| A | B |
|---|
| The selling of slaves at auctions | Often resulted in the cruel separation of black families |
| Belief in white superiority and the hope of owning slaves | Kept poor, nonslaveholding whites committed to a system that actually harmed them |
| The constant abolitionists agitation in the North | Aroused deep fears of rebellion and ended rational discussion of slavery in the South |
| Garrison's Liberator and Nat Turner's bloody slave rebellion | Made abolitionists personally unpopular but convinced many Northerners that slavery ws a threat to American freedom |
| The slaves' love of freedom and hatred of their condition | Caused slaves to work slowly, steal from their masters, and frequently run away. |
| The religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening | Stirred a fervent abolitionist commitment to fight the "sin" of slavery |
| Whitney's cotton gin and Southern frontier expansionism | Turned the South into a booming one crop economy where "cotton was king" |
| Politically minded abolitionists like Fredrick Douglass | Opposed Garrison and organized the Liberty party and the Free Soil party |
| Excessive soil cultivation and financial speculation | Created dangerous weaknesses beneath the surface prosperity of the southern cotton economy |
| White southern defenses of slavery as a "positive good" | Widened the moral and political gap between the white South and the rest of the Western world |
