By: Ms. Susan M. Pojer
Horace Greeley HS Chappaqua, NY
Early Emancipation in the North
Missouri Compromise, 1820
Characteristics of the
Antebellum South
1. Primarily agrarian.
2. Economic power shifted from the
“upper South” to the “lower South.”
3. “Cotton Is King!”
* 1860--> 5 mil. bales a yr.
(57% of total US exports).
4. Very slow development of industrialization.
5. Rudimentary financial system.
6. Inadequate transportation system.
Slave-Owning Population (1850)
Southern Society (1850)
6,000,000
“Slavocracy”
[plantation owners]
The “Plain Folk”
[white yeoman farmers]
Black Freemen
250,000
Black Slaves
3,200,000
Total US Population --> 23,000,000
[9,250,000 in the South = 40%]
White
Slaveholders
Slave-Owning Families (1850)
Southern Population (1860)
Graniteville Textile Co.
Founded in 1845, it was the South’s first
attempt at industrialization in Richmond, VA
Southern Agriculture
Slaves Picking Cotton
on a Mississippi Plantation
Slaves Using the Cotton Gin
Changes in Cotton Production
1820
1860
Value of Cotton Exports
As % of All US Exports
“Hauling the Whole Week’s
Pickings”
William Henry Brown, 1842
Slaves Working
in a Sugar-Boiling House, 1823
Slave Auction Notice, 1823
Slave Auction: Charleston, SC-1856
Slave Accoutrements
Slave Master
Brands
Slave muzzle
Anti-Slave Pamphlet
Slave Accoutrements
Slave leg irons
Slave shoes
Slave tag, SC
Slave-Owning Population (1850)
Slave-Owning Families (1850)
Slaves posing
in front of
their cabin on
a Southern
plantation.
Tara – Plantation Reality or Myth?
Hollywood’s Version?
A Real Georgia Plantation
Scarlet and Mammie
(Hollywood Again!)
A Real Mammie & Her Charge
The Southern “Belle”
A Slave Family
The Ledger of John White

Matilda Selby, 9, $400.00 sold to Mr.
Covington, St. Louis, $425.00

Brooks Selby, 19, $750.00 Left at Home –
Crazy

Fred McAfee, 22, $800.00 Sold to Pepidal,
Donaldsonville, $1200.00

Howard Barnett, 25, $750.00 Ranaway. Sold
out of jail, $540.00

Harriett Barnett, 17, $550.00 Sold to
Davenport and Jones, Lafourche, $900.00
US Laws Regarding Slavery
1. U. S. Constitution:
* 3/5s compromise [I.2]
* fugitive slave clause [IV.2]
2. 1793 --> Fugitive Slave Act.
3. 1850 --> stronger Fugitive Slave Act.
Southern Slavery--> An Aberration?

1780s: 1st antislavery society created in Phila.

By 1804: slavery eliminated from last
northern state.

1807: the legal termination of the slave
trade, enforced by the Royal Navy.

1820s: newly indep. Republics of Central &
So. America declared their slaves free.

1833: slavery abolished throughout the British
Empire.

1844: slavery abolished in the Fr. colonies.

1861: the serfs of Russia were emancipated.
Slavery Was Less Efficient
in the U. S. than Elsewhere

High cost of keeping slaves from
escaping.

