Chapter 11 Terms

“peculiar institution”

A phrase used by whites in the antebellum South to refer to slavery without using the word “slavery.”

Second Middle Passage

The massive trade of slaves from the upper South (Virginia and the Chesapeake) to the lower South (the Gulf states) that took place between 1820 and 1860.

“Cotton is king”

Phrase from Senator James Henry Hammond’s speech extolling the virtues of cotton and, implicitly, the slave system of production that led to its bounty for the South. “King Cotton” became a shorthand phrase for southern political and economic power.

paternalism

A moral position developed during the first half of the nineteenth century, which claimed that slaves were deprived of liberty for their own “good.” Such a rationalization was adopted by some slaveowners to justify slavery.

proslavery argument

The series of arguments defending the institution of slavery in the South as a positive good, not a necessary evil. The arguments included the racist belief that Black people were inherently inferior to white people, as well as the belief that slavery, in creating a permanent underclass of laborers, made freedom possible for whites. Other elements of the argument included biblical citations.

fugitive slaves

Slaves who escaped from their owners.

Underground Railroad

Operating in the decades before the Civil War, a clandestine system of routes and safehouses through which slaves were led to freedom in the North.

Tubman, Harriet

Abolitionist who was born a slave, escaped to the North, and then returned to the South nineteen times and guided 300 slaves to freedom.

Amistad

Ship that transported slaves from one port in Cuba to another, seized by the slaves in 1839. They made their way northward to the United States, where the status of the slaves became the subject of a celebrated court case; eventually most were able to return to Africa.

Denmark Vesey’s conspiracy

An 1822 failed slave uprising in Charleston, South Carolina, purported to have been led by Denmark Vesey, a free Black man.

Nat Turner’s Rebellion

An 1831 insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia, led by an enslaved preacher, resulting in the death of about sixty white persons.