Chapter 11
The Peculiar Institution
Frederick Douglass
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•
Background: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1539.html
Background (extensive, but good): http://nha.org/history/hn/HN-n40n3-douglass.htm
How does Frederick Douglass
• Born -1818, Maryland, into slavery (mother)
• Learned to read & write (illegal in Maryland)
– Knowledge was “the pathway from slavery to freedom”
• Work: house servant, skilled craftsman in Baltimore shipyard, field hand on
a plantation
• “Slave breaker” tried to control his independent spirit at 15 years old
Frederick Douglass
• Freedom: he vowed to gain his freedom after being whipped, this event
was “the turning-point in my career as a slave”
• Escape: borrowed a free black sailor’s freedom papers and sailed to New
Bedford, Massachusetts
• Abolition: lectured against slavery in the North & British Isles, campaigned
for women’s rights
• Publications condemning slavery,
1845 Autobiography - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave, Written By Himself 1845
1848 Newspaper - North Star, a four-page weekly, Rochester, New York
Slavery can end with continuous resistance. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trr085.html
Frederick Douglass argued that slaves were truer to the principles of the Declaration of Independence than were
most whites. He expresses this on July 4, 1852 to a crowd in his home of Rochester, NY.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927.html
A photograph of Frederick Douglass , the fugitive slave who became a prominent abolitionist, take
between 1847 and 1852. As a fellow abolitionist noted at the time, “The very look and bearing of
Douglass are an irresistible logic against the oppression of his race.”
The Old South
• Peculiar Institution – an institution of slavery unique to the
South in contrast to the free states of the North
• Mason-Dixon Line – established 1763-1767
a border dividing the states between slave and free; result of a
survey meant to settle a border dispute between the colonies of
Pennsylvania and Maryland
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/usstates/lgcolor/mdmasondixon.htm
Statistics: http://eh.net/encyclopedia/slavery-in-the-united-states/
• 1850 – slavery expanded to Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas
• 1860 – 4 million slaves
- slave population 1/3 of South
- 1/3 of U.S. cotton grown in Mississippi
The Old South
Cotton Is King
• By 1820, slavery was an old institution in America, being two centuries old.
Slavery persisted in Brazil and the Caribbean, Britain’s abolition of slavery within its empire in 1833 made the
United States indisputably the center of New World slavery.
- Timeline of Slavery http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/timeline/1619.html
- 1619, Jamestown & Slavery http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p263.html
- Historic Mystery of 1st slaves solved recently http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/09/02/AR2006090201097.html
• KING COTTON (5:36)
http://www.gpb.org/georgiastories/videos/king_cotton_and_the_cotton_gin
• Cotton – international commodity “White Gold”
– US supply ¾ of world’s cotton
– 1803 Cotton is the most important export in the US
– By 1860, investments in slaves exceeded in value the worth of all of the nation’s factories,
railroads, and banks combined.
• Supply Chain of Cotton:
• People - Slaves, Textile workers, transporters, manufacturers, planters
• Textile manufacturers from Great Britain, to France and Russia depend on cotton
The Old South
The Second Middle Passage
1808
Foreign Slave Trade is banned in the US, leading to an internal slave trade
1820 – 1860
2 million slaves sold to the Deep South
Deep South - South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deep%20south
Internal Slave Trade defined the Cotton Kingdom:
• Slave Sales – Auctions, Advertisements, Slave Traders
• Banks – Finance slave trade
• Government (state/local) tax slave sales earning revenue
Slave Trade Background - http://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/the-slave-trade
Lexington, Kentucky Slave Auction Images - http://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/items/show/171#.VF1F3XuMFTQ
An engraving from just after the Civil War shows a cotton gin in use. Black laborers bring cotton to
the machine, which runs it through a series of pronged wheels, to separate the seeds from the fiber.
An American Slave Market, painted in 1852 by the unknown artist Taylor, depicts the sales of slaves,
including one who had attempted to run away.
