There were at least three economic factors that played a part in establishing African slavery in the United States: the need for a large number of laborers to work plantations, the tariff policy that increased the price of manufactured goods, and the agricultural nature of the SouthÆs economy. Plantations required a much larger number of workers than could be supplied locally, and slaves were imported to fulfill that need. The maintenance of slaves did incur cost, but not as much as if they were paid a standard wage. The tariff policy was a main driver for keeping the South agricultural as opposed to industrial. While the North was in the midst of industrialization, the South stayed with agriculture to avoid having to pay the high tariffs on imported goods which would have been necessary to support industry. Finally, the agricultural economy itself promoted slavery, because by not demanding tariffs, the South was totally dependent on agriculture to meet its needs. Slave labor enabled the South to survive in an increasingly industrialized world, but there was no manpower left for industry even if the South had been amenable to it. (1918). There was no currency that was agreed upon and used by both the North and the South, and this made it difficult to have a common market. Free northern farmers operating on wage labor did not want to compete against the SouthÆs slave labor. To free the slaves would destroy much of the SouthÆs wealth; to keep them slaves would prevent the United States from achieving its place as an economic power.
The impact of slavery on the United States as an emerging nation was to polarize the North and the South into vastly different cultures, one industrialized and moving forward with technology, the other tied to agriculture and languishing in the past. The Southern economy depended on slavery for survival, but it undercut northern wage-based labor. In the end, this polarization led to the Civil ...