On the eve of the Civil War, economic changes generated new ideological, social, cultural, and political issues that further divided the nation along moral and regional lines. Reformers tried to address these issues. Influenced by the messages of self-discipline and individual achievement embodied in the Second Great Awakening, transcendentalism, and "free labor," these reform movements included temperance, women's rights, abolition, and states' rights.
One such concept was the ideal of "free labor" supported by many in the Northern states. Although the term might suggest it, the word "free" had nothing to do with cheap labor, but rather with the ideals of using non-slave labor. The concept emphasized a vision of individual human potential, the idea that anyone could climb the ladder of success with hard work and dedication. Such concepts and confidence in individual potential sprung from, or were at least supported by, the religious revivalism of the Second Great Awakening.
The ideal of "free labor" in the north was harshly opposed by southerners. To them the switch from salves, actual free labor, to freedmen laborers would be an unacceptable loss in revenue. Slave owners felt threatened by the northern push for non-slave labor in factories and responded with hostility, pushing for stricter and stricter laws for slaves. This angered northern abolitionists, causing them to focus their efforts more heavily from the north to the south.
The abolitionists themselves were greatly influenced by the great awakening, the ideals that each man had a value, and could contribute to society cemented in the minds of many northerners the growing suspicion that slaves were actually human. For so long the slaves had been treated as beasts, looked down upon for being "lesser beings," it had been common thought that slavery was "the kindest of institutions" for the Africans as