“ from can’ t see, to can’ t see”
an independent republic in 1836, and it was admitted into the United States as a slave state in 1845.
America’ s dramatic growth during its second half century was built, in every measurable sense, on the labor and suffering of enslaved Black people.
The westward spread of slavery into Texas and other new states drove politics, society and the economy during this period and ignited a simmering abolitionist movement that advocated for the emancipation and full citizenship of Black people. Ultimately, the tensions erupted in the bloodiest war fought on American soil. Constitutional amendments that followed advanced opportunity for Black people before a backlash.
In 1826, the 50th anniversary of the United States kicked off with celebratory speeches, parades and fireworks, setting the stage for a period that would see the nation expand from 24 states to 38, spreading from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. Before the Civil War, debates raged between the Northern and Southern regions of the United States over whether the new territories and states would be slave or free.
The nearly two million Black people in bondage in 1826 grew to four million who were deprived of the“ liberty and the pursuit of happiness” by the time the Civil War began in 1861.
Ironically, this nation’ s second 50 years began on July 4, 1826, with the deaths of two of its founders – John Adams, 91, laid dying in Quincy, Massachusetts, famously whispering“ Jefferson lives” – unaware that 83-year-old Thomas Jefferson had died hours earlier.
Although the two men joined forces in the fight for independence against Great Britain, they held different views about slavery. Adams, a Northerner, opposed the enslavement of Blacks, while Jefferson, a Southerner, personally enslaved over 600 Black people during his lifetime, including Sally Hemings, a slave with whom he fathered at least six children.
The only other president to oppose slavery from the nation’ s founding until the election of Abraham Lincoln was Adams’ son,
John Quincy Adams, who was the nation’ s sixth head of state at the time of his father’ s death.
Slavery and the cruelty that accompanied it were entrenched in the first half of the 19th century, providing widespread economic benefits in the North, South and to foreign countries. The United States experienced exponential growth between 1826 and 1876. The nation’ s Gross domestic product grew almost 10-fold, from $ 876 million to $ 8.5 billion in today’ s dollars according to the Measuring Worth Foundation.
Enslaved Black men, women and children worked without compensation to build the American nation, suffering family separations, severe beatings and the dehumanizing designation as human property. They built the plantation economy of the South. They toiled long days, from“ can’ t see, to can’ t see,” on Southern plantations to grow crops, including what was then the world’ s most lucrative commodity: cotton.
Slaves were the human engines that built government buildings,
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