Answer 1

Slavery in North America and the Caribbean Sea began in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Blacks were imported mostly from parts West Africa to be slaves, but also, whites (criminals, poor people, captured pirates, et cetera) could also be slaves, and not all of the slaves were slaves for life. Some of them were indentured servants (or, slaves for a certain number of years, after which they were free). By the time the American Civil War began, slavery was becoming obsolete because of advent of the Industrial Revolution. Canada, Mexico, and the Northern US states had outlawed slavery, but the Southern US states clung to it for quasi-religious reasons. All slaves by this time were African, and all were likely to be slaves for life. Attempts by the North, largely through the efforts of the Abolitionst Movement and the Christian Clergy, to discourage and or stamp out the practice of slavery only made the Southern/Confederate resistance to the ending slavery worse.

• Former Presidents Washington and Jefferson, who died on the same day, freed their African slaves upon their death, as did other white slave owners. Under the Monroe administration, some freed slaves chose to return to Africa where they formed the country of Liberia, and some remained in the US.

• The black soldiers who wore blue Union uniforms during the Civil War are very well known, but there were also some free Southern black soldiers who wore gray Confederate type uniforms. They were not accepted into the Confederate Army, so they fought for the South as state regiments.

The Southern plantation owners mainly used slaves to pick their cotton, as they didn't want to have to replace them with waged workers, because it would have been much more costly to pay for the wages of paid hired, or indentured pickers, while it was easier to use the free labor of slaves that weren't paid.