Week 15: “Irrepressible Conflicts” – The Long Battle to the American Civil War

The article “Irrepressible Conflicts” presents itself in a fashion that would be complicated to those that cannot make the connection between the economy established during the time period the article states and the economy how it ended up after the changes it has done in both socially and economically. Also, this article also points out how this economic drive happens to work: religion and the Atlantic Slave Trade. Across the world, the Atlantic Slave Trade and/or Religion has affected individuals in one fashion or another, but they each have gained influence until there was more than a supermajority (a majority in the past was not enough since laws would not make a simple majority possible) population supported it. This is where the Atlantic Slave Trade’s effects started to take a toll on the United States.

In the United States, the Atlantic Slave Trade had the most impact on how the nation would deal with its problems down the line. While the article mentions that other nations like Britain and other European Nations had to deal with religion due to their leaders putting on a demand on religion purity, the United States had “Freedom of Religion” on the basis of the 1st Amendment and rarely had to deal with it. The United States had to deal with the effects of Slave Trade because the Southern States were not going to give up on the prospects of keeping slavery legal in their respective states. In the Southern States, the economy set up in those states had to depend on slavery to stay alive. Once the Southern States saw that their economy was going to be in serious danger due to the election of Lincoln, they succeeded from the Union and the conflict began with the American Civil War being played out.

In Shreshta’s blog post, she mentions that abolition was not “an overnight process” and “peaceful” but they it had to happen to remove slavery and change the dynamic of trade routes around the world.