Ch. 11 & 12 - Cotton, Slavery, and the Old South

Also has Ch. 12 - Antebellum Culture and Reform

Cotton Kingdom

1. The **south western zone** of the “lower South,” or “Deep South”
2. The **growing demand** for cotton caused by industrialization created a **Southern economy** centered on **cotton production**
3. Shift __from tobacco__ to **wheat, rice, sugar, & long & short-staple cotton**
4. By the **1850s** cotton plantations __spread from__ **Georgia to Texas, north to Kentucky, and Missouri**
5. __2/3__ of the world’s cotton was **produced in the South** and by __1860, cotton was almost 2/3 the total value of all U.S. exports__

Planters

1. **Minority of the southern population** from which those that earned the largest profits built an aristocratic lifestyle that came to dominate the South
2. The __“rags to riches“ story__ of many successful planters created a culture of hope among others in the South
3. **Wealthy planters thought of themselves as higher-class that should be admired by other whites and slaves**
4. Stories **portrayed planters a moral figures** who treated slaves as inferior dependents, yet reality was that they often beat their slaves and raped the women
5. __**Not the “chivalrous“ community**__ of saintly white superiors they wished to portray

Long-Staple Cotton

Fibers contributed to better spinnability and strength, delivering regular yarns of superior quality. The staple length of cotton fibers are divided into 19 lengths with a fixed range.

Short-Staple Cotton

Fibers produced carded yarns that are generally irregular and have protruding hairs, hence a cheap yarn quality.

Racist Ideology

1. Ever evolving identification of **whites as superior to Africans**
2. Allowed whites to __excuse slavery__, suggesting __African-Americans were ill suited to care for themselves or succeed in society__
3. Claimed it was their __duty to provide rigid social controls__ to keep **African-Americans** from __competing__ with a “__superior race”__
4. Those that owned slaves __used this to retain the support__ of those that did not own slaves
5. __**Additionally, some believed that slavery helped guarantee equality, freedom, and democracy**__

Chattel

1. a.k.a. $personal property$; the __identity of slaves in the U.S.__ according to the law of the day
2. **Treatment** of slaves __varied from holder to holder__
3. Southern __profits gave many slaves better__ clothes, homes, and food than unskilled white workers in the north
4. Amenities __encouraged obedience, hard work, & child-bearing__

“peculiar institution“

1. Phrase __used by southerners to describe slavery__; denoting the relationship as **odd but distinctive & special to the region**
2. By the time of the cotton boom the __American South__ was one of the few places left in the western world that __allowed slavery__
3. **A deepening racial and cultural line**
4. **Also** called __“necessary evil”__ to __sympathize with the north__
5. __**After**__ the **abolitionist movement** kept **growing** they __began to call it a “positive good”__

Slave Codes

1. Southern code of laws **designed to keep blacks oppressed**
2. Severely **limited the movement & rights** of southern blacks


1. __Could not own property__
2. __Could not leave their master without permission__
3. __Could not be out after dark__
4. __Forbidden to congregate with other slaves except at church__
5. __Could not strike a white person, even in self-defense__
6. __No legal recognition for slave marriage__
3. Whites were __prohibited from teaching slaves to read & write__
4. Enforcement of such laws varied from state to state, county to county, & owner to owner

Manumission

1. The act of **acquiring freedom**, either by __purchasing oneself or being given freedom by one’s owner__
2. About __500,000 African-Americans were free blacks in 1860, half living in the south__
3. __**Most free Southern blacks bought their freedom prior to 1800**__
4. __Profitability of King Cotton halted manumission__, yet free blacks experienced success and failure in the South

Prosser’s and Vesey’s Rebellion

1. Two unsuccessful slave rebellions, characteristics of the uprisings organized by the ill-equipped slave population
2. __**Gabriel Prosser**__, a literate slave, led an uprising in VA around 1800 that was put down by the militia called on by then Govenor James Monroe. VA enacted laws restricting slave life and slave education
3. __**Denmark Vesey**__, A former slave who purchased his freedom, planned a revolt in Charleston, SC, but was discovered. Vesey and his coconspirators were tried and executed

Nat Turner’s Rebellion

1. Slave uprising in __1831, led by Nat Turner__, a slave in Southhampton County, Virginia
2. Turner had __taught himself to read & as a devout Christian__ believed he had been assigned a **spiritual duty to lead African-Americans in a race war for freedom**
3. Saw __an eclipse__ as a sign __that he should move on his plan__, Turner led __a band of sixty in a rebellion__ in which **sixty slave owners and their families were killed; often dismembered & decapitated**
4. A __county militia easily put down__ the uprising; __fifty slaves were tried and twenty hanged__, **including Turner**
5. **Built a fear of slave rebellion**

