The South and the Slavery Controversy
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| 1107332625 | "King Cotton" | the South grew and exported cotton, which was their major economic industry. The South produces more than half of the world's supply of cotton. Britain was also very dependent on Southern cotton. The North was also dependent on cotton as it was the major part of their shippping industry | 0 | |
| 1107332626 | Sir Walter Scott | a favorite author of elite Southerners. He wrote about a feudal society, which is what the South resembled. | 1 | |
| 1107332627 | "Land Butchery" | excessive cultivation. caused by the quick profits of growing cash crops in the South. This caused a heavy leakage of population to the West and Northwest. | 2 | |
| 1107373579 | Financial Instability of the Plantation System | - temptation to overspeculate in land and slaves caused many planters to plunge into extreme economic depths - Slaves were a heavy investment of capital, and they might injure themselves or run away or an entire group could be killed by disease - dependence of one-crop economy ("King Cotton"), whose price level was at the mercy of world conditions. The south also hated seeing the North become well-to-do because of them. - repelled large-scale European immigration, which added to the manpower and wealth of the North (because of this, South was the most Anglo-Saxon section of the nation) - slavery was profitable for the great planters though it hobbled the economic development of the region as a whole. | 3 | |
| 1107373581 | Social Classes in the South | - wealthy slave-owners (the smallest minority. had 100+ slaves, so naturally this class had the traditional white house with columns and a plantation) - less wealthy slave-owners ( Still minority). - Smaller slaveowners (owned fewer than 10 slaves [normally 1 or 2]. Majority of masters Southern population). - Nonslaveowning whites. (made up majority of entire Southern population. They often sneered at the cotton kingdom elites ("snobocracy") but were some of the most ardent supporters of slavery because they hoped to move up in social standing by having slaves one day. - free blacks: free blacks in south kind of a "third race". They were prohibited from working in certain occupations as well as testifying against whites in court. They were always at the risk becoming slaves by some slave traders. (In North: unpopular also, several states forbade their entrance, most denied them the right to vote, some barred blacks from public schools). Antiblack feeling frequently stronger in North than South. - Slaves: regarded as investments by planters. Were the primary form of wealth in the South. They were sometimes spared dangerous work, in which case an Irish laborer was preferred. **Mountain Whites: they were essentially marooned in the Appalachian valleys. They lived under old frontier conditions. They were unlike rest of South. Some still retained Elizabethan speech styles. They were independent small farmers. They supported the Union in the Civil War and were very important as they were in the South. | 4 | |
| 1107486556 | Uncle Tom's Cabin | a book by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Seized the emotional part of slave auctions in her book by putting it at the center of her plot for the book. | 5 | |
| 1107486557 | Slave Conditions in South | - hard work, ignorance, and oppression of slaves everywhere in South but conditions for slaves actually varied from region to region. Universal conditions for slaves in South included: no civil or political rights, worked from dawn to dusk, minimal protection from unusually cruel punishment, floggings common (whip used instead of wage to get labor) but almost never very severe (to protect the owners investment). | 6 | |
| 1107486558 | "Black Belt" of the Deep South | the area that stretched from South Carolina and Georgia into Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. This is where most slaves were concentrated by 1860. This was the region of the southern frontier, where the Cotton Kingdom had burst into in a few short decades. Generally, life was rough and raw, and conditions for slaves worse there than in more settled areas of the Old South. | 7 | |
| 1107486559 | Slave Families | a majority of blacks lived on large populations. There, the family lives of slaves tended to be relatively stable, and a distinctive African-American culture developed. Forced separations of spouses, parents, and children more common on smaller plantations and in the Upper South. Most slaves were raised in stable two-parent households. Continuity of family identity across generations evidenced in the widespread practice of naming children for grandparents or adopting the surname not of a current master, but of a forebear's master. African-Americans also avoided marriage between first cousins in contrast to the frequent intermarriage of close relatives among the ingrown planter society. | 8 | |
| 1107505397 | Slave Religions in America | African roots also evident in slave religion. Heavily Christianized by 2nd Great Awakening evangelists, but blacks in slavery added African elements to Christianity. They emphasized aspects of Christian heritage that seemed most relevant to their situation, esp. captivity of the Israelites in Egypt. Also used "responsorial" style of preaching (congregation frequently punctuates the minister's remarks with assents and amens [an adaption of give and take between caller and dancers in the African ringshout dance]). | 9 | |
| 1107528351 | Ways that Slaves Resisted Slavery | - slowed pace of their labor to barest minimum that would spare them the lash (myth of black "laziness") - stole food from the "big house" and other goods that had been produced or purchased by their labor. - sabotaged expensive equipment, stopping the work routine until repairs were accomplished - sometimes poisoned their master's food | 10 | |
