The Cultural Impact of Slavery
Different sections of the country/Summarize economic development
Why didn’t South industrialize?
Initial differences in transportation grow
Lack of capital
Power
No immigration
Aristocratic mindset
After cotton gin, attitudes about slavery change
Anomaly => Necessary Evil => Positive Good
Southern Impact
Slaves
Diaspora: Cultural holocaust?
English w/West African grammar (double neg/verb conjugation)
Ebonics: History as argument (ESL?)
Gullah
Barrier Islands
Family Patterns
Single Motherhood
“Grandmothers”
“It takes a village” History as argument
Male slave management
Jumping the broom (Gay rights co-option)
Daniel Patrick Moniyhan’s The Negro Family: The Case for National Action
Out of wedlock births today.
Christianity
Oppression v. resistance
Vernacular architecture: balconies
Slave preachers/hymns
Voodoo
Historiographical problem: sources
Eugene Genovese: “Roll, Jordan, Roll! TheWorld the Slaves Made”
Rich Whites
Face (Pulling the nose)
Violence: Dueling, caning, horsewhipping
Brooks/Preston Caning
Code Duello
Code of Chivalry
Poor Whites
Trapped in poverty
Imitative violence (emulation) (APING – Veblen)
David Roedigger’s Wages of whiteness
Women:
Moonlight, magnolias and mint juleps?
Female isolation
Clothes
Wet nurses
Mammy/Auntie
Aunt Jemima
Religion: Pro-slavery sermon
Carry Me Back to Old Virginny (link to historiography)
North slowly became increasingly opposed to slavery. As religion got involved, opposition raised to a
fever pitch. (Next class: JIHAD!)