Amstud Chapter 11

Chapter 11 Study Guide

Dates Covered by Chapter: ca. 1800-1860

Frederick Douglass - advocate for racial equality through autobiography, accomplishments testified to the incorrectness of prevailing ideas about Blacks’ inborn inferiority. Argued slaves were truer to the nation’s principles. Debunked white theories about black incompetence.

• the “peculiar institution” (p. 406)-- A phrase used by whites in the antebellum South to refer to slavery without using the word “slavery.”

  • WDIM– Mason-Dixon Line: drawn by 2 surveyors to settle a boundary dispute b/t Maryland and Virginia = dividing line b/t slavery and freedom

  • The Survival crisis of AR + rapidly expanded westward. High rate of natural increase compensated for the prohibition in 1808 of slave imports from Africa. Slaves made up ⅓ South population, ⅓ cotton-producing states of Lower South

  • Life for slaves was a life of brutal punishment + fear that their families would be destroyed by life, few legal rights, could be sold/leased by owners at will w/o voice in gov’t that ruled over them, could not testify a/g a white person, own property, firearms, leave plantations w/o permission of owner, and by 1830s, it was law to teach a slave to read/write

• “Cotton is king” (p. 411)-- 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.

  • WDIM– Cotton replaced sugar as the world’s major crop. USA became the center of slavery in the Americas. ¾ supply came from the south. Cotton sales = allowed the US to pay for imported manufactured goods. $ investment by slave pop exceeded value of nation’s factories

• Second Middle Passage (p. 408)-- 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.

  • WDIM– Main commercial districts of southern cities had slave trader offices, selling slaves at auction at public slave markets. S newspapers had advertisements for slave sales, s banks financed slave trading, s ships and railroads carried enslaved to sellers, S states earned revenue by taxing the sale of slaves

  • Brought 2 mil slaves to replace the slave trade from Africa, prohibited by Congress in 1808

  • N merchants/manufacturers participated in the slave economy. earned in cotton trade -> helped finance industrial developments. N ships, bankers, companies, factories financed plantations, insured slave property, and used cotton to turn it into cloth.

  • NYC’s commercial prominences depended on shipping lines that gathered S cotton

Southern Economy

• Upper South - major centers of industry in Baltimore, Richmond, St. Louis (more divers)

• Lower South - dependent on cotton

• Slavery limited growth of industry, discouraged immigrants from entering the region, and inhibited technological progress compared to the North.

• New Orleans - gathering point of cotton, world’s leading exporter of slave-grown crops. Proved slavery and economic growth could go tg.

• Majority of white southerners owned no slaves. They used family labor + livestock for own uses. Unlike N farmers, they did not have market for manufactured goods -> South didn’t develop an industrial base

• Poorer whites, Johnson and Brown, rose to power as spokesmen of common man against the “slavocracy. Most just made their peace w/ planters

  • Planters - held the most fertile land, highest incomes, state and local offices, leadership of both parties. Slaveowners invested in infrastructure. Wives would idealize in southern lore for femininity, beauty, and dependence on men. They’d care for sick slaves, direct domestic servants, and supervise the entire plantation when husbands were gone

• paternalism (p. 414)-- A moral position developed during the first half of the 19th century, which claimed that slaves were deprived of liberty for their own “good.” Such a rationalization was adopted by some slave owners to justify slavery. Planters’ values glorifying hierarchical, agrarian society where slaveholding men took personal responsibility for physical and moral well-being or children, slaves, women.

  • WDIM–Mor e ingrained after closing of African slave trade in 1808. Masked and justified the brutal reality of slavery. Enabled slaveowners to think of themselves as kind masters as they did the slave trade. Supported the claim that slaves formed part of the master’s “family.

• proslavery argument (p. 415)-- 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.

  • WDIM- Stated that slavery was essential to human progress, w/o it then planters would be unable to cultivate the arts, sciences, and other civilized pursuits. White supremacy.

  • White southerners took a deep interest in international affairs, formed a community of interest w/ owners in Cuba and Brazil. They used their power in the federal gov’t to insist that the American foreign policy would promote slavery thru the hemisphere

  • Defenders of slavery argued that it guaranteed equality for whites by preventing the growth of a class doomed to a life of “unskilled” labor. It also liberated them from “low, menial” jobs like factory labor in the North

  • In 1830s, proslavery writers began questioning the ideals of liberty, equality, and democracy. SC became aggressive defenders of slavery. Southern writers after1830 devoted themselves to spreading the defense of slavery, arguing that freedom for whites rested on power to command the labor of Blacks.

Emancipation

• Strongly affected debates over slavery in the US. Defenders of slavery charged that British emancipation had been a fail b/c sugar production declines

• Abolitionists argued the rising standard of living of freed slaves, spread education, and other improvements in their lives

Conditions of Slave Life + Free Blacks

• American slaves enjoyed better diets, lower rates of infant mortality ,and longer life expectancies -> contributed to improving material conditions b/c of the price of slaves rising after the closing of African slave trade.

  • Geographically, South laid outside area where tropical diseases like malaria, yellow fever ,and typhoid fever flourished

• South req that voluntary releasing of slaves had to be approved by the legislature

• Most were freed by southern owners in the aftermath of AR, or gradual emancipation by northern. #’s were supplemented by slaves who’d been voluntary liberated by their owners, purchasing freedom or running away

  • Free blacks could own property + marry, but they had no voice in selecting public officials, no testifying in court a/g whites, serving on juries, and they had to carry a certificate of freedom at all times. Poor free blacks could be bound to labor alongside slaves

  • New Orleans & Charleston had free Black communities that allowed them to acquire an education and diversify their occupations as craftsmen. Established churches and schools.