A slave dealer’s place of business in Atlanta. The buying and selling of slaves was a regularized part of
the southern economy, and such businesses were a common sight in every southern town.
An advertisement by a slave trader seeking owners wishing to sell slaves. Dealers like Griggs played a
crucial role in moving slaves from the Upper South to the burgeoning Cotton Kingdom of the Gulf
Coast states.
A broadside advertising the public sale of slaves.
Demographics
Free African Americans in 1860
http://www.freeaainnc.com/censusstats1790-1860.pdf
http://antebellumamerican.weebly.com/the-northupper-south-lower-south.html
•
•
•
•
The North
The Upper South
The Deep South
Total
• Total Population U.S.
226,152
224,963
36,955
488,070
26,957,471
Table 11.1 Growth of The Slave Population
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
The Slave, Free Black, and White Population of the United States in 1830
•Map - The Slave,
Free Black, and
White Population of
the United States in
1830
•This map does not
distinguish the slave
from the free black
population of the free
states, although the
process of gradual
emancipation in
several northeastern
states was still
underway and some
black northerners
remained enslaved.
Map 11.1 Slave Population, 1860
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
The Old South
Slavery and the Nation
• Constitution gave disproportionate power to southern states
http://www.wwhp.org/Resources/Slavery/constitution.html
– 3/5th Compromise gave the South disproportionate representation in the
House of Representatives and electoral college
– Required all states to return fugitive slaves (Article IV canceled by 13th
Amendment)
•
Northern states abolished slavery, yet slavery affected them:
• Northern merchants and manufacturers participated in the slave
economy and profited from it.
• Cotton trade profits helped finance industrial development and internal
improvements in the North.
• Northern ships carried cotton, northern banks financed plantations,
northern companies insured slave property, and northern factories turned
cotton into clothing.
The Old South
•
•
•
The Southern Economy
Slavery inhibited industrial growth, discouraged immigration, and slowed
technological progress.
It did not have large and diverse cities like the North, except for New Orleans.
NEW ORLEANS had a rich immigrant culture:
http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/projects/katrina/Campanella.html
Free People of Antebellum New Orleans (interesting): http://www.nola.com/175years/index.ssf/2011/08/1855_free_people_of_color_flou.html
•
•
Banks and railroad lines served plantations and little else.
Slavery was very profitable and expanded the southern economy.
•
Upper South:
– slaves and slave owners were a much smaller percentage of the population,
– centers of manufacturing
– slavery caused the South to have a very different economic development than
the North.
Deep South:
• Stretching from SC to TX
• Had the most slaves
• Economy depended entirely on cotton
•
This 1860 view of New Orleans captures the size and scale of the cotton trade in the South’s largest city.
More than 3,500 steamboats arrived in New Orleans in 1860.
The Old South
Plain Folk of the Old South
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
3/4ths of white southerners did not own slaves
Planters had the best land, most small white farmers lived outside the plantation belt in areas unsuitable for
cotton.
They worked the land with the labor of family members, not slaves or wage-workers.
Many were self-sufficient and remote from markets.
They were often desperately poor and more often illiterate than northern farmers, since most southern states
lacked free public schools.
These farmers did not provide a market for manufactured goods - the South did not develop industry.
While some poor whites resented the planters’ economic and political power, most accommodated the
planters and shared with them a common racial identity, business ties, common political culture, and kinship
ties. Many small white farmers believed their economic and personal freedom rested on slavery.
South’s “Plain Folk” were a lookout for runaway slaves, rented slaves, elected slaveholders
The Old South
The Planter Class
•
•
•
Most slave owners did not own large plantations.
– Fewer than 2,000 Families owned 100+ slaves.
– In 1850, most slaveholding families owned 5 or fewer slaves.
Planters’ slave property provided wealth, status, and influence.
– Best land,
– Highest incomes
– Dominated local and state politics and government
– Owned slaves to make huge profits
– used those profits for the conspicuous consumption of luxury goods, creating an aristocratic material life
Small slave owners aspired to become large planters.
