American Pageant Chapter 16 APUSH Review

Slavery in America

• Bacon' s Rebellion in Virginia (1676) leads to shift from indentured servants to black slavery.
• 1780s: Slavery issue of debate at the Constitutional Convention
  • 3/5th Compromise
  • Slave Trade ends in 1808
  • Fugitive Slave Act
• Following the American Revolution slavery slowly ends in Northern and middle states.
• Slavery band in northwest territory with northwest ordinance 1787.
• The north and South were able to postpone a major sectional crisis with the Missouri compromise in 1820.

King Cotton

• Southern economy reliant on cash crops such as tobacco, rice, and cotton
  • Eli Whitey cotton gin makes the cash crop economy profitable.
  • Demand for land for cotton production leads to huge increase in demand for slave labor
• Market Revolution: northern industry demand for southern cotton
• Prosperity of North, South, and England built on backs of slaves

Increase in Cotton Production

Expansion of Slavery

• Western expansion and the issue of slavery will cause an increase in sectional conflict.

• Missouri compromise of 1820.

• Compromise of 1850.

• Kansas Nebraska Act 1854.

  

Antebellum South:

• Primarily agrarian society: "King Cotton"
  • Lack of industrialization
  • $$$ invested in slave labor
• 25% of population owned slaves
  • Majority of southerners were not slave owners
  • Southern whites support and defend institution of slavery
  • Hopeful they will one day own slaves
  • Racism: Felt higher than slaves in southern society
• Southern politics was in many ways a oligarchy
  • Government by the few wealthy
  • Plantation owners
  • Southern large slave holders control southern politics
• Southern plantation owners 2) Small slaveholders 3) Yeoman farmers 4) people of the pine barrens
• Contrast with the north
  • Lack of immigration to the south

African American Communities

• African American population in the North
  • About 250,000
  • Tensions with Irish immigrants
  • Competition over low skilled jobs
• Free black population in the South
  • About 250,000
  • Many restrictions on daily life
  • Especially after Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831

Slavery

• Chattel slavery
  • Slaves were treated as property
  • “Uncle Tom's Cabin": brought the issue of families being broken up to a mass audience
• By the eve of the civil war most slaves were in the deep south
• Slaves were not afforded any social, political, or civil rights
  • Illegal to learn to read or write

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• African American culture emerged as a blending of African and American cultural influences
  • African American religion (especially after 2nd GA)
  • Black Christianity [Baptists & Methodists]:
    • African practice of responsorial style of preaching.
    • Drawing on West African traditions
  • Importance of music in black culture. [esp. spirituals].

Resistance to Slavery

• Forms of Resistance
  • Work slowdowns
  • Negligence
  • Break equipment
  • Run away: Underground Railroad
  • Slave Revolt
• Slave revolts were not common
  • Stono Rebellion (1739): South Carolina slaves runaway to Florida
  • Denmark Vesey (1822): massive revolt planned in South Carolina
  • Nat Turner (1831): Revolt in Virginia killed 60 people
• Southerns react
  • Harsher laws: “Black Codes”
  • Slave Patrols

Abolitionist Movement

• Quakers were earliest opponent slavery
• American Colonization Society: transport freed slaves back to Africa (1822 Monrovia, Liberia)
• David Walker- "Appeal to thee Colored Citizens of World" (1829 called for violent uprising
• William LIoyd Garrison (1833) American Anti-Slavery Society called for immediate uncompensated emancipation. - Published "The Liberator"
• Sojourner Truth & Frederick Douglas: former slaves who advocated for abolitionism.
• Liberty Party (1840)

Southern Reaction: Defense of Slavery

• Gag Resolution in Congress (1836-1844)
  • Ban on anti-slavery petitions being discussed in Congress
  • Repealed by John Quincy Adam in 1844
• Bans on teaching slaves to read or write
• Southern states adopt strict slave codes
  • Nat Turner revolt
• Anti-slavery messages banned from Southern mail
• Pro-slavery argument by George Fitzhugh
  • Slaves as family
  • Better than "wage slavery"
  • civilized inferior people

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