Chapter 11-12

Staple Crops In the South (By Area)

Staple Crops In the South (By Area)

• upper south relied on tobacco (unstable prices and depleted soil caused decline of tobacco)

• old tobacco region turned to wheat, tobacco center moved west

• southern region relied on rice (needs a lot of irrigation + long growing season)

• gulf coast: sugar (labor intensive)

• coastal southwest: long-staple (sea island) cotton

• short staple cotton: more versatile cotton - cotton gin made mass cultivation possible (known to deplete soil)

Effects of Cotton Production Increase

• shift of economic power from upper to lower south

• cotton became 2/3 of us exports

• increase slavery in deep south

• sell of slaves became important part of upper south

Domestic Slave Trade

• domestic slave trade increases cus international slave trade barred in 1808

• migration methods:

  • coastal system: through atlantic seaports

  • inland commerce: using river and roads (slave coffles)

Planter Elite

• 2 elite groups

  • traditional aristocrats of the old upper south

  • market driven entrepreneurs in new lower south (invested in cotton) increasing power

• made a large effort to portray themselves as aristocrats

Industry (or lack thereof) in the south

• manufacturing in Upper South

• merchants and brokers accompany the agriculture industry

• south depended more and more on manufacturers, merchants, and professionals of the North

• South has inadequate infrastructure to have own industry - i.e bad transportation

De Bow’s Review

• newspaper written by James B. D. De Bow

• advocated for southern economic independence from north

  • colonial dependency benefited elite but hurt poor farmers

• said south should invest in industrialization

Reasons for colonial dependency

• profitability of agriculture

• investment in land and not industry

• values against growth of cities and industry (cavaliers)

Honor

• white men adopted code of chivalry, dignity + manliness are rly important

• Brooks v. Sumner - cane incident

The Southern Lady

• lives centered home

• subordinate to men

  • George Fitzhugh: compared women to children in needing to be controlled

• family = principle economic and social unit of south - few opportunities to look beyond

• less access to education

• high birth rate but high infant and mother mortality

Plain Folk

• owned few/no slaves

• subsistence farming

• no educational opportunities

• small farmers depend on local plantation aristocracy - muted class tension

• class tension further muted cus even the bottom felt superior than African Americans

“Hill People”/ “Sandhillers”

• live in appalachian

• cut off from commercial/plantation world - wake up to reality

• hated planter aristocracy + slavery b/c felt it threatened freedom

Federal government’s role in expansion of slavery

• Louisiana purchase

• removing natives

• annexing Texas + Mexican territories

Slave Code

• slaves had no rights + many restrictions on how they live

  • no property

  • needed permission to leave property

  • no congregations

  • no education

• laws not enforced very strictly, punishments enforced by masters so slaves lived in varying conditions

Slave Labor systems

• Task System: old south, less rigorous, assigned one task then open rest of day

• Gang System: new south all day working, assigning work “gang”, closely supervised by black drivers/white overseers

  • increased cotton cultivation but exhausted soil

Paternal Defense of Slavery

• counter abolitionism

• used by southern elite to defend slavery

• benevolent social system and a “positive good based on their understanding of Christian ideology

• christianization

• housing, clothing, and food

• paternal nature of slavery: slaves relid on master for survival - instrument of white control

Life under slavery

• living conditions harsh but livable

• hard labor intensive days, esp for women who also had to do domestic/child-rearing rate

• high mortality rates

• slave population increased through natural reproduction

• field vs. domestic slaves (close proximity w/ masters)

• female household slaves often sexually abused

Slavery in the cities

• urban slaves in coastal cities in the south were less supervised

• intermingled w/ whites and freemen, depending on slave code

  • racial solidarity

• slaves hired out on contract cus there’s less immigrant population to make up common laborers

  • most made up artisan class or skilled workers

Free African Americans

• could buy freedom or be freed by masters (manumission)

• amount of free slaves in 1790 - 8%, 1820-40 - 13%, 1860 11%

  • decrease in 1860. caused by tightening of laws on free blacks + laws that made freeing slaves more difficult

• half of all freemen in the north were kind of accepted and were kind of successful

• laws regardless closed off many occupations + banned assembling

  • accused of crimes, no jury, had to have free papers

The Slave Trade

• foreign slave trade banned in 1808 (up to that point South Carolina was the largest slave market)

