Is the Civil War Still Being Fought? Midterm

In what ways was American slavery unique in the history of slave societies?

1. Exceedingly violent and exploitative.

2. Chattel slavery

3. Slave status inherited from the mother

4. Cotton-picking was backbreaking, but not deadly -> natural growth in slave population -> less dependence on slave trade

Why was racism worse in the United States than in other slave societies?

- Reduced slaves to property -> dehumanization of Black people

- Cain and Abel -> Cain was the first murderer -> mark of Cain gave "dark skin"

- Ham, Noah's son -> family tree cursed with dark skin

Why were slave owners so fearful of national or federal authority?

- Scared that increased legislative power in the North would cause slavery to be abolished

- Scared that the federal government could override Southern control over states and counties

How has slavery been defined in this course?

- State of war (cannot exist without threat of violence or violence)

- Chattel principle

- Denial of public voice

- Radical alienation from family and friends by robbing freedom of movement

How would you define "slave power," and how would you summarize the significance of "slave power?"

- Control of Southerners in Congress to prevent reform on slavery

- An oligarchy of a small number of immensely powerful and wealthy plantation owners who wanted to spread slavery

- The wealth of the nation was centered on the South

Why were slave-owning Southerners so aggressive in trying to expand slavery from 1830-1860?

- Bringing in new territories as slave states would increase Southern legislative power to compensate for immigration to the North

- Slavery was the US's first "big business"; it was highly profitable, and expanding it to new states was very lucrative

- The rest of the world was abolishing slavery, and Southerners felt threatened

How would you distinguish between abolitionist and anti-slavery advocacy?

- Abolitionists were radicals, while anti-slavery advocates were liberals.

- Abolitionists advocated for an immediate end to slavery, while anti-slavery advocates argued for gradual abolition.

- Abolitionists supported integration, while anti-slavery advocates supported colonization.

What was the "free labor ideal?"

- The "artisanal ideal" in the North.

- 95% of Northerners were artisans or farmers who sustained themselves through their own work.

- Southerners falsely claimed that Northerners were being exploited by working low-paying factory jobs.

How would you distinguish between the two parties in the antebellum political system: the Whig Party and the Democratic Party?

Whig Party (North)

- Founded by Henry Clay

- A "party of compromise" that emphasized economic development

- Outwardly anti-slavery, but Internally divided: some wanted gradual abolition, others wanted immediate abolition

Democratic Party (South)

- Founded by Andrew Jackson

- A pro-slavery party that believed in universal White male suffrage

- Most Irish immigrants joined the Democratic Party

What were the effects of Nat Turner's rebellion?

- Southerners viewed it as a threat of impending slave insurrection

- Teaching slaves literacy and openly opposing slavery became illegal in the South

- Virginia considered emancipation

- Nat Turner becomes a hero, martyr, and inspiration to African Americans in the North

What were the effects of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850?

- Pushes many northerners to adopt an active rather than passive anti-slavery position

- The sectional divide between the North and South becomes more stark

- Inspires the writing of Uncle Tom's Cabin

In Uncle Tom's Cabin, what are the solutions to slavery?

- Colonization of Liberia

- Salvation and looking to God

- Ending gradually, not immediately

What was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854?

- Allowed Kansas and Nebraska to enter the union and decide slave status by popular sovereignty.

- Overturned the Missouri Compromise

Vigilante groups flood into Kansas, causing "Bleeding Kansas"

- Causes fierce debate over the slave status of states admitted following the Mexican-American War

What were the three main things that the majority opinion in the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision stipulated?

- Any Black person could be reduced to a state of slavery, and Black people could never be citizens.

- Prohibiting the spread of slavery is unconstitutional.

- If slave owners travelled to the North with their slaves, their slaves could not be emancipated.

In what ways did John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry influence the sectional crisis over slavery?

- Northerners saw John Brown as a hero.

- The Republican Party gains popularity as the first explicitly anti-slavery party.

- Southerners concluded that they could not trust Northerners.

- Divides the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern Democrats, leading to Lincoln's victory.

- Major catalyst for secession.

Why did Uncle Tom's Cabin come to be dismissed as a "very bad novel" in the twentieth century?

- The rise of literary modernism leads sentimentalism to be deemed "low-brow."

- Stage adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin are not as interesting as Stowe's novel.

- The South takes control over many universities, and Uncle Tom's Cabin is pushed out of curriculum.

How would you compare and contrast Nat Turner and Harriet Beecher Stowe in terms of how they responded to slavery?

