History of the United States I / Unit 9 USH1 1249 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Middle Class on Slavery
The idea
Northern business elites viewed slavery with ambivalence, because their fortunes ran through the cotton trade. Most members of the middle class took a dim view of it, and the anchor gives their reason precisely. Slavery promoted a culture of leisure, which was the antithesis of the middle-class view that dignity and respectability were achieved through work. Many became active in efforts to end it.
In practice
A class opposing slavery because it offended their theory of how a person earns standing.
Where people slip
This is opposition to slavery on grounds that have nothing to do with the enslaved. The objection is that slaveholding produces idle masters, not that it produces suffering. Unit 13's abolitionists argue very differently, and the distinction matters because it explains why antislavery sentiment was widespread in the North while abolitionism stayed a minority.
Your place on the trail
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