• professional slave trade: transfer of slaves from upper to lower south

• domestic slave trade - inhumane (seperated families)

Slave Resistance

• Amistad mutiny - slaves took over spanish ship in 1839 (captured but then freed)

• Prosser Rebellion - killed whites in virginia (perpetrators killed)

  • leads to increased slave laws

• Nat Turner Rebellion - killed whites W(they were executed)

  • instilled widespread fear of revolt: sometimes: reduced white master’s use of violence

• other forms of rebellion: running away (risky) underground railroad, refusal to work hard (sabotage)

Language and Music in slave society

• common language: pidgin/gullag (mix of african words + english)

  • makes community more homogenous

• music is important part of black culture

  • slave spirituals

African American Religion

• culture was based on evangelical christianity

• developed their own version of christianity by incorporating African religious traditions (i.e voodoo)

• used imagery of christian salvation as hope for freedom

• African Methodist Episcopal Church - oldest independent african american church

The slave family

• no legal marriages

  • had own traditions like jumping broomstick + naming kids

• families often broken apart - caused extended fictive kinship networrks

Romanticism in Painting

• American artists influenced by romanticism and often portrayed the nation’s landscapes

• Hudson River School - the first great school of American painters in NY

• Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt

• liberation of the human spirit

James Fenimore Cooper

• novelist

• evocation of American wilderness

• “the last of the Mohicans”

  • portrayed disorder of the American West

  • challenges/dangers of American expansion

Walt Whitman

• poems celebrating democracy - very spirited

• break individual barriers

• “leaves of grass”

• individualism but not isolationism: communal living

Herman Melville

• "Moby Dick”

• more pessimistic about the quest for liberation

Southern Writing

• more romantic cus it romanticized southern plantation life

• southern literary capitol: Charleston

• William Gilmore Simms: nationalism - defended slavery

• writers on the fringe of plantation society focused more on ordinary people and poor whites - included vulgar humor

Transcendentalists

• american transcendentalists influenced by Emmanual Kant

• Individuals should transcend rationalism and find truths through individual lived experience

• followers are mostly the new england upper and middle class

Ralph Waldo emerson

• first major transcendentalist

• known for his lectures (Lyceum Circuit) and essays

• argued for communion with the natural world + self reliance

• criticized industrialization

Henry David Thoreau

• society = repressive

• people should work for self-realization

• “Walden”/”Life in the woods”

• rejected modernization in favor of living simply + embracing nature

• civil disobedience/non-conformity

• influenced Gandhi and MLK

Defense of Nature

• Transcendentalists feared the effects of new capitalism/modernization on the natural world

• believed that humans separated from nature lose their humanity

• First American environmentalists - inspired by the destructive construction of the Erie Canal

Brook Farm

• experimental community created by transcendentalist George Ripley

• all residents would share equally in labor and leisure - Ripley believed leisure was important to the cultivation of self

• people could develop minds and souls and uplift society

• intellectual hotspot for transcendentalists

• experiment failed but passion for individual freedom lived on through abolitionism

• inspired by Charles Fourier

“New Harmony”

• experimental community created by Robert Owen

• socialist

Margaret Fuller

• transcendentalist who questioned gender roles

• “Women in the 19th century”

• believed women should have psychological and social independence

• believed new era was coming in relations between men and women

Oneida Community

• perfectionism

• established by John Humphrey Noyes in upstate NY

• complex marriage - everyone married to each other, mated to maximize traits

• children raised communally

• made silverware

the shakers

• founded by An Lee

• strict government

• tried to take away sins of jealousy, greed, and desire: complete celibacy: the only way to grow = conversion and adoption

• matriarchy

• common ownership of land

• first communal movement that was successful

• made furniture

Amena Community

• German immigrants in Iowa trying to realize Christian ideals w/ a socialist society

Mormons

• started in rural NY by Joseph Smith

  • Book of Mormon

  • polygamy, strict social organization, patriarchal, hard work

• Chased out of NY - went to Nauvoo, Illinois where Smith is killed

• Brigham Young took over and established a Mormon community in Salt Lake City Utah (in Mexico) - practice polygamy

• Joseph Smith II (Smith’s son) didn’t support polygamy so made a separate Mormon faction that stays in the US

Revivalism and Morality

• influence of divinity of individual in reform movements: transcendentalism, Unitarianism, universalism, and romanticism

