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Why did economically disadvantaged white people not see a common cause with enslaved people?

User Saadia
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With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became the cash crop of the Deep South, stimulating increased demand for enslaved people from the Upper South to toil the land.
As the disparity between plantation owners and poor white people widened in the Deep South, deeply entrenched racism blurred perceived class divides.
The slave economy of the South had international economic reach since the majority of cotton was sold abroad; it connected the United States to the international marketplace.
User KaHeL
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