GOAL --> raise the “exit cost.”
u
Slave patrols.
u
Southern Black Codes.
u
Cut off a toe or a foot.
Slave Resistance
1. “SAMBO” pattern of behavior used as a
charade in front of whites [the innocent,
laughing black man caricature – bulging
eyes, thick lips, big smile, etc.].
Slave Resistance
2. Refusal to work hard.
3. Isolated acts of sabotage.
4. Escape via the Underground Railroad.
Runaway Slave Ads
Quilt Patterns as Secret Messages
The Monkey Wrench pattern, on the left,
alerted escapees to gather up tools and
prepare to flee; the Drunkard Path
design, on the right, warned escapees not
to follow a straight route.
Slave Rebellions Throughout the Americas
Slave Rebellions
in the Antebellum South
Gabriel Prosser
1800
1822
Slave Rebellions in the Antebellum South:
Nat Turner, 1831
The Culture of Slavery
1. Black Christianity [Baptists or Methodists]:
* more emotional worship services.
* negro spirituals.
2. “Pidgin” or Gullah languages.
3. Nuclear family with extended kin links,
where possible.
4. Importance of music in their lives. [esp.
spirituals].
Southern Pro-Slavery
Propaganda
Richard Allen led the first public protest by free
blacks in the North in 1787
at St. George Methodist Episcopal Church in
Philadelphia. He went on to found African
Methodist Episcopal Church
Free Blacks in the North
Democracy and Race
Antebellum
Revivalism
&
Reform
Ms. Susan M. Pojer
Horace Greeley HS Chappaqua, NY
1. The Second Great
Awakening
“Spiritual Reform From Within”
[Religious Revivalism]
Social Reforms & Redefining the
Ideal of Equality
Temperance
Education
Abolitionism
Asylum &
Penal Reform
Women’s
Rights
The Rise of Popular Religion
In France, I had almost always seen
the spirit of religion and the spirit of
freedom pursuing courses diametrically
opposed to each other; but in America,
I found that they were intimately
united, and that they reigned in common
over the same country… Religion was the
foremost of the political institutions of
the United States.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, 1832
R1-1
“The Pursuit
of Perfection”
In
Antebellum America
“The Benevolent Empire”:
1825 - 1846
The “Burned-Over” District
in Upstate New York
Second Great Awakening
Revival Meeting
Charles G. Finney
(1792 – 1895)
“Just Do it!”
“You can be perfected!”
“soul-shaking”
conversion
R1-2
If the church would do
her duty, the Millennium
may come to this country
in three years!”
Revivals
he ranges of tents, the fires, reflecting light…;
the candles and lamps illuminating the
encampment; hundreds moving to and
fro…;the preaching, praying, singing, and
shouting,… like the sound of many waters,
was enough to swallow up all the powers of
contemplation. T
The Mormons
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)
 1823  Golden
Tablets
 1830  Book of
Mormon
 1844  Murdered in
Carthage, IL
Joseph Smith
(1805-1844)
Violence Against Mormons
The Mormon “Trek”
The Mormons
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)
 Deseret
community.
 Salt Lake City,
Utah
Brigham Young
(1801-1877)
Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784)
The Shakers
If you will take up your crosses against the
works of generations, and follow Christ in the
regeneration, God will cleanse you from all
unrighteousness.
Remember the cries of those who are in need
and trouble, that when you are in trouble, God
may hear your cries.
If you improve in one talent, God will give you
more.
R1-4
Shaker Meeting
Shaker Hymn
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'Tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Till by turning, turning we come round right.
Shaker Simplicity & Utility
2. Transcendentalism
(European Romanticism)
 Liberation from understanding and
the cultivation of reasoning.”
 “Transcend” the limits of intellect
and allow the emotions, the
SOUL, to create an original
relationship with the Universe.
Transcendentalist Thinking
 Man must acknowledge a body of moral