Similarities

- Embraced Christianity as a core tenet of anti-slavery beliefs

Differences

- Stowe wrote romanticized works, while Turner's testimony is explicitly grotesque

- Stowe advocated for nonviolent resistance to slavery, while Turner argued that violence could only be solved by violence

"All this, with what preceded and what followed, occurred with such involutions of rapidity that past, present, and future seemed one."

Work: Benito Cereno

Author: Herman Melville

Context: Babo lunges at Cereno, and Captain Delano realizes that there is a slave rebellion aboard the ship.

Significance: Melville shows that change requires patience but in revolutionary time, change happens quickly - almost immediately.

"And now the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me, and made plain the miracles it had shown me--For as

the blood of Christ had been shed on this earth, and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of sinners, and was now returning to earth again in the form of dew--and as the leaves on the trees bore the impression of the figures I had seen in the heavens, it

was plain to me that the Saviour was about to lay down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and the great day of judgment was at hand."

Work: Confessions of Nat Turner

Author: Nat Turner (transcribed by Thomas Gray)

Context: Nat Turner is describing an encounter he had with the Holy Ghost, which made many believe him to be a prophet.

Significance: It demonstrates how Turner used Christianity and his premillenialism to justify his rebellion.

"But, what can any individual do? Of that, every individual can judge. There is one thing that every individual can do,—they can see to it that they feel right. An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. See, then, to your sympathies in this matter! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? or are they swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy?"

Work: Uncle Tom's Cabin

Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe

Context: End of the book, where Stowe breaks the fourth wall to speak directly to readers

Significance: Stowe adopts the position of a preacher, advocating for sympathy and empathy in a clear example of sentimentalism

"'Now, John, I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow.'"

Work: Uncle Tom's Cabin

Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe

Context: Mrs. Bird is talking to her husband, Mr. Bird, after rescuing Eliza from the frozen Ohio River.

Significance: Example of sentimentalism. Mrs. Bird appeals to higher law to argue against the Fugitive Slave Law.

"This is an age of the world when nations are trembling and convulsed. A mighty influence is abroad, surging and heaving the world, as with an earthquake. And is America safe? Every nation that carries in its bosom great and unredressed injustice has in it the elements of this last convulsion."

Work: Uncle Tom's Cabin

Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe

Context: End of the book, where Stowe breaks the fourth wall to speak directly to readers

Significance: This is the closest Uncle Tom's Cabin comes to outright predicting the Civil War which occurs shortly after its publication

"Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival."

Work: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (Speech)

Author: Frederick Douglass

Significance: Frederick Douglass satirically pokes fun at a nationalist view while pitting the US as an embarrassment to itself.

"A man's body at auction, (For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,) I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business. Gentlemen look on this wonder, Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it, For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant, For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll'd."

Work: I Sing the Body Electric (Poem)

Author: Walt Whitman

Significance: Creates a lyrical democratic eye that, by putting the reader in the Black person's place, emphasizes the need for equality for all people.

"Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan—you are a made man from this day; You are mighty cute—and here is one of your bargains."

Work: A Boston Ballad (Poem)

Author: Walt Whitman

Significance: The poem was Whitman's commentary on the highly publicized Boston events associated with the return by federal marshals of the fugitive slave Anthony Burns. At the end of the poem, Americans crown the skeleton of Britain's king, conflating the tyranny of the monarchy with the tyranny of slavery.

"'You are saved,' cried Captain Delano, more and more astonished and pained; 'you are saved: what has cast such a shadow upon you?' 'The Negro.'"

Work: Benito Cereno

Author: Herman Melville

Context: This is the very end of the novella, when Captain Delano asks why Captain Cereno is so downcast after being saved from the revolt.

Significance: Expresses fear and dread for what will happen if slavery continues in its current manner.

"We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State."

Work: "A House Divided" (Speech)

Author: Abraham Lincoln

Context: Address to the Republican Convention during his campaign against Stephen Douglas

Significance: This is an example of Lincoln's radical anti-slavery stance in direct response to the Dred Scott decision.

"I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done -- as I have always freely admitted I have done -- in behalf of His despied poor, was not wrong, but right."

Work: John Brown's Address to the Court

Author: John Brown

Context: John Brown's statement to the court during his trial following the raid of Harper's Ferry

Significance: The quality of his speech convinced many Northerners that Brown was a kind of hero.

"I am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without verry much bloodshed; it might be done"

Work: John Brown's Note to the Jailor

Author: John Brown

Context: This note was given to his jailor on the day of his execution.

Significance: Shows that John Brown now feels that Civil War is necessary to abolish slavery.