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In Inhuman Bondage, Davis discusses how international politics shaped the way slavery was perceived and addressed during the times of the abolitionist movements. Between Great Britain freeing slaves that they came across by sea, and the Northern states pushing for change, the South was in a bind.
On the international scale, Britain was pressuring the US, along with other nations, and to abolish slavery by freeing the slaves that the Southern states had purchased, without compensation. Davis described Britain’s actions as “a deep-rooted hate for anything America represented” (272). There were even some hints of war from Secretary of State Daniel Webster to the British if they were not compensated accordingly for the slaves that had ben freed. Britain and the US came to an agreement favoring the states and Britain paid reparations.
If the International pressure wasn’t bad enough for the Southern states holding tight onto slavery, the Northern abolitionists were pushing that the new territory to be admitted to be a free state, in an effort to throw off the 11 free/11 slave state balance in their favor. The Missouri Compromise was a major deal in determining the future of slavery in the states, yet the North saw the compromise as a defeat. The rift between North and South only grew larger as time went on, and eventually led the US to the Civil War.
The dependency the Southern states had on slavery due to labor, along with the newer idea that blacks were physically inferior to whites, shaped the political ideologies of Southern politicians in the early 1800s. Politics affected everyone; as Greg pointed out in his post, Southern politics even influenced groups such as Irish Catholics, just so they could gain a stature higher than slaves. International and national pressure for the gradual emancipation of slaves and abolition proved just how deeply the slavery impacted Southern politics.