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The failure of the Unites States to deal with the issue of slavery may have been the single most important issue leading to the Civil War. Between 1790 and the Civil War, plantation agriculture expanded, therefore, so did the demand for slaves. Almost 1/3 of all Southern families owned slaves. That number approached 1/2 in South Carolina and Mississippi. The total number of slave owners was around 385,000. The Southern economy was almost entirely based on slaves and the slave trade. More money was invested in slavery than machinery, as opposed to the North, which was going through an industrial revolution. However, not everyone was in favor of slavery. Many wanted to abolish the practice, including many whites. Some of the most famous abolitionists were Fredrick Douglas, who founded the anti-slavery newspaper The North Star n 1847, William Lloyd Garrison, who began the anti-slavery society Liberator in 1821, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. Some believed that it would take bloodshed to root out the evil slavery. On August 22, 1831, Nat Turner and a group of slaves from Southampton, Virginia escaped and killed 60 white men. Within 48 hours, the slaves were captured. Nat Turner and his f