truths that were intuitive and must
TRANSCEND more sensational proof:
1. The infinite benevolence of God.
2. The infinite benevolence of nature.
3. The divinity of man.
 They instinctively rejected all secular
authority and the authority of organized
churches and the Scriptures, of law, or of
conventions
Transcendentalism
(European Romanticism)
 Therefore, if man was divine, it would be
wicked that he should be held in slavery, or
his soul corrupted by superstition, or his
mind clouded by ignorance!!
 Thus, the role of the reformer was to
restore man to that divinity which God had
endowed them.
Transcendentalist Intellectuals/Writers
Concord, MA
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
Nature
(1832)
Self-Reliance
(1841)
Henry David
Thoreau
Walden
(1854)
Resistance to Civil
Disobedience
(1849)
“The American
Scholar” (1837)
R3-1/3/4/5
The Transcendentalist Agenda
 Give freedom to the slave.
 Give well-being to the poor and the
miserable.
 Give learning to the ignorant.
 Give health to the sick.
 Give peace and justice to society.
A Transcendentalist Critic:
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
 Their pursuit of the ideal led
to a distorted view of human
nature and possibilities:
* The Blithedale Romance
 One should accept the world
as an imperfect place:
* Scarlet Letter
* House of the Seven
Gables
3. Utopian Communities
The Oneida Community
New York, 1848
 Millenarianism --> the
2nd
coming of Christ had
already occurred.
 Humans were no longer
obliged to follow the moral
rules of the past.
• all residents married
John Humphrey Noyes
(1811-1886)
•
to each other.
carefully regulated
“free love.”
Secular Utopian
Communities
Individual
Freedom
Demands of
Community Life
spontaneity
discipline
self-fulfillment
organizational
hierarchy
George Ripley (1802-1880)
Brook Farm
West Roxbury, MA
Robert Owen (1771-1858)
Utopian Socialist
“Village of Cooperation”
Original Plans for New Harmony, IN
New Harmony in 1832
New Harmony,
IN
4. Penitentiary Reform
Dorothea Dix
(1802-1887)
1821  first
penitentiary founded
in Auburn, NY
R1-5/7
Dorothea Dix Asylum - 1849
The Alcoholic Republic, 1790’s to
1820s
• Per capita consumption of 100% distilled
alcohol – 4 gallons.
5. Temperance Movement
1826 - American Temperance Society
“Demon Rum”!
Frances Willard
R1-6
The Beecher Family
Annual Consumption of Alcohol
“The Drunkard’s Progress”
From the first glass to the grave, 1846
6. Social Reform  Prostitution
The “Fallen Woman”
Sarah Ingraham
(1802-1887)
 1835  Advocate of Moral Reform
 Female Moral Reform Society focused
on the “Johns” & pimps, not the girls.
R2-1
7. Educational Reform
Religious Training  Secular Education
 MA
 always on the forefront of public
educational reform
* 1st state to establish tax support for
local public schools.
 By
1860 every state offered free public
education to whites.
* US had one of the highest literacy rates.
Horace Mann (1796-1859)
“Father of
American Education”
 children were clay in the
hands
of teachers and school officials
 children should be “molded”
into a state of perfection
 discouraged corporal
punishment
 established state teachertraining programs
R3-6
The McGuffey Eclectic
Readers
 Used religious parables to teach “American
values.”
 Teach middle class morality and respect for
order.
 Teach “3 Rs” + “Protestant ethic” (frugality,
hard work, sobriety)
R3-8
Women Educators
 Troy, NY Female Seminary
 curriculum: math, physics,
history, geography.
 train female teachers
Emma Willard
(1787-1870)
 1837  she established
Mt. Holyoke [So. Hadley, MA]
as the first college for women.
Mary Lyons
(1797-1849)
7. “Separate Spheres” Concept
“Cult of Domesticity”
A woman’s “sphere” was in the home (it was a
refuge from the cruel world outside).
Her role was to “civilize” her husband and
family.
 An 1830s MA minister:
The power of woman is her dependence. A woman
who gives up that dependence on man to become a
reformer yields the power God has given her for
her protection, and her character becomes
unnatural!
Early 19c Women
1. Unable to vote.
2. Legal status of a minor.
3. Single  could own her own
property.
4. Married  no control over her
property or her children.
5. Could not initiate divorce.
6. Couldn’t make wills, sign a
contract, or bring suit in court
without her husband’s permission.
What It Would Be Like If
Ladies Had Their Own Way!
R2-8
Cult of Domesticity = Slavery
The 2nd Great Awakening inspired women
to improve society.
Angelina Grimké
Sarah Grimké
 Southern Abolitionists
R2-9
Lucy Stone
American Women’s
Suffrage Assoc.
edited Woman’s Journal
R2-6/7
8. Women’s Rights
1840  split in the abolitionist movement
over women’s role in it.
London  World Anti-Slavery Convention
Lucretia Mott
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
1848  Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments
Seneca Falls Declaration
9. Abolitionist Movement
 1816  American Colonization
Society
created (gradual, voluntary
emancipation.
British Colonization Society symbol
Abolitionist Movement
Create a free slave state in Liberia, West
Africa.
No real anti-slavery sentiment in the North
in the 1820s & 1830s.
Gradualists
Immediatists
Anti-Slavery Alphabet
William Lloyd Garrison
(1801-1879)
Slavery & Masonry
undermined republican
values.
Immediate emancipation
with NO compensation.
Slavery was a moral, not
an economic issue.
Pacifism and moral
suasion
No union with
slaveholders
R2-4
The Liberator
Premiere issue  January 1, 1831
R2-5
The Tree of Slavery—Loaded with
the Sum of All Villanies!
Other White Abolitionists
Lewis Tappan
Theodore Weld
James Birney
Liberty Party.
Ran for President in
1840 & 1844.
Arthur Tappan
Black Abolitionists
David Walker
(1785-1830)
1829  Appeal to the Coloured
Citizens of the World
Fight for freedom rather than
wait to be set free by whites.
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
1845  The Narrative of the Life
Of Frederick Douglass
1847  “The North Star”
R2-12
Sojourner Truth (1787-1883)
or Isabella Baumfree
1850  The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
R2-10
Harriet Tubman
(1820-1913)
Helped over 300 slaves
to freedom.
$40,000 bounty on her
head.
Served as a Union spy
during the Civil War.
“Moses”
Leading Escaping Slaves Along
the Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad
“Passengers” ==== escaping slaves
“Tracks” ==== routes
“Conductor” ==== leader of the escape
“Trains” ==== farm wagons transporting
the escaping slaves
“Depots” ==== safe houses to rest/sleep
“The Slave Power
• Abolitionists brought the issue of slavery to the
attention of the nation and made it a moral issue.
• They also raised the specter of a Slave Power that
would stop at nothing to extend and protect slavery,
including violating the rights of whites.
• They were never a majority and often the object of
violence, insults, opprobrium. And yet, when many
northerners saw abolitionists beaten and mobbed,
and their mail confiscated by the federal government
and their petitions to the House of representatives
automatically tabled without discussion (“gagged”)
• The mobbing, beatings, killings of abolitionists and
the confiscation and destruction of their mailings to
the South, and the automatic tabling of their
petitions to Congress (Gag Rule, 1836seemed to
confirm in the minds of many the existence of a
“Slave Power.”
Susan M. Pojer
Horace Greeley H. S.
Chappaqua, NY
Trends in Antebellum America: 1810-1860
1. New intellectual and religious movements.
2. Social reforms.
3. Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in America.
4. Re-emergence of a second party system and more
political democratization.
5. Increase in federal power  Marshall Ct. decisions.
6. Increase in American nationalism.
7. Further westward expansion.
“Manifest Destiny”
 First coined by newspaper editor, John O’Sullivan in 1845.

