Changes

They began to see the question less as a concern of the future of America and more of an identification with the prospects of Black freedom—regardless of what happens in and to America. They built an alternative convention movement that raised these concerns and supported various initiatives that were the harbingers of Pan Africanism and Black Nationalism.

[[File:Cotton_gin_harpers.jpg|thumbnail|left|300px|Slaves using the first cotton gin - Drawn by William Sheppard in 1869]]

One does not need to be a historical materialist to recognize the ways that economics shapes decision-making. Such was especially the case in the modern world. The argument advanced by many was that the Age of Europe created rationales for exploration that were lodged in the acquisition of land and thus of wealth. The enslavement of Africans was part of this matrix, and it is crucial to make those connections. While moral arguments about abolition were critical, it is unlikely, as Eric Williams argued, that enslavement would have been abolished without the shift in the industrial and imperial ambitions of one of the major powers: Great Britain.