An upcountry family, dressed in homespun, in Cedar Mountains, VA.
Many white families in the pre-Civil War South were largely isolated from the market economy.
Map 11.2 Size of Slaveholdings, 1860
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Table 11.2 Slave Holding, 1850 (in round numbers)
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
The Old South
The Paternalist Ethos
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•
•
•
•
•
Southern slaveowners were committed to hierarchical, agrarian society in which slaveholding gentlemen took
personal responsibility for the well-being of their dependent women, children, and slaves.
Hierarchy – Master “protects” dependents (family, slaves)
This outlook of “paternalism” had long been a feature of American slavery, but it deepened with the end of the
African slave trade, which closed the cultural gap between slaves and owners.
Plantations were part of a world market, and planters worked to accumulate land, slaves, and great profits,
some of which they invested in railroads and banks.
And most southern slave owners lived on their own plantations, close to their slaves. Paternalism obscured
and justified slavery’s brutality. Owners thought themselves kind and responsible even while they bought,
sold, and punished their slaves.
Paternalism and Slavery:
http://www.armstrong.edu/Initiatives/history_journal/history_journal_paternalism_and_the_southern_hierarchy_how_slavery_def
•
Paternalism and Slavery supported the institution: http://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/2843
The Code of Honor
•
Over time, southern values diverged from the North’s culture of egalitarianism, competition, and individualism.
In the South, men of all classes followed a code of personal honor, in which they were expected to defend the
reputation of themselves and their families, with violence if necessary. Dueling, while illegal, was not
uncommon. Southern white women were even more confined to the home and the domestic ideal than
northern women.
A pre–Civil War engraving depicting the paternalist ideal. The old slave in the foreground says, “God Bless you massa! You feed and
clothe us, . . . And when too old to work, you provide for us!” The master replies, “These poor creatures are a sacred legacy from my
ancestors and while a dollar is left me, nothing shall be spared to increase their comfort and happiness.”
Slavery as It Exists in America: (Proslavery argument)
Proslavery thought that slaves were happy and carefree, while English workers,
including children, were victims of the oppressive system of “factory slavery”
The Old South
The Proslavery Argument
•
In the thirty years before the Civil War, pro-slavery thought came to dominate
southern intellectual and cultural life.
• Fewer southern whites felt, as had many founding fathers, that slavery was a
necessary evil, and more started to argue it was a positive good.
Foundations of Proslavery Argument:
• Racism—the belief that blacks were innately inferior to whites and suited for
slavery—framed the proslavery argument.
• Slave owners also found justification for slavery in ancient history and the Bible.
• Some southerners argued that black slavery guaranteed equality for whites by
preventing the growth of a white working class in the South. Slavery, they argued,
provided the economic autonomy and independence that the North’s industrial
workers lacked and which formed the basis of the republic. Prevented them “low,
menial jobs”
• Proslavery Arguments: http://www.ushistory.org/us/27f.asp
Overview:
• Slavery was supported by many Southerners, no longer arguing that it was a
necessary evil, but claimed it as the basis for free institutions
• argued that slavery was essential to human, economic, and cultural progress
The Old South
Abolition in the Americas
• Southern slaveholders knew of the Haitian Revolution, other slave
rebellions, and British abolition (1833). Emancipation throughout the
Americas strongly shaped debates about slavery and its future in the United
States. While American slave owners argued that emancipation had been a
failure, abolitionists disagreed. By 1850, slave systems remained in the
western hemisphere only in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and the United
States.