| 1107592361 | Slave Revolts | Many slaves left as runaways but some tried unsuccessfully to rebell: 1. 1800: Gabriel led an armed insurrection in Richmond, Va but was foiled by informers and its leaders were hanged 2. 1822: Denmark Vesey, a free black, tried to lead a rebellion in Charleston but was also betrayed by informers. Vesey and more than 30 followers were publicly hanged 3. 1831: Nat Turner, a visionary black preacher, led an uprising that slaughtered about 60 Virginians, mostly women and children. | 11 | |
| 1107592362 | Impact of Slavery on Whites | fostered brutality of the whip, bloodhound, and branding iron. White southerners lived in a state of siege, surrounded by potentially rebellious blacks inflamed by abolitionist propaganda from the North. Their fears bolstered the theory of biological racial superiority. Defenders often forced to degrade themselves along with the slaves. | 12 | |
| 1107628167 | American Colonization Society | founded in 1817. Founded for the purpose of sending blacks to Africa. In 1822, the Republic of Liberia, on the West African coast, was established for former slaves. 15,000 free blacks transported there over the next 4 decades. Most blacks wanted to go back to Africa as they were no longer Africans, they were African-Americans, with their own history and culture. It did appeal to some antislaveryites/free soilers including Abraham Lincoln until the Civil War | 13 | |
| 1107628168 | Theodore Dwight Weld | had been evangelized by Charles Grandison Finney in the Burned-Over District in the 1820s. Self-educated, Weld appealed with power and directness to his rural audience of untutored farmers. Weld was aided by 2 wealthy and devout New York merchants, the brothers Arthur and Lewis Tappan. In 1832, they payed Weld's way to Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, OH. He was expelled along with several other students in 1834 for organizing an 18-day debate on slavery. Weld and his fellow "Lane Rebels" fanned across the Old Northwest preaching antislavery. He also created an important propaganda pamphlet, American Slavery As It Is (1839). Its arguments made it among the most effective abolitionist tracts and greatly influenced Uncle Tom's Cabin. | 14 | |
| 1107659563 | William Lloyd Garrison | published in Boston the militantly antislavery newspaper, The Liberator. He triggered a 30-year war of words with proslaveryites. He proclaimed that under no circumstances would he tolerate the poisonous weed of slavery but would stamp it out at one, root and branch. He was a nonresistant pacifist. He favored Northern secession from the South. He burned a copy of the Constitution. | 15 | |
| 1107659564 | Wendell Ohillips | a Boston patrician known as "abolition's golden trumpet". He was of strict principle, he would eat no cane sugar and wear no cotton since both were produced by southern slaves. | 16 | |
| 1107659565 | David Walker | Black abolitionist. Wrote the book Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829) which advocated a bloody end to white supremacy. | 17 | |
| 1107659566 | Sojourner Truth | a freed black woman in New York who fought for black emancipation and women's rights. | 18 | |
| 1107659567 | Martin Delaney | one of the few black leaders to take seriously the notion of mass recolonization of Africa. In 1859, he visited West Africa's Niger Valley seeking a suitable site for relocation. | 19 | |
| 1107689021 | Frederick Douglass | greatest black abolitionist. Escaped from slavery in 1838. He was "discovered" by abolitionists in 1841 when he have a stunning impromptu speech at an antislavery meeting in Massachusetts. After this, he lectured widely for the cause, despite frequent beatings and threats against his life. In 1845, he published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Douglass looked to politics to end slavery (political abolitionists backed the Liberty Party in 1840, Free Soil Party in 1848, and Republican Party in 1850s). | 20 | |
| 1107730540 | Abolitionist Impact in the South | - VA legislature debated and defeated various emancipation proposals in 1831-1832. - After VA, all state states tightened their slave codes and moved to prohibit emancipation of any kind, voluntary or compromised. - Turner's rebellion sent wave of hysteria across South. Garrison's Liberator appeared at about the same time and he was condemned as being a terrorist and inciter of murder - Nullification crisis of 1832 - Jailings, whippings, and lynchings greeted efforts to discuss slavery problem in the South - Proslavery launched a massive defense about how slavery was a positive good. They claimed slavery was supported by the authority of the Bible and the wisdom of Aristotle. It was good for the Africans who were lifted from barbarism and clothed with the blessings of Christian civilization.White apologists pointed out that master-slave relationships really resembled those of a family. They said that slaves worked in the sunlight and not in the dark and stuffy factories and did not have to worry about slack times or unemployment. They were cared for in sickness and old age unlike northern workers. **These arguments only made the South look more backwards. | 21 | |
| 1107737888 | Gag Resolution | drove through the House in 1836 by southerners. Required all such antislavery appeals to be tabled without debate. This angered John Quincy Adams, who waged a successful 8-year fight for its repeal. | 22 | |
| 1107762194 | Abolitionist Impact in the North | - Abolitionists were for a long time unpopular in many parts of the North. Northerners had been brought up to respect the Constitution and to regard the clauses on slavery as a lasting bargain. the ideal of Union, hammered in by people like Daniel Webster, had taken deep root and Garrison's talk of secession was harsh to northern ears. - North had large economic stake in South (banks, textile mills, shipping). - Mob outbursts in North (Lewis Tappan's New York house broken into and trashed by a mob, Garrison dragged through streets of Boston by the Broadcloth Mob but somehow escaped, Elijah P. Lovejoy's printing press was destroyed 4 times and in 1837 was killed by a mob and became "the martyr abolitionist"). | 23 |
