Analyze the social impact of slavery in southern states.

Volumes have been written to address all of the possible answers to this question, so let’s just focus on a couple of the main points.
Slavery was legal in the southern states until 1865, when the 13th Amendment was passed at the end of the Civil War. Until then, slavery was an integral part of life in the southern states: the agricultural economy depended on slave labor. On a more subtle, psychological level, owning slaves was an indicator of social status. White southern plantation owners had a lot at stake, financially and personally, which depended on the legality of keeping other people as property.
Although many people argue that the Civil War wasn’t just about freeing the slaves, slavery is one of the main issues mentioned by all of the seceding states in the Declaration of Causes. We can’t escape the fact that opinions on slavery, the southern states’ economic situation, and socially sanctioned racism created a major social and political divide at the time.
We’re still feeling the effects of this rift in our society to this day. Freeing the slaves did not erase the social stigma that the African Americans faced. Even Abraham Lincoln, who argued for the slaves’ basic right to freedom, believed that white people were naturally superior. (See the 4th transcript from the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.) Although we’ve made a lot of progress over the past couple of centuries, African Americans (and other people of color) still face discrimination in a social structure that was fundamentally created by the needs and expectations of white cultures.