• Slave rebellions abroad sent waves of fear throughout the South
• The End of slavery in Latin American nations involved gradual emancipation
and recognition of owners' legal rights to slaver property; this allowed for the
ownership of existing slaves while eventually freeing their slaves' children
The Old South
Slavery and Liberty
•
Many white southerners claimed they were the true inheritors of the Revolution’s legacy, and they freely used
the language of liberty to contrast their condition with slavery. They complained that government interference
with their economy threatened to “enslave” them. Southern state constitutions acknowledged equal rights for
free white men. But in the 1830s, some pro-slavery writers began to argue that liberty, equality, and
democracy were not necessarily beneficial to the South. South Carolina in particular was home to many who
argued that freedom and equality were not universal entitlements, even for all whites. When sectionalism
intensified after 1830, more southern writers and politicians came to defend slavery not as ensuring equality
between whites, but as the basis of an organic, hierarchical society in which white large planters ruled over
lesser whites and slaves.
Slavery and Civilization
•
Virginian George Fitzhugh took this argument to the extreme, repudiating Jeffersonian ideals and the idea of
America’s world mission to spread freedom. He argued that slavery, not liberty, was the normal basis of
civilization in world history. He argued that slaves were happy and contented. He suggested that white
workers in the North and South should have paternal white owners to care for them, rather than be enslaved
by capitalist markets and employers.
Life under Slavery
Slaves and the Law
•
•
Slavery meant incessant toil, harsh punishment, and constant fear that that their
families would be destroyed by sale.
Although these laws were not always enforced, the entire southern legal and
governmental system was designed to enforce the slave masters’ control over the
slaves’ bodies and labor.
• Slaves were considered property and had few legal rights:
Legal Rights: Right to Trial by Jury with an all white jury and judge
Legal Constraints:
– Bought and sold by owners at will
– No voice in government
– Could Not testify in court against whites, sign contracts or buy property,
own firearms, hold meetings apart from whites, or leave a farm or
plantation without permission, illegal to teach slaves to read and write (by
1830’s)
– but they had the right to a trial (all white jury and judge) when accused of
serious crimes, marriage was also controlled by masters
Life under Slavery
Conditions of Slave Life
• Paternalism contributed to slaves’ material improvements
• Slave conditions improved by the mid-19th century due the end
of the external slave trade (1808) & the rising value of slaves
encouraged planters to care for their slaves’ basic well-being.
Living Conditions: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/living/history.html
Read the 1st 3 paragraphs in the 1st column about paternalism.
• Slavery was also tightened in this period, and states passed
laws making it harder for owners to free their slaves and for
slaves to buy their own freedom.
Legal Restrictions (black codes): http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-antebellum/5328
This is an essay that elaborates in detail how legal code referred to as black codes restricted
African-Americans lives. Simply read the footnotes in the left hand margin of the essay to get a
general idea.
Life under Slavery
Free Blacks in the Old South
• Slavery helped define the status of free blacks. By the Civil War, half a
million free blacks lived in the United States, the majority in the South. While
whites defined their freedom by their distance from slavery, free blacks were
not radically different than enslaved blacks.
• North - free blacks could not vote and had few economic opportunities.
• South – free blacks could own their own property , marry, and could not be
bought or sold as slaves
– Free blacks could not own dogs, guns, liquor, strike whites, own
firearms, testify in court, or vote
• Israel Hill was a community of free blacks in Virginia using land provided by
Richard Randolph http://www.co.prince-edward.va.us/travel_israelhill.shtml
Life under Slavery
The Upper and Lower South
By 1860, very few of the South’s free blacks lived in
the Lower South, and those who did were mostly in
cities. In New Orleans and Charleston, however, large
free black communities existed, and while most were
craftsmen, a few became quite wealthy. They
established their own churches and schools. In the
Upper South, where most southern free blacks lived,
they worked mostly for wages as farm labor. Some
free blacks here even owned slaves.
http://www.teachingushistory.org/lessons/BlackSlaveOwnersinCharleston.html
Table 11.3 Free Black Population, 1860
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Map 11.3 Distribution of Free Blacks, 1860
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Life under Slavery
Slave Labor
• Labor occupied most of a slave's daily existence.