• protestant revivalism + second great awakening evolved into powerful force of social reform

• a lot of revivlaism in “burned over district” aka upstate new york

• people searched for stability and discipline

Charles Grandison Finney

• most influential revival leader

• self salvation: each person has capacity for spiritual awakening + salvation

• popular in upstate NY where life was being upturned by economic changes brought on by the Erie canal

• Finney mobilized many women (in order to gain access to their husbands)

• Finney’s revivalism called for crusade against personal immorality

Temperance Movement

• strengthened by evangelical protestansim

• crusade against drunkenness

• alcohol blamed for crime, husbands mistreatment of wives and children, poverty, and disorder

• increased supply of alcohol cus of surplus of grain in the west

• 1826: the american society for the promotion of temperance

• cultural divide: catholics targeted with alcohol restrictions cus many of their practices relied on it

Health Fads

• cholera epidemic + other public health issues caused feeling of insecurity

• city health boards created but weren’t veru effective

• affluent people: health spas + changed diets (Sylvester Graham - more fruits and veggies + less meat)

Medicine

• rly unreliable

• Phrenology

  • idea that shape of skull could predict character and intelligence

• Oliver Wendell Holmes: realized disease could be transmitted between people

Reforming Education

• effort to create a system of universal public education

• Horace Mann: believed an educated electorate was essential to democracy

• public education widened throughout the country

  • tax supported elementary schools were accepted and there were elementary schools in every state

• wide range of quality of education

  • people in west and south less likely than northerners to go to school

• US had highest literacy rate in the world by the civil war

Rehabilitation Effort

• asylums for criminals and mentally ill

• prison (penitentiaries) and hospital reform

• Dorothea Dix: leader of movement

• prisons reform v. punishment: let prisoners reflect, i.e. solitary confinement

The Indian Reservation

• ppl wanted to relocate natives to area where they are “protected from whites”

• thought they would “learn the ways of civilization” in a protected environment

Emergence of feminism

• women used power they got from religious authority during 2nd great awakening to play a central role in many reform movements

• Lucretia Mott, Elizabeht Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony organized the Seneca Falls Convention

• “Decleration of sentiment” - wanted equality + right to vote for women + end of seperate spheres

• individual women rose up but little institutional change

  • NY gave women some legal rights + rights to wages and property

Early opposition to slavery

• colonization/resettlement of slaves to africa

• 1817: American colonization society: would give masters compensation for the slaves

• movement had questionable morals: some people wanted to get rid of free black from north cus of job competition and racism

• failed because of lack of funding + slaves 3-4 generations removed from Africa didn’t have any ties

William Lloyd Garrison

• founded abolitionist newspaper: “the liberator”

• rejected gradualism/colinzation: wanted immediate abolition

• supported african americans getting all rights of american citizenship + equality for women

• believed Constitution was implicit in slavery

• founded New England Anti-slavery society + American anti-slavery society in philadelphia

  • Philadelphia female anti-slavery society followed

  • AAS funded underground railroad

Black abolitionists

• northern abolitionists argued for policies of social uplift + believed free blacks should be educated + be moral so that they could be accepted (moderate view)

• David Walker - “appeal to the colored citizen” - called for a violent uprising for racial equality

• Sojourner Truth: powerful spokeswoman for abolition and women’s rights

• Frederick Douglas: anti-slavery newspaper the “North Star” + wrote an autobiography

Anti-Abolitionism

• abolitionists are still a minority

• people scared of losing jobs and racial melding

• increased violence against abolitionists

  • the murder of Elijah Lovejoy

Abolitionism Divided

• split between radical abolitonists (i.e. Garrison) and more moderate

• moderates tried to appeal to morals of slaveholders - failed

North takes a stand

• Supreme Court: Prigg v. Pennsylvania ruled that states don’t need to enforce the 1793 law requiring the return of fugitive slaves

• passage of personal liberty laws in the North: northern states forbade the capture and return of runaway slaves

The Liberty Party

• created in 1840

• “free soil” party - want to keep slavery out of the west/new territories, didn’t advocated for abolition in the south

• chose James G. Birney as presidential candidate

Anti-slavery writings/propaganda

• Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “uncle tom’s cabin”

• Weld + Angelina and Sarah Grimke’s “testimony of a thousand witnesses” depicted conditions of slavery