Unit 2: Freedom, Slavery, and Resistance (1503–1865) Flashcards

Flashcards covering Unit 2: Freedom, Slavery, and Resistance (1503–1865), including key figures, revolts, labor systems, and the legal evolution of chattel slavery in the Americas.

Columbian Exchange

The global history-altering exchange of goods, plants, animals, and people between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas starting after 1492.

Ladinos

Free and enslaved Africans familiar with Iberian (Spanish/Portuguese) culture and language who participated in the earliest European explorations of the Americas.

Atlantic Creoles

People of African descent in ‘New World’ Latin America who served as cultural mediators, liaisons, diplomats, and interpreters.

La Florida

The Spanish name for an area that included present-day Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Juan Garrido

A free conquistador born in the Kingdom of Kongo who became the first known African to arrive in North America in 1513.

Estevanico

Also called Esteban; an enslaved African healer from Morocco forced to work as an explorer and translator in Texas and the Southwest in 1528.

Domestic Slavery

A historical system of slavery where enslaved people were typically absorbed into the culture of their captors and children were not born into enslavement.

Chattel Slavery

A system in which enslaved people and their descendants are classified as property, not humans, and are considered enslaved for life.

Transatlantic Slave Trade

A trade system lasting over 350 years (early 1500s to mid-1800s) during which more than 12.5 million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas.

Charleston, S.C.

The center of U.S. slave trading, where 48% of all Africans brought directly to the United States landed.

Middle Passage

The second part of the three-part journey involving travel across the Atlantic; approximately 15% of captive Africans perished during this stage.

Phillis Wheatley

The first African American to publish a book of poetry; her portrait is the first known individual portrait of an African American.

Deracination

The trauma of being uprooted from one's social, cultural, and geographic environment.

Commodification

Being treated as an item or thing for sale rather than as a human being.

Sengbe Pieh (Joseph Cinqu)

A Mende captive who led a famous revolt aboard the schooner La Amistad in 1839.

Cotton Gin

An invention that increased U.S. cotton production and profits, leading to a higher dependency on cotton as a cash crop.

Second Middle Passage

The massive forced migration of over one million African Americans from the Upper South to the Lower South during the 19th-century cotton boom.

Benign Institution

A myth used by White supremacist leaders and historians, such as John C. Calhoun, to claim that slavery was gentle or helpful to African Americans.

Gang System

A labor system where enslaved people worked in groups from sunup to sundown under the discipline of an overseer.

Task System

A labor system where enslaved people worked individually until they met a daily quota, allowing for more autonomy to maintain cultural practices.

Gullah

A creole language developed in the Carolina Lowcountry that combines elements from West African and European languages.

Three-fifths Clause

A constitutional provision allowing slave states to count enslaved people as 3/5 of a person for determining House of Representatives seats.

Slave Codes

Laws defining chattel slavery as a race-based, inheritable, lifelong condition while restricting rights to movement and education.

Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)

A Supreme Court decision ruling that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not and could never become citizens of the U.S.

Partus Sequitur Ventrem

A 17th-century law defining a child's legal status based on the status of the mother, codifying hereditary racial slavery.

Hypodescent

The ‘one-drop rule’ which classified a person with any degree of African descent as having a singular, inferior racial status.

Spirituals

Also called ‘jubilee songs’ or ‘sorrow songs’; music used by enslaved people to resist dehumanization and communicate strategic escape information.

American Colonization Society

A White-led organization founded to exile the free Black population to a colony in Liberia, Africa.

Fort Mose

The first sanctioned free Black town in what is now the U.S., established in 1738 in Spanish Florida.

Stono Rebellion

A 1739 South Carolina revolt led by an enslaved man named Jemmy, where rebels marched toward sanctuary in Spanish Florida.

Haitian Revolution

The only uprising of enslaved people (1791–1804) that successfully overturned a colonial government and established a Black republic (Haiti).

Toussaint L’Ouverture

A formerly enslaved man who led the Haitian Revolution and became Governor before being captured by Napoleon's forces.

Maroons

Afro-descendants who escaped slavery to establish autonomous, free communities in remote environments.

Gabriel’s Rebellion

An 1800 plot near Richmond, Virginia, where an enslaved blacksmith name Gabriel planned to seize the capital under the banner ‘Death or Liberty.’

German Coast Uprising (1811)

Also known as the Louisiana Slave Revolt of 1811; the largest slave revolt on U.S. soil, led by Charles Deslondes.

Maria Stewart

A free Black woman from New England who was the first Black woman to publish a political manifesto and give a public address.

Quilombo dos Palmares

The largest maroon society in Brazil, which lasted for nearly 100 years.

Queen Nanny

A legendary leader of Jamaica’s Maroons who was born in Ghana and credited with freeing nearly 1,000 enslaved people.

Black Nationalism

A movement promoted by activists like Paul Cuffee and Martin R. Delany that emphasized Black unity, self-determination, and pride.

Moral Suasion

A persuasive technique used by some anti-emigrationists that utilized logic and moral arguments to influence change.

Nat Turner’s Rebellion

The largest and most successful slave rebellion in U.S. history (1831), resulting in the deaths of 55 white Virginians and subsequent harsh legal restrictions.

Underground Railroad

A covert network of Black and White abolitionists who helped an estimated 30,000 enslaved people flee to free territories.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

A law requiring ‘free states’ to assist federal commissioners in the capture and return of self-liberated people.

Harriet Tubman

A conductor of the Underground Railroad who returned to the South 19 times and later served as a spy and nurse during the Civil War.

Harriet Jacobs

Author of ‘Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’ (1861), the first narrative published by an enslaved African American woman.

Robert Smalls

An enslaved sailor who stole a Confederate ship to gain freedom for himself and 15 others; later served in the House of Representatives.

Emancipation Proclamation

An 1863 wartime order declaring freedom for enslaved people in the 11 Confederate states and allowing Black men to serve in the military.

13th Amendment

Ratified in 1865, it secured the permanent abolition of slavery throughout the entire United States.

Juneteenth

Commemorated on June 19, 1865, it marks the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, were informed of their freedom.

General Order No. 3

A document read by Major-General Gordon Granger in Galveston that mentioned 'absolute equality of personal rights' between former masters and slaves.