• There were many types of jobs:
– Large plantations - labor in the fields to skilled labor like carpentry, engineering,
and shoemaking
– Worked on steamboats, in mines, in seaports, and on railroads
– Built roads, forts and other public buildings for state and federal government
– (cutting wood, working in mines, working on docks, artisans, field hand)
– 1860 - 200,000 worked in industry in the upper south such as ironworks and
tobacco factories
– Master rented out to do other jobs
– A few slaves were entrusted with great responsibilities, such as supervising other
slaves and white workers, selling goods, or handling money
– Simon Gray oversaw a riverboat crew on the Mississippi and managed the sale
of his owner's lumber)
Slave Labor and Conditions: http://www2.coloradocollege.edu/Dept/HY/HY243Ruiz/Research/Antebellum.html
Life under Slavery
Gang Labor and Task Labor
Large Plantations & Labor:
•
•
Most slaves worked in the Cotton Belt in the fields using a gang system of labor
(75% of women 90% of men)
Slaves who worked sugarcane in southern Louisiana also worked in gangs, in the
harshest working conditions in the South.
– Gang Labor: teams of slaves would be managed by an overseer
– Overseer: a white employee in charge of ensuring a profitable crop for the plantation
master, often brutal
Look inside the account book of an Overseer: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/living/feature.html
– Slave “Drivers”: slaves appointed by masters to positions of authority on the plantation
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/enslavement/text4/text4read.htm
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3401803120.html
Small Farms and Labor:
• Owners on small farms often labored with slaves
– Task labor: allowed slaves to take daily jobs, set their own pace, and work on their own
when they were done
• Slaves who worked on rice plantations in South Carolina and Georgia
engaged in task labor, without supervision, and had free time for the day if
they finished their daily task. Malaria was a risk in the swamps.
Map 11.4 Major Crops of the South, 1860
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Life under Slavery
Slavery in the Cities
From the slaves’ perspective, slavery in different regions of the
South could be “worse” in some respects and “better” in others.
• Slaves in rice fields faced harsh conditions but had more
independence than other slaves because of task labor and the
absence of a large white population.
• Urban slaves were most often domestic servants
– Skilled urban slave craftsmen had great autonomy and often could hire
themselves out and sometimes even keep their earnings.
– Many urban slaves even lived by themselves.
• By the 1850s, most slave owners began to remove urban
slaves to the country, fearing their independence was eroding
the relationship between master and slave.
Life under Slavery
Maintaining Order
Slavery was based on force. Slave owners used a
variety of methods to maintain order and discipline and
persuade slaves to work productively.
• Whip - it was the rare slave who was not whipped at
some point in his or her life. Even minor infractions
invited whipping.
• Reward for Good Work - They created incentives for
hard work, such as time off or even cash payments.
• Threat of sale was the most powerful weapon owners
had, since sales divided families and slave
communities.
Slave Culture
The Slave Family
• Slaves never gave up their hope for freedom or their will to resist total white
control over them.
• Created a semi-independent culture centered on the family and church,
which enabled them to survive the experience of bondage without
abandoning their self-esteem and to pass on to other generations values
that conflicted with those of their masters.
• Slave culture drew on the heritage of Africa. African influence appeared in
dance and music, forms of religious worship, and slave medicine. The end of
the foreign slave trade helped foster a particularly new African-American
culture, shaped by American and African traditions and values.
• Marriage between slaves was illegal but many slaves married, jumping over
a broomstick was part of the ceremony (in order to sweep away their former
single lives)
• Children were named after other family to retain over generations
Slavery and Family: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/family/history.html
(Skim this site for details on slave families, marriages, and hardships)
Slave Culture
The Threat of Sale
•
•
•
•
•
•
Family was the center of slave community.
Natural increase of the slave population in the United States was supported by an
equal ratio of male and female slaves, allowing for the creation of families.
Marriage - While slave marriages were not legally recognized, masters had to
consent to them and marriages were often significant events on plantations.
Separation of Families - Most slaves stayed married for life, if not disrupted by sale,
and families typically had two parents, although the sale of male slaves created a
higher number of female-headed families than in white families.
Many men and children were separated from families by sale, but so were women.
Some masters simply ignored slave families when making decisions about selling
slaves.
Threat of being sold, and thus disrupting families, was the slave owners’ greatest
weapon, and fear of being sold pervaded slave life.
Slave Culture
Gender Roles among Slaves
• In some ways, gender roles for slaves were very different than those in the
larger society.
– Slave men and women were equally powerless.
– The cult of domesticity, relegating women to the home, did not apply to
slave women.
– Slave men could not provide for their families, protect wives from
physical or sexual abuse by owners and overseers, or choose when and
how their children might work.
• When slaves worked “on their own time,” traditional gender roles prevailed.
– Slave men worked outdoors while slave women cared for children and
cooked.
• The slave family remained central to slave culture and allowed slaves to
transmit their values and traditions and strategies for survival from generation
to generation.
Slave Culture
Slave Religion
• A distinctive form of Christianity also helped slaves survive and resist
bondage. Slaves participated in the religious fervor of the Second Great
Awakening.
• Every plantation seemed to have a slave preacher, often with little education
but considerable oratorical skill and knowledge of the Bible.
• Urban slaves often established their own churches.
• Masters used Christianity as another means of control and discipline. Some
required their slaves to attend sermons reminding slaves that theft was
immoral and that servants should obey their masters.
Slavery & Religion:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/religion/history2.html
Slave Culture
The Gospel of Freedom
• Black Christianity offered hope to slaves, it combined African
traditions and Christian beliefs, identified with enslaved Jews in
Egypt, Biblical stories offered hope
Biblical Stories and Connections:
• The biblical story of Exodus in which God chooses Moses to lead the
enslaved Jews of Egypt to the promised land of freedom, was central to
black Christianity. Slaves saw themselves as a chosen people whom would
one day deliver from bondage. Christ as a redeemer who cared for the
oppressed was important.
• Other heroes from the Bible included Jonah, who escaped from the whale;
David, who bested the more powerful Goliath; and Daniel, who escaped
from the lion’s den. The Christian message of brotherhood and equality of all
before the Creator seemed to repudiate slavery.
Slave Culture
The Desire for Liberty
• Slave culture rested on a sense of the injustice of bondage
and the desire for freedom.
• Slave folklore, like Brer Rabbit stories, glorified the weak over
the strong and their spirituals emphasized eventual liberation
Brer Rabbit:
Themes of Brer Rabbit http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/78857/Brer-Rabbit
Origins of Brer Rabbit http://www.wrensnest.org/about_stories.php
Brer Rabbit Stories http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22282/22282-h/22282-h.htm
Folktales background: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/education/history.html
Resistance to Slavery
Forms of Resistance
• Slave Rebellions Rare - Outnumbered by whites and facing
federal, state, and local authorities dedicated to preserving
slavery, slaves only rarely rebelled. This does not mean that
slaves simply submitted to their condition.
• Resistance to slavery took many forms: individual acts of
disobedience to the occasional uprising.
• “Silent Sabotage" - The most common form of slave
opposition was “day-to-day resistance” or “silent sabotage”:
doing poor work, breaking tools, abusing animals, and simply
disrupting plantation routine.
• Less common ways to resist were poisoning, arson, armed
assaults
Resistance to Slavery
Fugitive Slaves
•
•
•
Escape was a serious threat to slavery’s stability. Most slaves who ran away would leave the
plantation for a day or two, simply to frustrate owners, but would return. The smaller number of
fugitive slaves who attempted to permanently escape faced considerable obstacles to freedom.
Obstacles to Escape: Little or no knowledge of geography beyond the plantation
Statistics of Escape:
– 1,000 slaves reached the North or Canada each year.
– Most fugitive slaves escaped from Upper South states, where they could more easily reach
the North.
– In the Deep South, fugitive slaves often went to cities where they could blend in with free
black communities.
Underground Railroad:
• A loose organization of sympathetic black and white abolitionists, called the “Underground
Railroad,” helped slaves runaway.
