The book I recommended covers the Santa Domingo slave revolt very well and the way it dominated thought in the American South. And in so doing it brings up some points. One, American slavery was relatively benign in that slaves were increasing in numbers. But that fed right into the fears of a slave revolt. Slave owners were hemmed in by the various laws not allowing them to take slaves to some of the territories. So it was like a steam kettle with the lid tied down. They had an ever increasing number of slaves, many of them young men in prime physical condition, and they couldn’t get rid of them.
The slave trade was abolished. So they couldn’t sell them out of the country. They couldn’t take them to new territories. And they couldn’t set them free because they then would be running loose with no means of support and would surely resort to crime and mayhem. The primary reason the South wanted to expand slavery to the territories was not to expand “slave power” as the abolitionists claimed, but to get rid of some of the slaves and lesson the chances of slave revolts.
