The South and the Slavery
Controversy
Chapter 16 APUSH
Early Emancipation in the North
Missouri Compromise, 1820
King Cotton
• Cotton Kingdom develops to huge
agricultural factory
• Northern shippers reaped a large part
of the profits from the cotton trade
•to a large degree, the prosperity of the
both the North and the South rested on
the bent backs of slaves
• South produced more than half the world’s cotton supplyA fact that held foreign nations in economic bondage to the
South.
-Britain was the world economic superpower and 1/5 of its population
drew its wealth from cotton cloth
- 75% of that cotton came from the South
- South knew it
Changes in Cotton Production
1820
1860
Value of Cotton Exports
As % of All US Exports
Southern Society as an
Oligarchy rather than a
Democracy
• Planter aristocrats had the majority of the
wealth
–Educated their children in private schools
–These young became experts at statecraft: John
C. Calhoun; Jefferson Davis - felt a keen sense to
serve the public
–But widened gap b/w rich and poor
–No reason to favor tax-supported public
education
Southern Population
The “Wasteful” Plantation System
1.
Economic system becomes monopolistic
•
2.
Small farmers must sell their landholdings and move north or
west
Financial instability of the system
–
–
3.
Led to over speculation in land and slaves
(supporting evidence) slaves fed for .10 cents a day but could
cost $1,200 each; they could be injured; they could run away;
they could be wiped out by disease
Agribusiness - King Cotton meant one crop
economy. No diversification or industry
Southern planters resent watching North grow fat at
their expense
4.
–
5.
(supporting cultural division) Southerners resent being wrapped
in Northern cloth, coffins with Yankee nails
Cotton Kingdom repelled large scale European
immigration
–
–
No diversity of people
Irish immigration competes with slave labor
Southern A griculture
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.
•1/4 of white southerners owned slaves
–Smaller slave owners did not own a majority of the slaves but
they made up the majority of the masters
–Typically modest farmhouses, working with and eating with the
slaves
•Beneath them: 3/4 white southerners
owned no slaves
– Redneck farmers living on thinner soils of backcountry and
mountains.
–Subsistence farmers - corn and hogs. Isolated lives
•Below them - “poor white trash”
• All these whites without slaves had no direct
stake in preservation of slavery yet they were
among the stoutest defenders. Why?
Southern Society (1850)
6,000,000
“Slaveocracy”
[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%]
Slave-Owning Families (1850)
Slave-Owning Population (1850)
• All these whites without slaves had no direct
stake in preservation of slavery yet they were
among the stoutest defenders. Why?
–Hope of American dream - one day they might own
slaves
–Fierce in need to proclaim racial superiority (Jerry
Springer theory…?)
–Always want to outrank someone else
NC Mountain Boys (Appalachian)
• Little in common with whites of flatlands
• Isolated- Elizabethan English
• “rich man’s war but poor man’s fight”
•
when war came this group formed a vital Union
peninsula jutting down into secessionist territory
Free blacks
• purchased freedom
•often illegal to marry within the state of
residence
•Owned property
•Owned other slaves
•Couldn’t testify in court
•Vulnerable to being kidnapped and
sold into slavery
•Freed blacks unpopular in North
–Compete with immigrant labor
–Frederick Douglas
Slave Life
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.
African American Culture
• Deep South - relatively staple culture so
more distinctive culture
• Dance, religion (Israelites in Egypt - “let
my people go”), “sister” and “brother”
T he Culture of Slavery
1. Black Christianity [Baptists or Methodists]:
* more emotional worship services.
* negro spirituals.
2. Nuclear family with extended kin links,
where possible.
3. Importance of music in their lives. [esp.
spirituals].
Slave Resistance
• Refusal to work hard.
• Isolated acts of sabotage.
• Escape via the Underground Railroad.
Slave Rebellions
in the Antebellum South
Gabriel Prosser
1800
Henrico, VA
On August 30, 2007, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine informally
pardoned Gabriel and his co-conspirators
1822
Charleston, S.C.
Slave Rebellions in the Antebellum South:
Nat Turner, 1831
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
Reformers of the Era
• Theodore Dwight Weld - spiritually
inspired. Rebels at Lane Theological
Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio = “Lane
Rebels”
W illiam Lloyd Garrison
(1801-1879)
• Slavery & Masonry
undermined republican
values.
• Immediate emancipation
with NO compensation.
• Slavery was a moral, not
an economic issue.
R2-4
T he Liberator
Premiere issue  January 1, 1831
R2-5
Other W hite Abolitionists
Lewis Tappan
James Birney
• Liberty Party.
• Ran for President in
1840 & 1844.
Arthur Tappan
Black Abolitionists
David Walker (1785-1830)
-Appeal to the Colored
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
1852 Speech of Frederick Douglass in honor of
signing of Declaration of Independence,
“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You
may rejoice, I must mourn…. Above your national,
tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions”
Sojourner Truth (1787-1883)
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”
Slave Rebellions in the Antebellum South:
Nat Turner, 1831
1831-1832
Turning Point: Virginia
Legislature Debate
• emancipation proposals
• defeated
• result: tightened slave codes
• result: no emancipation whatsoever voluntary or compensated! It is illegal!
