“PECULIAR INSTITUTION”
Slavery and Abolition
Chapter 17
When is evil so enormous,
that it must be denounced,
even at the risk of
participating bloodshed and
butchery?
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.
KING COTTON
1793: Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin
Economic Impact:
•
•
•
•
Cotton ½ of all exports after 1840
½ World’s supply of cotton
1/5 of British population tied to cotton industry
75% of all British cotton came from American South
PLANTATION AGRICULTURE
•“Land Butchery”
•Monopolistic – big got bigger, small got smaller
•Financial Instability
•Slaves were a heavy investment
•One-Crop Economy
•Resented North for getting rich at the South’s expense
Southern Population
Southern Society (1850)
6,000,000
“Slavocracy”
[planter aristocracy]
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%]
SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE SOUTH
•Who owned slaves?
•¼ of white southerners
•Planter “Aristocracy”
•1/3 of Slave owners
•Sir Walter Scott – glorified feudal society
•Southern Women
•Smaller Slave owners
•2/3 of slave owners
•Less than 10 slaves
•Small formers, similar to small farmers of the north
Slave-Owning Population (1850)
Slave-Owning Families (1850)
SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE SOUTH
3/4 of whites owned no slaves
•Lived isolated lives
•“white trash”, “hillbillies, “crackers”, “clay eaters”
•Shiftless, listless, lazy – Actually sick – malnourished
•Biggest defenders of slave system – WHY?
Mountain Whites
•Lived far from cotton kingdom
•Hated planters and slaves
•Civil War “Rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight”
•Unionists
SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE SOUTH
Free Blacks
•South:
•250,000 in 1860
•Mulattoes – emancipated children of white planters
•Purchased freedom
•New Orleans – many owned property
•“Third Race”
•North:
•250,000
•States forbade their entrance
•Especially hated by the Irish
•Race Prejudice
SLAVE LIFE
Singing, Dancing, Banjos
Whippings
Family Life
Auctions
Separation of Families
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
By Harriet Beecher Stowe
What specific information about slaves and slavery can
you see in (or infer from) these photographs?
Early Emancipation in the North
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.
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
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
“Conductor” ==== leader of the escape
“Passengers” ==== escaping slaves
“Tracks” ==== routes
“Trains” ==== farm wagons transporting
the escaping slaves
“Depots” ==== safe houses to rest/sleep