Slavery in America
American Character Qualities this addresses:
Freedom
Conflict and Compromise
Reform and Progress
First Slaves Arrive
• 1619 – Jamestown
• Dutch ship brings in 20 black indentured servants
• By around 1660, slavery is legalized in the colonies
Colonial Slavery
• Northern colonies
• Economy and geography did not provide the opportunity for large-scale slavery
• Southern colonies
• Increased growth of cash and labor-intensive crops (rice, tobacco, then cotton)
and the decline of indentured servants created a need for slavery
• Then Eli Whitney’s cotton gin (1793) drastically increases the need for slave labor
• The “peculiar institution” is solidified and defended by all classes of southerners
Declaration of Independence
• Jefferson originally attacked slavery in the
Declaration, but removed it because of southern
colonial opposition (particularly Georgia and South
Carolina), and he also received northern
complaints from ship owners involved in the slave
trade.
Constitution
• 3/5 Compromise – to settle the dispute between northern and southern
states over how slaves would be counted. Three-fifths of all slaves would
be counted towards the state’s population for representation and
taxation.
• Southerners considered them property, and not persons. However, they
wanted them counted as persons to increase their representation in
Congress
• Northerners would have been more likely to consider blacks persons, but
they didn’t want the south to be allowed to count them as persons for
representation to Congress
• Congress’s power over restricting the slave trade would last 20 yrs., until
1808.
Constitution cont.
• Fugitive Slave Clause - No Person held to Service or
Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping
into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or
Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or
Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party
to whom such Service or Labour may be due. ARTICLE IV,
SECTION 2, CLAUSE 3
Expansion and Slavery
• Northwest Ordinance – 1787 (this predates the
Constitution and conflicts with the Constitution's
Fugitive Slave Clause!)
• America’s first plan to settle westward (in what is now Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan)
• Slavery was banned - "neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude" would exist in the territory
Conflict & Compromise
• Missouri Compromise
• When a state enters the Union as a free state, another state
must enter as a slave state in order to balance out power in
Congress.
• Compromise of 1850 (lots of parts, we'll study later)
• Fugitive Slave Clause - held that states could impose penalties
on citizens for harboring fugitive slaves (Northerners felt like
they legally had to support slavery)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yjx_b5MsFA
Abolition Movement
• The prominent African American abolitionists
disprove the Southern argument for slavery that
blacks are intellectually inferior and only suited for
manual labor. (Example?)
• The prominent white abolitionists are often
religious leaders and newspaper journalists.
• The movement is closely tied with the women’s
rights movement as well.
Southern Arguments for Slavery
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Slavery has always existed.
It is economically entrenched in the prosperity of the South.
It’s in the Bible! (religious argument)
Slaves were better off than Africans, as well as blacks in northern factories.
• Recall some of the slave narratives we read.
• Slavery is beneficial to blacks because they’re “childlike” (paternalistic view).
• Fear of integration.
Dred Scott Decision
• Master had moved his slave into free territory (Illinois, then
Wisconsin); when his owner returned South (Missouri, then
Louisiana), Scott and his wife also went back South. The owner
died, and Scott tried to buy his freedom, then sued for it, claiming
he had been free as he has lived in a free state.
• Making its way to the Supreme Court, this case is a defining
moment in the debate over slavery and the personhood of slaves.
Result of Dred Scott:
• Slaves are NOT citizens of the United States
• Therefore, they have no right to sue in federal
court.
• Congress has no authority to abolish slavery in
territories. (Missouri Compromise invalid)
Dred Scott
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OML9AVR10PQ
1860 Election
• Republican nominee whose party had adopted an antislavery stance; Lincoln himself stated he did not want
slavery to expand into the territories, but he would not
abolish it where it existed.
• However, once the war began, as we read in the
Emancipation Proclamation, the conditions of the war
led Lincoln to change his position.
What did Lincoln really believe?
• http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/abraham-lincoln
Reasons for the Emancipation
Proclamation
• Military: to weaken the Confederate military strength; to attract slaves
to the Union forces
• Political/Economic: To ensure that Britain (who was anti-slavery)
would not support the Confederate cause (legitimizing the South)
• Moral: slavery was indeed wrong! And in order to reunite the country,
the question of slavery was going to have to be resolved once and for
all.
• AND: it gave the North a rallying cause after a Union victory in battle
(the war had gone very poorly for the North thus far)
• http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/emancipationproclamation
End of the Civil War: Slavery abolished
• Now the questions that have to be addressed:
• 1) Do we punish the South for the rebellion? Or do
we try to reunite, without retribution?
• 2) How do we integrate African Americans into
society?
RECONSTRUCTION:
was it a success?
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A. Constitutional Amendments
B. Black Codes--ways states get around the constitutional amendments
C. Letter from Henry Adams
D. Elected Black Officials
E. Freedmen's Bureau and Education
F. Sharecropping (whole class)
G. Literacy test to vote
Directions:
• Your group (of 3) will have 3-5 minutes with a source.
Send one group member to the front table, use the
resource, then return it and get another one. You must
analyze 5 of the resources.
SHARECROPPING
Political Restrictions
• Example of a literacy test:
• http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/28/voting_rights_and_the_supreme_
court_the_impossible_literacy_test_louisiana.html
We will analyze the success/failure of
Reconstruction through the evidence collected
& this cartoon: