Week 6. Slavery

Quiz words
peculiar institution
Nat Turner rebellion
slave culture
The Liberator
Grimke sisters
Soujourner Truth
Frederick Douglass
Underground Railroad
manifest destiny
Compromise of 1850
Fugitive Slave Act

Economy
primary staple crops: cotton, rice, tobacco, and sugar cane
also corn, livestock for local consumption
agrarian capitalism (slavery was profitable, manufacturing lagged behind north)

White Society
planters (owned 20 slaves or more, small but influential group, 1 in 30 in 1860 was a planter)
yeoman farm families (most owned a few slaves but supported slavery)
poor whites (did not own land, victims of discrimination, succeptible to "lazy" diseases, ate clay)
white culture based on honor (defense of female purity, hospitality, dueling, gouging)
at the same time planters routinely fathered children with slave women)

Black Society
by 1860 4 million slaves and 262,000 free blacks in the slave states
domestic slave trade flourished (families separated, cost $1,500-2,000, more for skilled slaves)
free blacks were often skilled artisans, some where wealthy and could own slaves
free blacks could be enslaved if they did not have an official certificate of freedom
plantation slaves: household slaves and fieldhands
field works was harder, they were more often severely punished
more than half of slaves died in the first year of life
slaves ran away and rebelled
1831 Nat Turner rebellion (Virginia, Turner was a black overseer, rebels killed planter families, rebellion was violently suppressed)
women also resisted: Celia killed her master Robert Newsom for repeatedly raping her in 1855

Slave Culture
dialect and folklore originated in Africa (Gullah dialect in South Carolina and Georgia)
Christianity--slaves had their own meetings, identified with Israelites in Egypt
nuclear family was the rule, but extended family was important
many slaves were of mixed white-black ancestry

Antislavery movement
American Colonization Society 1817 (resettled slaves in Liberia, few emigrated)
1831 William Lloyd Garrison published The Liberator (Boston), an antislavery newspaper
Garrison was a pacifist but was blamed for Nat Turner's rebellion
American Antislavery Society (1833) - national, argued for abolition of slavery and black equality
but conceded the right of states to legislate slave institutions
Garrison and New England abolitionist--radical branch, rejected colonization, called the Constitution "agreement with hell", linked antislavery to other reform movements like women's rights
Sarah and Angelina Grimke promoted antislavery, feminism, and Quakerism
moderate abolitionists critiqued them as antifeminine
in 1840 New England allowed women full participation in abolitionist movement
as a result New York branch broke with the movement

Black abolitionists
active in white societies but did not have full recognition
Soujourner Truth (escaped slave, successfully preached against slavery and for women's rights)
Frederick Douglass (escaped slave, excelled at speeches, wrote powerful autobiography, started an abolitionist newspaper for blacks, the North Star in Rochester, New York)
Underground Railroad (system to help runaway slaves to reach Northern states and Canada safely)
Harriet Tubman (conductor on the Underground Railroad, saved 300 slaves including her own family)
abolitionists were frequently threatened and killed by mobs
Congress ignored abolitionists
Southern Christian churches turned proslavery
opponents claimed that blacks could not live in freedom and were better cared for in slavery (paternalism)

Exerpts from Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project
former slaves were interviewed in 1936-1938
remembered their life as slaves--work conditions, family life

Events leading up to the Civil War

Territorial Expansion:
the idea of "manifest destiny" justified expansion - Anglo-Saxon Americans have a mission to expand their instituions across North America (editor John L. O'Sullivan in an article on the annexation of Texas published in July-August 1845 edition of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review)
1821 Mexico becomes independent from Spain
1836 Texas became independent from Mexico
1845 Texas formally annexed after Congressional debates about slavery in western states
1846 U.S. annexed Oregon (from Britain)
1848 victory in Mexican War (1845-1848) brought southwestern territories (Texas, California, and New Mexico)

Question of slavery in the territories:
1846 (David) Wilmot proviso proposed to outlaw slavery in western territories (Senate did not approve)
Oregon added as a "free soil" state
Free Soil party organized but lost elections (Democrats, Conscience Whigs, and abolitionist Liberty party)
California (growing because of the Gold Rush of 1848) and New Mexico asked to be admitted as free states

Compromise of 1850:
followed a heated debate
California admitted as a free state
Texas and New Mexico are admitted as territories without mention of slavery
slave trade (but not slavery) outlawed in the District of Columbia
Fugitive Slave Act provided a reward for turning fugitive slaves to federal authorities

Reaction to the compromise:
riots freeing captured runaways (few)
Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin became popular

The Kansas-Nebraska crisis:
Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas proposed to annex Kansas and Nebraska
to gain support of Southerners Douglas agrees to repeal the Missouri Compromise (no slavery in the north) but give popular sovereignity for the new territories (bill passed)
in response - riots against the Fugitive Slave Act in Boston
1854 anti-slavery Republican party formed (Whig party dissolved)
Nebraska government declared the state free
in Kansas - armed conflict between two governments (anti-slavery and pro-slavery aided by Missouri pro-slave forces)
John Brown begins his anti-slavery raids
Preston Brooks beats Senator Charles Sumner with a cane
Republican party adopts an anti-slavery platform in 1856 presidential elections but loses