Underground Railroad

1. __Informal network of trails, routes, & safe houses used by abolitionists__ to emancipate & secretly move escaped slaves
2. __Helped thousands of slaves escape__ and make their way from basement-like structures to the next until reaching freedom
3. by 1861, some **75,000 slaves had escaped through this network**

Malone’s Underground Railroad/ Abolitionism

1. The __First Congregational Church__ was one of the many final stops on the Underground Railroad
2. __**Slave hideaways are still found in the basement or choir nook**__
3. Involved members of the local anti-slavery movement- the Malone Anti-Slave Society (MASS) formed in 1836

Harriet Tubman

1. Most famous “conductor“ of the Underground Railroad
2. An escaped slave, who, from 1849 to the Civil War, made many trips to the South to free slaves__
3. Helped __free her elderly parents and some 300 other slaves__
4. Became a Union spy during the Civil war

Romanticism/Sentimentalism

1. A __cultural movement developed in Europe__ which spread to the U.S. as sentimentalism in the early 1800s
2. **Emphasized “feeling“ or emotional understanding**
3. **Sentimentalists sought physical appreciation for God, nature, & people, becoming a part of literature, theatre, marriage, etc.**
4. In many ways parallel to the hippy movement of the 1960s

Institution of marriage

1. Traditions observed within the practice of marriage
2. __Colonial/early post-revolution marriages were arranged by parents to secure economic longevity__
3. **Sentimentalism led to marriage based on love and emotion**, becoming more about the relationship than parenting
4. This led to an increase in divorce

Transcendentalists

1. __Group of reformers/intellectuals who believed that lives truths “transcended“ human understanding__
2. Believed **people should be liberated from limits created by religion and industrial society**
3. Came from the wealthy families who romanticized life
4. Attempted to create utopian communities

Utopias

1. **Societies** that are politically, socially, and morally **perfect**
2. An __impossibility due to the varying perceptions__ of individuals as to what perfection means

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1. Once Unitarian minister who became __the intellectual leader of the Transcendentalists in 1832 at the age of 29__
2. __Trusted moral insight rather than organized religion__, arguing that people needed to be freed from tradition & custom
3. In Concord, Mass. he began writing and lecturing about radically free individualism
4. Emerson believed that __self-reliance, dissent, and nonconformity was the way to accomplish the desired transformation__ & that nature was the best place to do it
5. 1833-1860 Emerson gave at least 1500 lectures & authorized numerous essays & poems

Henry David Thoreau

1. **Transcendentalist that was heavily influenced by Emerson**, taking his call for solitude in nature literally
2. Believed **individuals should work toward self-discovery** & resist pressures to conform
3. Thoreau built a cabin on Walden Pond, near Concord, and lived there from 1845 to 1847
4. __Published Walden, Or Life in the Woods’, discussing his desire to find the “facts of life“ in seclusion__, not part ways with society
5. __Became celebrated American literature and an inspiration to utopia builders__

“Civil Disobedience” (*Resistance to Civil Gov’t - 1849*)

1. __Anonymous essay, later found to have been written by Thoreau, laying out the blueprint for nonviolent protest__
2. Advised people to __resist gov’t that recognized slavery__ by **breaking laws** & **accepting the punishment in semi-martyrdom**
3. __Thoreau practiced civil disobedience__ in 1846; __refusing to pay a poll tax__ in protest of **slavery** & the U.S. war with Mexico
4. He __served two years in prison__, hoping to inspire social change and political attention
5. __Inspired later leaders like Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.__

Margaret Fuller --- “*Women in the 19th Century*“

1. __Influenced by Emerson & Transcendentalism__, she __organized meetings with Boston women to compensate for their lack of formal education__
2. __Wrote ‘____*Women in the Nineteenth Century*____‘__ which drew the conclusion that **men & women were independent & equal before god & should also be in society**
3. Ironically, __Fuller lived very differently than the domestic ideal she came to criticize__
4. Fuller’s work **prompted the woman’s rights movements**

Joseph Smith

1. **Founder of the Mormon Church** who believed he became a __prophet in 1820__, when the __**Angel Moroni**__ showed him __gold plates inscribed with religious text in hieroglyphics__
2. Smith __published ‘____*The Book of Mormon*____‘ in 1830__ and later revealed a revelation encouraging Mormon polygamy
3. __Smith would be killed by a mob__ after being __arrested for conspiring to create a Mormon colony in Mexican territory__

Mormons

1. **New religious group to establish the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and attempt to create a utopian community**
2. Faced **persecution in Ohio, Missouri, & Illinois**, based on their **secrecy, prosperity, voting power, & polygamy**
3. Mormons later __found success and peace in the west__

