The growth of an increasingly market-oriented economy was a dominant feature of the second quarter of the nineteenth century. In a country as large and economically diverse as the United States, the development of commercial structures and commercial practices had complex and contradictory effects. In the North, and especially New England, the most developed region, it accelerated the growth of wage labor which in turn posed a challenge to traditional republican notions of virtue and independence. I have argued that abolitionism, though clearly of appeal to only a small minority of northerners, was a response to these economic changes. The abolitionist redefined the role of conscience and family in accordance with the needs of a society in which wage labor was increasingly prominent. The resulting view of the proper northern social order implied a deep hostility to slavery everywhere, but especially in the United States. In the South, however, the same processes of commercial development had an opposite effect in that they tended to reinforce and perpetuate the section's dependence on, and attachment to, slavery. The strong commercial bonds connecting slave produce with the markets of Europe generated economic growth in the South just as in the North, but growth ironically widened the gap between the two sections. Even in parts of the South that were suffering from competition from more fertile lands, like South Carolina, the successes of some planters, combined with the sheer numbers of blacks involved, made the prospect of emancipation increasingly unimaginable.