Study questions for The Half Has Never Been Told:

1) How have white historians in the past described the relationship between slavery in the American South and the rising political power and economic growth of the United States? Why was slavery not portrayed as a “modern” institution?
a. White historians of the past have insisted that their existed no link between slavery and the growth of the United States in the nineteenth century. They have depicted slavery as a pre-modern institution with no commitment to profit seeking which would rule out its part in any economic expansion. However, this point of view ignores the fact that the “returns from (the) cotton monopoly powered the modernization of the rest of the American economy” which proves …show more content…
The issue of expanding slavery was especially important to Southern legislators who valued the three-fifths representation each slave brought their home state. If slavery were allowed in the growing Western states, Southern states could also keep their majority in the House and Senate, or, at the very least, ensure that Northern representation did not outnumber them.
3) What do northern land speculation and the Yazoo land claims tell us about northern whites’ attitudes toward expanding and profiting from slavery?
a. That Northern interest in the Yazoo territory proves that non-enslaving whites had great interest in the economic benefits of slavery. Although they criticized the “psychopathy” of the enslaver, Northerner’s were more than willing to “pour money into slavery’s frontier” to see that money returned to them.
4) Why did some legislators argue that moving slaves from Southern states to Western territories—“diffusing” them—was necessary and good?
a. The idea of diffusion was paired with the ever-growing belief that slavery would eventually die out if it continued to expand. Along with this faulty logic, diffusion spread the number of African Americans more evenly throughout the country and ensured that no one state would become overpopulated, thus leading to the greater liability of slave