Chapter 15: The South and Slavery (1793–1860)

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering social hierarchy, the plantation economy, slave culture, resistance, and abolitionism from Chapter 15: The South and Slavery (1793–1860).

Short-Staple Cotton

A hardy variety of cotton capable of growing across varied soils and climates that became the dominant agricultural staple of the South following Indian removal and western land expansion.

King Cotton

A phrase describing the Southern cotton economy that dominated U.S. exports (accounting for two-thirds of total exports and generating nearly $200 million annually by the Civil War), growing from 500,000 barrels in 1820 to nearly 5 million barrels in 1860.

Factors

Southern crop brokers and merchants whom plantation owners relied upon to market crops, locate buyers, and extend credit or loan money.

Planter Class

The wealthy Southern minority possessing large estates and enslaved laborers; though numbering only 383,000 out of a white population of 8 million in 1860, they exerted disproportionate political, social, and economic control.

Yeoman Farmers

Non-slaveholding Southern white families who worked 50 to 200 acres in self-sufficient subsistence agriculture (principally hogs and corn), supported slavery to ensure someone remained lower on the social scale, and aspired to become slaveholders.

Plain Folk

The ordinary, non-wealthy white majority of the South (roughly 75% of white Southerners owned no slaves) who owned land but struggled to make enough money to break even, hampered in part by inferior schooling that catered primarily to the rich.

Hill People

White Southerners living in isolated regions such as the Appalachians and Ozarks who practiced subsistence farming, avoided the commercial plantation economy, and remained largely detached from the slave system.

Southern Code of "Honor"

A strict social code among white Southern males emphasizing personal dignity, manhood, and public reputation, frequently defended through dueling or physical violence (such as Preston Brooks caning Charles Sumner in the U.S. Senate).

The "Southern Lady"

The idealized role of white women in the antebellum South who were relegated to subservient household roles on isolated plantations, with nearly 25% of those over the age of 20 being illiterate.

Peculiar Institution

A euphemistic Southern term for African American chattel slavery, which served as the unifying economic and racial foundation across stratified white Southern society.

Slave Codes

State laws governing enslaved people that prohibited them from carrying firearms, assembling, testifying against whites, learning to read or write, or being out at night, while granting white masters legal leeway to punish or kill them.

Urban Slavery

The practice of slavery in Southern cities where enslaved people experienced less direct supervision, were hired out as unskilled laborers due to low European immigration, and enjoyed greater personal autonomy.

Free African Americans (South)

A group of roughly 250,000 free Black individuals living in the South by 1860 (over half residing in Virginia and Maryland) who faced legal restrictions and severely curtailed employment opportunities.

Syncretic Slave Religion

A unique religious tradition created by enslaved people combining native African spiritual heritage with Christianity, emphasizing Old Testament liberation of the Israelites from Egypt and New Testament promises of redemptive suffering and justice.

Slave Resistance (Day-to-Day)

The most common forms of defiance against enslavement, which included working slowly, feigning illness, losing or breaking tools, doing work incorrectly, or running away temporarily.

Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831)

An uprising led by enslaved preacher Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, which killed sixty white individuals before being suppressed, inciting widespread panic and stricter slave codes across the South.

Denmark Vesey (1822)

A free Black carpenter in Charleston, South Carolina, who organized an extensive conspiracy for a slave revolt that was betrayed before it could be executed.

Gabriel Prosser (1800)

An enslaved blacksmith who organized an armed conspiracy of hundreds of slaves to march on Richmond, Virginia, which was foiled by informants and severe weather.

Stono Uprising (1769)

An early armed rebellion by enslaved people in South Carolina cited as an important milestone in the history of slave uprisings.

William Lloyd Garrison

An abolitionist editor who launched The Liberator in 1831 and helped establish the American Antislavery Society, advocating for immediate, unconditional, and universal emancipation while viewing slavery from the perspective of Black Americans.

The Liberator

A Boston anti-slavery newspaper established in 1831 by William Lloyd Garrison that called for the immediate abolition of slavery without compensation to slaveholders.

Frederick Douglass

An escaped slave (in 1838) who became an orator in England, bought his freedom in 1847, established the newspaper The North Star, and authored Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass to expose the brutal realities of bondage.

Amistad Case

An 1839 incident in which enslaved Africans seized control of a Spanish slave ship heading to Cuba; after capture by the U.S. Navy and charges of piracy, their legal defense was funded by abolitionists who successfully won their freedom.

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

An abolitionist novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe that combined sentimental fiction with anti-slavery critique, selling over 300,000 copies and intensifying sectional tensions between the North and South.

McCulloch v. Maryland

A landmark Supreme Court decision that affirmed the implied powers of the federal government under the U.S. Constitution and established federal supremacy over state laws.

Nullification

The political theory asserting that a state holds the sovereign power to declare a federal law unconstitutional and void within that state's borders.

John Marshall

The prominent Supreme Court Chief Justice noted in course reviews who helped establish judicial review and expanded federal power under the Constitution.

Erie Canal

A major man-made engineering project that connected the western Great Lakes with the Atlantic seaboard, transferring agricultural trade from the Northwest directly to eastern markets.

Henry Clay

A Kentucky statesman celebrated as the "Great Compromiser" for negotiating legislative agreements to diffuse sectional conflicts over slavery and territorial expansion during the 1800s.

1808 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

The federal ban on the importation of enslaved laborers from abroad, which sharply elevated the domestic slave trade and the break-up of enslaved families through interstate sales.