The fifth chapter returns to tensions between the North and South, who clashed over the disproportionate political sway the South gained through expanding the slave frontier despite this, the two US regions remained united by the great gains slavery brought to both. They also explore enslaved people’s attempts to resist and the terrible lengths to which enslavers went to prevent this. They present violence and torture as the ultimate reason for slavery’s great efficiency, examining the true scale and brutality of the new model of slavery and its relationship with the 19th century’s most important raw commodity: cotton. The third and fourth chapters focus on the ways in which slavers maintained power over their human property and developed increasing wealth and influence through buying and selling slaves and cotton. From here, the second chapter examines how violence was central to the expansion of the slave frontier into the Mississippi Valley, noting how the Haitian Revolution ironically allowed the United States to purchase New Orleans and the area around the city from the French, and how the violent displacement of vast numbers of Creek Nation American Indians created more territory for cotton plantations.
It also begins to explore the growing significance of forced migration, both to slavery as an institution and to the development of the United States. In doing so, it examines both some early tensions between the North and South and the solid foundation of cooperation over slavery that benefited both regions. The study begins by exploring the early use of slavery in the Americas and the beginnings of a new model of slavery that would go on to profoundly shape the future of the nation.
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