Interregional slave trade

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The interregional slave trade was the trading of slaves before the Civil War to the deep South and West territories. The main reasons that this occurred were soil exhaustion which was addressed by Edmund Ruffin in the 1840s as he encouraged crop rotation and new machinery instead of depleting the natural resources in the soil. The Southerners did not want to give their slaves new plows because breaking the tools was often a form of slave rebellion. So instead they moved westward in search of new land. The interregional slave trade was also caused by the spread of industrialization southward. Middle states such as Virginia began to sell more and more states to the deep South where large plantations still existed. The movement westward created many political problems over whether new states should be admitted as slave or free and upset the balance. Because of this the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas Nebraska Act were put into effect.