What was that "wrong idea"? What is the impact of the nuance of the word "handled" in the following excerpt: "I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound by some of the crew"? It shows the Africans were viewed as objects instead of human beings.
Without big farms to run, the people in the North did not rely on slave labor very much. In the South, the economy was based on agriculture. ... The North wanted the new states to be “free states.” Most northerners thought that slavery was wrong and many northern states had outlawed slavery.