Nauvoo

1. __Mormon settlement founded along the Mississippi in Illinois in 1839__ after **fleeing persecution in NY, Ohio, & Missouri**
2. __Largest utopian community__ with upward of **30,000 converts**
3. The __political influence of this settlement drew criticism__ & Smith __asked the gov’t for Nauvoo to be recognized independent of Illinois__

Brigham Young

1. __**Leader of the Mormons following Joseph Smith’s murder**__
2. Concluded that the __only way Mormons would survive would be to move west, outside U.S. territory__
3. Young __organized the migration of the majority of Mormons__ to the Great Salt Lake __in present day Utah__ where the Mormons settled and thrived
4. Along the way they __built their own roads & bridges and planted seeds along the trail for future migratory parties__
5. In Utah **they turned desert to farmland by digging elaborate irrigation channels and created the foundations of many cities and towns**

Alcoholism

1. Alcohol consumption was common but rose to new heights in the early to mid-1800s
2. The supply of alcohol grew when western farmers started distilling their surplus grains
3. western consumption grew to ese the loneliness and isolation of frontier life
4. Urban consumption grew as a byproduct of the squalor conditions of slum life
5. As wage earners sunk into depression due to conditions the alcohol consumption rate rose dramatically
6. By 1830, the national alcohol consumption rate was **nearly three times the present-day levels**
7. Workers would sneak liquor into the workplace and/or patron a local bar or saloon after work

Temperance

1. Movement to reduce or eliminate the use of alcohol in the U.S., started by The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance & continued by evangelical revivalists
2. Reformers argued that alcohol was responsible for crime, disorder, poverty, domestic abuse, and misuse of family funds
3. Evangelicals concentrated on family and emotional conversion as a means to observe temperance
4. The annual individual consumption rate of alcohol in the U.S. fell by 3/5 from 1830 to 1845

Horace Mann

1. led the movement to expand & standardize elementary public education, driven by the Puritan belief in an educated citizenry
2. Mann gave up a legal career to work on education reform
3. 1837 appointed 1st Secretary of the Mass. School Board
4. Worked for better pay, training, school buildings, libraries, & textbooks
5. Mann’s example was followed by other states & by 1860 most states provided free elementary education
6. Teachers were primarily women, in part because they could be paid less than men
7. Women were especially supportive of this movement, concerned with the betterment of their children

Dorothea Dix

1. Boston Sunday school teacher who worked to protect the mentally ill; fighting against the stigma categorizing them as criminals or insane
2. For centuries the mentally ill had been seen as insane & were chained up & beaten in prisons, closets, cellars, stalls, and pens
3. After some effort, Mass. agreed to enlarge the state mental hospital to treat the mentally ill with compassion & medical treatment
4. Dix would travel the county & Europe trying to make more gains

Reservation Solution

1. Political approach of dealing with conflicts with Native tribes throughout the 1840s & 50s, moving away from removal
2. 1851- negotiations for plains tribes
3. An additional motivation was to convert Natives from their traditional ways
4. Plains tribes refused to restrict their movements to reservations & they struck against encroaching miners, cowboys, & farmers
5. At first, two large reservations were set aside --- in the Dakota Territory & Oklahoma --- additionally the Apache, Navaho, and Ute were given small reservations
6. Tribes that resisted faced the experienced U.S. army of 27,000

Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

1. Women’s Rights Convention in NY in July 1848
2. The women & men of the convention released the Declaration of Sentiments, loosely based on the Dec. of Independence;


1. “all men and women are created equal…“ “the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries… on the part of man toward women.“ It demanded that women “have immediate admission to all rights & privilege which belong to them as citizens of the U.S.“
3. Some women demanded the right to vote while others felt that this was too much too fast (continued until 1920)
4. This convention helped spread the movement around the country in the years to come

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

1. Outspoken reformer/activist abolitionist & women’s rights proponent that helped organize the Convention at Seneca Falls
2. Stanton was concerned with suffrage as well as the legal equality of women (parental & property rights, employment, etc.)
3. Also supported temperance

Lucretia Mott

1. Outspoken reformer/activist abolitionist & women’s rights proponent credited as **the first advocate for equal rights**
2. Helped organize the Seneca Falls Convention
3. Mott was more conservative than Stanton about divorce; believing that it should not be made easier, even to expand women’s rights

Emma Willard

1. The first American to formally advocate for the education of women
2. Established the Middlebury Female Seminary in VT in 1814 & similar institutions in Waterford (1819) and Troy (1821) N.Y.
3. Middlebury and Waterford failed, by the school in Troy survived
4. Available education for women opened new professional doors, not the least of which was teaching

