Describe the economy of the North, and its views on slavery, before the Civil War.

The Economy of the
North and Views of Slavery before the War to Prevent Southern Independence:

The economy of the North was mixed, but industrialism was dominant because of its
wealth.  If a farmer or craftsman had products for sale, the populations of the factory towns
and industrial cities comprised his market.  If a farmer or craftsman borrowed money, he
probably borrowed it from the banking industry.  The antebellum North was an industrial social
system because industry determined the welfare of everybody: farmers, craftsmen, factory
workers, industrial owners.

Abolitionists viewed slavery as a sin that must
be abolished immediately without regard to how much such haste might disrupt society or throw
many slaves (newly freed) out of a means of supporting themselves.

Many
Northerners viewed slavery as a source of Southern political power.  Since Southern politicians
opposed import tariffs which subsidized industry at the expense of agriculture, and opposed
spending tax dollars for improvements of harbors and for other subsidization of northern
industry and trade, these Northerners opposed slavery.  In fact, for this reason more than any
other, most Northerners opposed slavery, though they were far less enthusiastic in their
opposition than the abolitionists.  Fanatical abolitionists were fewer in number than mildly
anti-slavery Northerners.

Many northern working men opposed the abolitionists
because the abolitionists refused to recognize northern labor problems.  The laborers were
concerned about their own plight and their own liberation.  The abolitionists were concerned
only about the plight and liberty of far-away slaves.  Emancipation of the white man was the
great labor objective, and working men's conventions rarely gave any consideration to the
anti-slavery issue.  There were instances of riots by factory workers against abolitionists
because the factory workers feared that the end of slavery would result in many blacks migrating
to the North to work in the factories.  This would have brought the level of factory wages
down.  No doubt factory owners looked forward to this.

Horace Greely, a New
York newspaper man, had a similar opinion: "If I am less troubled concerning slavery
prevalent in Charleston or New Orleans, it is because I see so much slavery in New York which
appears to claim my first efforts."

References for this
answer:

Gara, Larry. 1975. "Slavery and the Slave Power: A Critical
Distinction" in Robert P. Swierenga, ed., Beyond the Civil War Synthesis:
Political Essays of the Civil War Era (1975), 295-308.  [College-level
reading.]

Rayback, Joseph G. 1943. "The American Workingman and the
Antislavery Crusade," The Journal of Economic , 3, 2 (Nov.), 152-163. 
[Senior high school and college-level reading.]