".22
the right of our manifest destiny to over spread and
to possess the whole of the continent which Providence
has given us for the development of the great experiment of
liberty and federaltive development of self-government
entrusted to us. It is right such as that of the tree to the
space of air and the earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny
of growth."
...
 A myth of the West as a land of romance and adventure
emerged.
“American Progress” by John Gast, 1872
The Pony Express
 Between April, 1860 and Nov., 1861.
 Delivered news and mail between St.
Louis, MO and San Francisco, CA.
 Took 10 days.
 Replaced by the completion of the
trans-continental telegraph line.
Aroostook “War,” 1839
 The only war ever declared by a state.
 Between the Canadian region of New
Brunswick and the state of Maine.
 Cause: The expulsion of Canadian lumberjacks in the
disputed area of Aroostook by Maine officials.
 Congress called up 50,000 men and voted for
$10,000,000 to pay for the “war.”
 General Winfield Scott arranged a truce, and a
border commission was convened to resolve the issue.
Maine Boundary Settlement, 1842
Texas Declaration of Independence
Key Figures in Texas Independence, 1836
Sam Houston
(1793-1863)
Steven Austin
(1793-1836)
The Republic of Texas
Remember the Alamo!
Davey Crockett’s Last Stand
The Battle of the Alamo
General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna Recaptures the Alamo
Overland Immigration to the West
 Between 1840 and
1860, more than
250,000 people
made the trek
westward.
The Oregon Trail – Albert Bierstadt, 1869
Trails Westward
The Doomed Donner Party
April, 1846 – April, 1847
The Doomed Donner Party
CANNIBALISM ! !
Margaret Patrick John
Breen
Breen Breen
James Reed & Wife
 Of the 83 members of the Donner
Party, only 45 survived to get to
California!
The Oregon Dispute: 54’ 40º or Fight!
 By the mid-1840s,
“Oregon Fever” was
spurred on by the
promise of free land.
 The joint British-U. S.
occupation ended in
1846.
The Bear Flag Republic
The Revolt  June 14, 1845
John C. Frémont
The Slidell Mission: NOV., 1845
 Mexican recognition of the Rio
Grande River as the TX-US border.
 US would forgive American citizens’
claims against the Mexican govt.
 US would purchase the New Mexico
area for $5,000,000.
 US would buy California at any price.
John Slidell
Wilmot Proviso, 1846
Provided, territory from that, as an
express and fundamental condition to
the acquisition of any the Republic of
Mexico by the United States, by virtue
of any treaty which may be negotiated
between them, and to the use by the
Executive of the moneys herein
appropriated, neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude shall ever exist
in any part of said territory, except for
crime, whereof the party shall first be
duly convicted.
Congr. David Wilmot
(D-PA)
The Mexican War (1846-1848)
General Zachary Taylor at Palo Alto
“Old Rough and Ready”
The Bombardment of Vera Cruz
General Scott Enters Mexico City
“Old Fuss and Feathers”
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, 1848
Nicholas Trist,
American Negotiator
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, 1848
The Treaty was basically forced on Mexico!
 Mexico gave up claims to Texas above the Rio
Grande River.
 Mexico gave the U. S. California and New Mexico.
 U. S. gave Mexico $15,000,000 and agreed to pay
the claims of American citizens against Mexico
(over $3,500,000).
Results of the Mexican War?
1. The 17-month war cost $100,000,000 and 13,000+
American lives (mostly of disease).
2. New territories were brought into the Union which forced the explosive
issue of SLAVERY to the center of national politics.
* Brought in 1 million sq. mi. of land (incl. TX)
3. These new territories would upset the balance of power between North and
South.
4. Created two popular Whig generals who ran for President.
5. Manifest Destiny partially realized.
• WILMOT PROVISO, 1846
• Proposed by David Wilmot
• Would have prohibited slavery in the territory
acquired from Mexico.
• This was the “anti-slavery” or “Free Soil” idea.
• Wilmot wanted to preserve territory in the West