Susan B. Anthony

1. Reformer/activist that took part in moral reform, abolition, temperance, & the women’s rights movement
2. Accused of acting more like a man than a woman
3. Organized networks of “captains“ in each county in NY to organize & effect change through signed petitions
4. 1860, NY granted women the right to control wages, property, bring suit in court, & legally share in guardianship of children

American Colonization Society

1. Organization established in 1817 with the goal of complete separation of the races
2. Based on both Norhtern & Southern racism, believing blacks were inferior & could not coexist or compete with whited
3. ACS raised money from individuals, state governments, & churches to purchase territory in west Africa (eventually Liberia)
4. Transport of free blacks, freed black slaves, and escaped slaves to Africa so that they might create their own separate, nation
5. Few blacks went, but in 1847 Liberia adopted a constitution and in 1862 the U.S. recognized their independence

William Lloyd Garrison & ‘The Liberator‘

1. Influential leader of the antislavery movement int he 1830s who worked on antislavery newspapers, founding ‘The Liberator‘ in 1831
2. Rejected compensated emancipation & ACS colonization
3. Burned a copy of the Constitution calling it a covenant with death & agreement with Hell because it recognized slavery
4. A her to follower, Garrison was mobbed & nearly killed by fellow northerners who were angered by his radicalism
5. Created the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832 & the American Antislavery Society a year later

David Walker & Appeal

1. A Boston representative of the first African American newspaper named “Freedom’s Journal,“ started in 1827
2. his “Appeal“ stated his case against slavery & for action to end the institution
3. Balked at the religious image that slaveholders liked to present
4. Encouraged slave rebellion should no one act to end the institution by peaceful means


1. “One good black man can put to death six white men“

Sojourner Truth

1. Former slave to lecture at antislavery & women’s rights conventions on the issues of slavery
2. Spoke about the experience of slave women as being far worse than the “Separate Sphere“ experienced by white women
3. One of thirteen children her mother had to watch be sold into slavery outside her care
4. The stories of Truth & other’s became the motivation for many in the abolitionist movement

Frederick Douglass

1. Most famous African-American abolitionist in the U.S.
2. Born a slave in Maryland but escaped to Mass. in 1838, was able to purchase his legal freedom in 1847
3. An eloquent speaker who found audiences with major political leaders and social revolutionaries
4. Believed that abolition could provide African-Americans with a fair chance at free community & family life
5. Started the abolitionist newspaper the ‘North Star‘
6. Later supported the Free-Soil Party and future presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln

Elijah P. Lovejoy

1. Abolitionist minister & editor that was harassed, threatened, and the victim of pro-slavery mob violence
2. In the numerous places he lived & printed he was harassed and his printing presses were destroyed
3. 1837, Lovejoy was murdered while protecting his most recently purchased press; a proslavery mob set his warehouse on fire to drive him out to be shot

“gag rule“ (1836-1844)

1. Congressional rule adopted by the House of Reps. in 1836, preventing discussion of antislavery petitions
2. Those in government thought that avoidance of the slave issue would help create cooperation between sections
3. prompted by the violence and disorder caused by abolitionism
4. The government of the state of Connecticut also adopted a similar rule

Prigg v. Pennsylvania

1. Chief Justice Roger Taney’s court ruled that states could not be required to enforce the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law requiring the return of escaped slaves to their “owners“
2. Prompted northern state & local governments to pass “personal liberty laws,“ forbidding officials from assisting in the return of runaway slaves

The Liberty Party

1. Political party formed in 1840, standing on a one plank platform- abolition
2. 1840 & 1844, nominated James G. Briney for president, feeling he was the perfect candidate because he had owned slaves and turned abolitionist
3. Cited the 5th Amendment as forbidding Congress the right to deprive a person of “life, liberty, or property,“ to argue against the legal recognition of slavery
4. After four years they had only received 3% of the presidential vote before fading away

Theodore Dwight Weld

1. Leader of the antislavery movement influenced by the religious revivals of the 1830s (also for temperance & education reform)
2. Saw all Americans as morally responsible for denying slaves freedom
3. 1834, inspired students at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati to form an antislavery society
4. Collaboratively with wife Angelina Grimke, he authored ‘Bible against Slavery (1837)‘ & ‘American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839)‘, each creating an argument/case against slavery as a lawyer would to a jury

Harriet Beecher Stowe & Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

1. Author & novel supporting the abolition movement
2. Sold more than 300,000 copies within a year
3. Described the range of slave experiences; from “good owners“ to “bad owners“ from being bought & sold to attempts to escape
4. Allowed people to see for the first time, the real experiences of slave life & sympathize in an emotional way
5. Spoke on the moral travesty of destroying slave families
6. Reviled in the South & celebrated int he North