Chapter 12 Guide
Key Concept 5.2: Intensified by expansion and deepening regional divisions, debates over slavery and other
economic, cultural, and political issues led the nation into civil war.
I.
Ideological and economic differences over slavery produced an array of diverging responses from
Americans in the North and the South.
A. The North’s expanding manufacturing economy relied on free labor in contrast to the Southern
economy’s dependence on slave labor. Some Northerners did not object to slavery on principle but
claimed that slavery would undermine the free labor market. As a result, a free-soil movement arose
that portrayed the expansion of slavery as incompatible with free labor.
B. African American and white abolitionists, although a minority in the North, mounted a highly visible
campaign against slavery, presenting moral arguments against the institution, assisting slaves’ escapes,
and sometimes expressing a willingness to use violence to achieve their goals.
C. Defenders of slavery based their arguments on racial doctrines, the view that slavery was a positive
social good, and the belief that slavery and states’ rights were protected by the Constitution.
Enslaved and free African Americans, isolated at the bottom of the social hierarchy, created communities and
strategies to protect their dignity and their family structures, even as some launched abolitionist and reform
movements aimed at changing their status.
Nat Turner
Upper South
Lower South
King Cotton
Social groups in the south
Pine Barrens
Hinton Helper “The Impending Crisis of the South”
Questions to Consider – USE THESE!
1. Be able to identify the South’s social, economic, and political characteristics. How different were the
“Upper South” and the “Lower South”? Did the Upper South have more in common with the Lower
South or with the North? Who did the Upper South identify with, and why?
2. Be able to compare and contrast the diverging cultures and economies of the north and south.
3. What was the biggest barrier to Southern industrialization?
4. What were the social hierarchies in the South? How did this compare to what you know of social
hierarchies in the North?
5. Why was it called “King Cotton”?
6. What arguments did whites use to justify and defend slavery in the South?
7. What was the interaction among the slaves and between the slaves and the master on the plantation?
8. How did southerners justify the institution of slavery? What were the responses of the abolitionists?
9. Be able to analyze continuities and changes in slavery and the plantation system from the 1700’s – 1860.
I recommend that you make a chart.
10. Characterize life for:
a. Slaves on plantations
b. Slaves off plantations/in cities in the South
c. Slaves in the Upper vs Lower South
d. free blacks in the South.
e. What do you know of free blacks in the north? (from last unit)
11. How did whites respond to Nat Turner’s rebellion and other forms of resistance?
12. What strategies did enslaved people use to cope with the realities of slavery?