Black Money Business Jobs : Abolitionism

[Shikamaru]

How and why this came about are questions that continue to puzzle historians. By and large, interpretations of abolition tend to fall into two camps. The first, popularized during the nineteenth century, tends to explain abolition in terms of a moral or humanitarian movement.

The second, which can be traced back to the publication of Eric Williams's book Capitalism and Slavery, in 1944, places much greater emphasis on economic factors. Controversially, Williams argued that abolition coincided with periods of general economic decline in the British Caribbean. Abolition, in other words, was motivated purely by economic self-interest. Williams's "decline thesis" remains a subject of ongoing historical inquiry. But if many of his arguments have been questioned, Williams was surely right in drawing attention to the connection between abolition and capitalism.

(Source)

I say economic self-interest, primarily of those Caucasians who were not manufacturer or plantation owners was the primary cause of abolitionist support in the North.

Capitalism and Slavery (1944) by Eric Williams