  • Upper South - large majority of where they lived, they generally worked for wages as farm laborers

Slave Labor

• Large plantations diversified communities where slaves performed all kinds of work. Large majority of slaves worked in the fields

• Largest concentration of slaves worked on the Cotton Belt (men,women,children labored in gangs, often under the direction of an overseer or a slave “driver”)

• Southern Louisiana had the harshest conditions requiring round-the-clock labor to cut and process sugarcane. Rice plantations of S Carolina + Georgia had task labor, w/ slaves assigned to daily tasks + allowed to set their own pace of work. Then free time

• City slaves were servants, cooks, domestic laborers to businessmen, merchants, lawyers. Urban slaves even lived on their own

• Masters could use brutal treatment to enforce work, they exploited divisions among the slaves, esp b/t field hands and house servants. Most powerful threat was the threat of sale - separated slaves from families and communities

Slave Culture

• Semi-independent culture that enabled them to survive bondage w/o losing self-esteem + pass a set of values down to generations.

  • Drew on African heritage, African influences were in slaves’ music, dance, religious worship, and use of herbs by slave healers to combat disease.

  • New creation - shaped by African tradition & American values

Slave Family

• US slave pop grew from natural increase -> even male-female ratio -> creation of families more possible. Slaves named children after relatives to solidify a sense of family continuity

• Slave traders did not care about preserving family ties

• Law did not recognize slave marriages

• Slave men + women had an euality of powerlessness; COD didn’t apply to slave women. Men couldn’t provide or protect wives from abuse.

• Slaves working on their “own time” = gender roles. Men chopped wood, hunted; women washed, took care of children.

  • Some planters allowed their slaves a small plot of land to grow food; women took charge of this

• Some Blacks (free/slave) took part in Great Awakening + South Baptist and Methodist churches during those revivals. No distinctions were made b/t age, sex, or color.

• Every plantation had a preacher w/ no education but had a familiarity w/ a bible = respected. Slaves worshiped in biracial congregations w/ white preachers, sitting in the back. Urban free Blacks made their own churches.

  • Slaveowners viewed Christianity as a method of societal control. Many req slaves to attend services conducted by white ministers to preach that theft was immoral + Bible req slaves to obey their masters

    • Slaves used the story of Exodus to identify themselves as chosen people that God would deliver from bondage

• Owners tried to keep slaves from learning abt the outside world -> slaves created their neighborhood networks that transmitted info b/t plantations

• fugitive slaves (p. 435)-- Slaves who escaped from their owners.

  • WDIM– threatened the stability of the slave system -> patrols were constantly on the lookout for runaway slaves. Slaves had little to no knowledge of geography.

  • Most runaways were young men, slave women couldn’t leave the children behind. Most fled to New Orleans or Charleston in the Lower South. Seminole Indians, Ottawas, Shawnees helped runaways or offered refuge.

• Underground Railroad (p. 436)-- 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.

  • WDIM– Few courageous individuals made forays into the South to liberate slaves.

• Harriet Tubman (p. 436)-- Abolitionist who was born a slave, escaped to the North, and then returned to the South nineteen times and guided 300 slaves to freedom.

  • WDIM– Risked her life by making 20 trips back to her state of birth to lead relatives + other slaves to freedom.

• the Amistad (p. 437)-- 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.

  • WDIM– President Martin Van Buren favored returning the slaves to Cuba. But abolitionists brought their case to the Supreme Court, where former president John Quincy Adams argued that since they had been recently brought from Africa in violation of international treaties banning the slave trade, the captives should be freed

  • Had no legal bearing on slaves within the US, but it inspired a similar uprising in 1841 when slaves seized control of a ship.

• Denmark Vesey’s conspiracy (p. 438)-- An 1822 failed slave uprising in Charleston, South Carolina, purported to have been led by Denmark Vesey, a free Black man.

  • WDIM–Reflected combination of American + African influences coming together in Black culture. Said that slavery and bondage is against the Bible. Quoted the DOI by saying that all men had equal rights, black as well as white.

• Nat Turner’s Rebellion (p. 439)-- An 1831 insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia, led by an enslaved preacher, resulting in the death of about sixty white persons.

  • WDIM– Virginians warned that a “Nat Turner” might be in any family -> hundreds of innocent slaves executed and whipped.

  • Virginia legislature of 1832 fastened more tightly the chains of bondage. New laws prohibited Blacks, free or slave, from acting as preachers, strengthened militia and patrol systems, banned Free blacks from owning firearms, and prohibited them to read. Southern states followed suit

  • 1831 - Parliament debated a program for abolishing slavery throughout British empire, underscoring Sout’s growing isolation. Turner’s rebellion suggested that American slavery faced enemies in and outside of the South. Some states made membership in an abolitionist society a criminal offense, while mobs drove critics of slavery out of their homes.

  • South’s rxn = most thoroughgoing suppression of freedom of speech in American history.

  • Reform movements arising in North condemning slavery as contrary to Christianity + American beliefs + national debate of peculiar institution = southern society closed in defense of slavery