Va Legislature Debate 1831-1832
Thomas Wright
If you wish to speak of economic advantages, I have some facts for you to consider regarding
the efficiency of free labor and slave labor. The best estimates are that it takes six slaves to do
the work of three free laborers. The slave receives the same support and food whether he works
much or little. The slave has every inducement to spare himself as much work as possible
without drawing punishment. Free laborers work hard for short periods. This gives them free
time to be idle. When idle, the free laborer does not have to be paid. Therefore, free labor is
cheaper than slave labor.
In 1800, field hands were selling for $400 and cotton was 36 cents per pound. Today slaves sell
for $800 to $1000 and cotton is 11½ cents per pound.
One half of the slave owners have fewer than twenty slaves. The economic loss of slaves as
property will be more than offset by decreased labor cost and greater productivity.
Emancipation can result in a greater supply of cheap labor that will mean profitable industrial
operation. Of course, safeguards must be taken to see that laborers are not exploited or
abused.
Va Legislature Debate 1831-1832
Amos Lovejoy
Slaves should be freed but not all at once. As a step toward complete
freedom, several practices should change. The power of punishing slaves
could be taken from the master and given to a magistrate. The sale of all
women could be stopped at once. All slaves could be provided wages
rather than using punishment as an incentive.
A second step could involve the complete release of slaves born on certain
days periodically. Over a period of years, all slaves could be set free.
Such a system has already worked in Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. In no
case has there been insurrection and bloodshed as is feared here.
Taking steps toward freeing slaves will lessen the possibility of violence
and insurrection.
Va Legislature Debate 1831-1832
James Hammond
In the state of Virginia, there are 470,000 slaves. The aggregate value of the slave
population in Virginia in 1830 was $94,000,000. All of the land and homes were
valued at $206,000,000. Slaves represent one-third of the property. Therefore,
slaves should not be freed without just compensation to their owners.
I propose that those slaves normally sold outside this state be sold to the State and
colonized elsewhere at the expense of the State.
This proposal will mean that 6,000 slaves would be given their freedom annually
and colonized at the expense of the State. This would cost $2,400,000 annually.
This is a modest investment to preserve the economy of the state. If the State
cannot afford it, perhaps the federal government could be called upon to
compensate owners for their slaves.
Va Legislature Debate 1831-1832
Samuel Holt
The idea of emancipation and relocation as proposed by some sounds good.
However, further examination exposes some flaws in this plan. To ask State or
Congress to purchase two million slaves at $400,000,000 is out of the question.
This will place far too great a burden upon those taxpayers who have never owned
to plan to own slaves. When the government begins to buy slaves, it will cause the
price of slaves to go up considerably. This will cause slave owners to encourage
their slaves to marry and produce more children, thus compounding the problem.
I ask those who say colonize the slaves: Where? Liberia now has a population of
2,500. At the most, Liberia could handle 500 new residents a year. If only 500
slaves were freed and located annually, in a 25-year period 41,000 more slaves
would be born than relocated.
Va Legislature Debate 1831-1832
Thornton Ruffin
I am opposed to emancipation of the slaves until some way can be found
to sustain the trade and commerce generated by the cultivation of cotton
and tobacco. Two-thirds of the cotton produced in this country is exported.
This greatly helps our balance of trade with Europe. Only one-forty-sixth of
the remaining agricultural production is exported. At the present time, onesixth of the blacks in the country are free. They shun the cottonfields. I
will favor emancipation of slaves only when we can assure that blacks will
remain in the cotton and tobacco labor market. If this cannot be assured,
to give the slaves their freedom would ruin the economy of the South and
seriously injure the economy of the North and England.
Southern Fears
• Nat Turner
• William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator
• Nullification Crisis 1832
Southern Pro-Slavery
Propaganda
Southern Defense of Slavery
• Supported by authority of the Bible
• “happy lot of servants” vs. factory life of
immigrant workers
• Post war - Freedom was bigger burden for
African Americans?- no health care, no
literacy, no knowledge of law, no knowledge
of contract law (sharecropping)
Congress
• 1836 Gag Resolution (all anti-slavery
appeals from citizens would be tabled
without debate)
• 1835 Postal system can not deliver
abolitionist literature
Abolition in the North
1.
Extreme abolitionists (Garrison) unpopular in the
North
•
•
2.
3.
- popularity of men like Daniel Webster stressing the Union
- Constitution is sacred and the clauses on slavery are lasting clauses
North had heavy economic stake in the South
Mobocracy due to abolitionism
–
–
–
–
Lewis Tappan’s New York house
Garrison and the Broadcloth mob
Elijah P. Lovejoy
Even Lincoln avoided extreme abolitionism
- growing number of Northerners didn’t want to abolish
slavery in the South but increasingly wanted to stop
its spread to Western territories