• Harriet Tubman was a fugitive slave who risked her life many times to bring others out of
slavery using a series of safe points (Underground Railroad) leading to freedom on the North
• the North Star was a guide North and led to freedom
Take a Journey on the Underground Railroad: (try both websites)
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/underground-railroad-interactive/?ar_a=1#
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/underground_railroad/index.htm
Map 11.5 Slave Resistance in the Nineteenth-Century
Atlantic World
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Resistance to Slavery
The Amistad
•
In a few cases, large groups of rebellious slaves gained their freedom. The most famous case
involved the slaves aboard the Amistad, a slave ship off the Cuban coast, in 1839. After they
seized the ship, the slaves sailed the ship up the American coast until it was seized. While
President Martin Van Buren wanted to return the slaves to Cuba, abolitionists helped the slaves
sue for freedom, and in the Supreme Court, former president John Quincy Adams defended
them. Adams argued that since the slaves had been brought from Africa in violation of
international treaties banning the slave trade, they should be freed. The Court agreed, and most
of the freed slaves emigrated back to Africa. While the Amistad case had no legal bearing on
slaves in the United States, it may have inspired later revolts on slave ships.
The Amistad: http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/amistad/amistadstory.htm
Slave Revolts
•
Slaves only rarely mounted organized rebellions within the U.S. The four largest conspiracies in
American history happened between 1800 and 1831. Gabriel’s Rebellion in 1800 was followed
in 1811 by an uprising on sugar plantations in Louisiana, in which several hundred armed
slaves who tried to march on New Orleans were defeated in a bloody encounter with militia and
federal troops. In 1822, Denmark Vesey, a slave carpenter in Charleston, South Carolina,
organized a rebellion. He quoted the Bible and the Declaration of Independence to justify armed
resistance. His plot was discovered before it was implemented, and Vesey and thirty-four other
blacks were executed.
Slave Rebellions -
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/did-african-american-slaves-rebel/
Resistance to Slavery
Nat Turner’s Rebellion
•
The most well-known slave rebel was Nat Turner, a slave preacher and mystic in Virginia, who
believed that God had appointed him to lead a black rebellion. Though he chose to launch his
uprising on July 4, 1831, it was delayed until August, when he led a handful of followers from
farm to farm, killing white families along the way. After killing dozens of whites, Turner and his
followers were captured and executed.
Impact:
• Turner’s Rebellion shocked the South and caused owners throughout the region to punish and
execute recalcitrant or suspicious slaves. In the aftermath, Virginia’s legislature passed harsh
laws further restricting slaves and the rights of free blacks. Other southern states followed suit.
The rebellion also inspired a growing movement of abolitionists in the North to demand the
immediate abolition of slavery, sparking a reaction in the South against abolition and civil
liberties that would intensify sectional hostility.
• Nat Turner Biography
http://www.biography.com/people/nat-turner-9512211
• Nat Turner Revolt http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/religion/spotlight.html
An engraving depicting Nat Turner’s slave rebellion
of 1831
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Additional Art for Chapter 11
A detail from Norman’s Chart
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
St. John Plantation, an 1861 painting by Marie
Adrien Persac
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
A plate manufactured in England to celebrate
emancipation
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Metal shackles, from around 1850.
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Slaves were an ever-present part of southern daily life.
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
A female slave drying cotton
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
In this undated photograph, men, women and children
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
A Public Whipping of Slaves in Lexington
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Virginian Luxuries.
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
A black preacher, as portrayed in Harper’sWeekly,
February 2, 1867.
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Plantation Burial.
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
A typical broadside offering a reward for the capture
of a runaway slave.
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
A lithograph depicting Joseph Cinqué
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Norton Lecture Slides
Independent and Employee-Owned
This concludes the Norton Lecture Slides
Slide Set for Chapter 11
Give Me Liberty!
AN AMERICAN HISTORY
THIRD EDITION
by
Eric Foner