for free white laborers.
• Passed three times in the House but was
defeated each time in the Senate.
Free Soil Party
Free Soil!
Free Speech!
Free Labor!
Free Men!
WHY?
 “Barnburners” – discontented northern Democrats.
 Anti-slave members of the Liberty and Whig Parties.
 Opposition to the extension of slavery in the new
territories!
The 1848 Presidential Election Results
√
The Mexican Cession
GOLD! At Sutter’s Mill, 1848
John A. Sutter
California Gold Rush, 1849
49er’s
Two Views of San Francisco, Early 1850s
 By 1860, almost 300,000
people had traveled the
Oregon & California
Trails to the Pacific
coast.
Territorial Growth to 1853
Westward the Course of Empire
Emmanuel Leutze, 1860
Expansionist Young America in the 1850s
America’s Attempted Raids into Latin America
By: Ms. Susan M. Pojer
Horace Greeley HS Chappaqua, NY
Problems of Sectional Balance
in 1850
ß
California statehood.
ß
Southern “fire-eaters” threatening
secession.
ß
Underground RR & fugitive slave issues:
 Personal liberty laws
 Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842)
Compromise of 1850
Harriet
Beecher
Stowe
(1811 – 1896)
So this is the lady who started
the Civil War. -- Abraham
Lincoln
Uncle Tom’s
Cabin
1852
 Sold 300,000
copies in
the first year.
 2 million in a
decade!
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852
1852 Presidential Election
√ Franklin Pierce
Democrat
Gen. Winfield Scott John Parker Hale
Whig
Free Soil
1852
Election
Results
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854
The Whig Party comes apart over KansasNebraska Act
The “Know-Nothings” [The American Party]
ß
Anti-Catholics.
ß
Nativists.
ß
Anti-immigrants.
Evolved in 1849 as the Secret Order of the Star-Spangled Banner and then became
the American Party. By 1855 it had split apart over slavery
“Bleeding Kansas”
Border “Ruffians”
(pro-slavery
Missourians)
“The Crime Against Kansas” 1856
Sen. Charles Sumner
(R-MA)
Congr. Preston Brooks
(D-SC)
Birth of the Republican Party, 1854
ß Northern Whigs.
ß Northern Democrats.
ß Free-Soilers.
ß Know-Nothings.
ß Other miscellaneous opponents
of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
John Brown: Madman, Hero or Martyr?
Mural in the Kansas Capitol building
by John Steuart Curry (20c)
1856 Presidential Election
√ James Buchanan
Democrat
John C. Frémont
Republican
Millard Fillmore
Whig
Republicans added key economic
planks to their platform in addition
to their anti-slavery stance and
their warnings about the Slave
Power..
• Protective tariff
• Federal funds for a Transcontinental
Railroad.
• Homestead Act
1856
Election
Results
Dred Scott v. Sanford, 1857
What caused the
Panic of 1857??
What were its
affects on the nation?
Stephen Douglas
breaks with Buchanan
• Popular
Sovereignty?
--Lecompton Constitution
(1857)
The Lincoln-Douglas (Illinois Senate)
Debates, 1858
A House divided against
itself, cannot stand.
Stephen Douglas
--Lecompton Constitution (1857)
--Freeport Doctrine (1858) Dilemma
Popular
Sovereignty?
John Brown’s Raid
on Harper’s Ferry, 1859
Last Moments of John Brown
√ Abraham Lincoln
Republican
Stephen A. Douglas
Northern Democrat
1860
Presidential
Election
John Bell
Constitutional Union
John C. Breckinridge
Southern Democrat
Republican Party Platform in 1860
ß
Non-extension of slavery [for the Free-Soilers.
ß
Protective tariff [for the No. Industrialists].
ß
No abridgment of rights for immigrants [a disappointment for the “KnowNothings”].
ß
Government aid to build a Pacific RR [for the Northwest].
ß
Internal improvements [for the West] at federal expense.
ß
Free homesteads for the public domain [for farmers].
Democratic Party Breaks Apart in
1860.
• Issue:
• Stephen Douglas and popular sovereignty
• Vs. southern insistence on a federal slave
code for the territories.
1860 Election: 3 “Outs” & 1 ”Run!”
1860 Election: A Nation Coming Apart?!
1860
Election
Results
Crittenden Compromise:
A Last Ditch Appeal
Senator John J. Crittenden
(Know-Nothing-KY)
Note that Lincoln was
willing to accept war
rather than compromise
on slavery’s extension
Secession!: SC Dec. 20, 1860
Fort Sumter: April 12, 1861