Cover Slide
The American Pageant
Chapter 16
The South and the Slavery Controversy,
1793-1860
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
If you put a chain around
the neck of a slave, the
other end fastens itself
around you own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841
Introduction
At the dawn of the Republic when George
Washington became President, slavery
faced an uncertain future
• The idealism of the Revolution prompted
some Southern leaders to talk openly
about freeing their slaves---even Thomas
Jefferson
• Others said that slavery would die
because it was unprofitable
---Prices were depressed
---Lands were barren from overcropping
BUT …………..
• Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in
1793 changed everything
• Cotton gin made possible wide scale
cultivation of short staple cotton
• Cotton gradually became the dominant crop in
the South, crowding out tobacco, rice and
sugar
---Created an insatiable demand for labor
---Chained the slave to the cotton gin and
chained the planter to the slave
Slaves ginning cotton
Slaves ginning cotton
The invention of the cotton
gin and the spread of
cotton agriculture
throughout the American
south created an
enormous new demand for
slave workers and
changed the nature of their
work. A handful of slaves
could process large
amounts of fiber using the
revolutionary new
machine, but it took armies
of field workers to produce
the raw cotton. (Library of
Congress)
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
• The reinvigoration of southern slavery
carried fateful implications for blacks
and whites alike
• AND it threatened the very survival of
the United States as a nation
I. “Cotton is King!”
A. The Cotton Kingdom (Term for the South
that emphasized its dependence on a single
staple product.) became a huge agricultural
•
•
•
factory
Planters, seeking quick profits, moved into
the Gulf States (Louisiana, Mississippi,
Alabama), where the soil was more fertile
This meant more slaves
Then bought more land and more slaves--economic spiral
B. Northern shippers profited from this
•
•
•
Transported cotton to England where they
sold it for pounds sterling with which they
bought manufactured goods to sell in US
Britain heavily dependent on cotton to feed its
textile factories (80% came from U.S.)
Prosperity of both the North and South rested
on slavery: After 1850, the prosperity of both
the North and the South became heavily
dependent upon growing, manufacturing and
exporting cotton
C. Cotton accounted for 50% of all American
exports after 1840
1.
South produced more than half of world’s
cotton --- which meant foreign nations were
somewhat dependent on it
2. Britain was leading industrial power
• Most important export in 1850s was cotton
cloth
• 20% of British population got its livelihood
from cotton either directly or indirectly
• 75% of English cotton came from US
D. Southern leaders were aware of
England’s dependence on their cotton,
and this made them feel powerful
1. “Cotton was King”
2. They were counting on England backing
them if war ever broke out between the
North and the South
Value of Cotton Exports
As % of All US Exports
Slaves Using the Cotton Gin
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 million bales a year
(57% of total US exports).
4. Very slow development of industrialization.
5. Rudimentary financial system.
6. Inadequate transportation system.
II. The Planter “Aristocracy”
A. In the antebellum (pre-Civil War)
South, the government in some ways
seemed more like an oligarchy (rule by
the few) as opposed to a democracy,
and the “few” who ruled were the
planter aristocracy
B. Only 1,733 families owned more than
100 slaves in 1850, and these
families made up the planter
aristocracy --- or “cottonocracy”
• Provided political and social
leadership
• Lived in the plantation mansions you
see in pictures, white painted, tall
columns, sipping mint-julep, riding
their purebred horses
From the movie Gone with the Wind
This is Tara –-Hollywood’s Version of Plantation Life
C. The planter aristocrats enjoyed most
of the wealth of the South
• Children were educated at the finest
schools (often in the North or abroad)
• Their money gave them leisure time to
study and pursue statesmanship
–
–
–
John C. Calhoun---Yale graduate
Jefferson Davis (West Point graduate)
Felt keen sense of obligation to serve the
public---South produced more first class
statesmen before the Civil War than did
the North
D. But even with its good points,
dominance by the aristocracy was
undemocratic
• Widened gap between rich and poor
• Hampered tax supported public
education (as planters could afford to
send their children to private school)
E. Southern elite’s favorite author: Sir Walter
Scott, a British novelist who wrote Ivanhoe,
a romantic vision of a feudal society
•
•
•
•
•
Harked back to feudal times with
manors and castles
Ivanhoe, Rowena
Sometimes had jousting tournaments
Tried to preserve an type of medieval
society that had already died out in
Europe --- or was dying out:
Mark Twain accused Scott of starting
the Civil War by arousing southerners
to fight for a “sham civilization”
Jousting tournament
F. Southern women were also shaped by
the plantation system
•
•
•
The mistress of a plantation had a large
household staff of mostly slaves
Ordered the servants around
Relationships between mistresses and
slaves ran the gamut from good to awful
---Some slaves were regarded as family
members
---Yet none argued for abolition and few
protested when husbands and children of
slaves were sold
Virginia Planter's Family by August Köllner, 1845
Virginia Planter's Family by August Köllner, 1845
As August Köllner's 1845 painting shows, a southern woman was
expected to be a loving and subservient wife to her plantation
husband, but she was also expected to be a harsh mistress toward
her black servants. ("Virginia Planters Family" by A. Kollner, 1845.
Library of Congress)
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
III. Slaves of the Slave System
A. The quick profits in growing cotton led
to excessive cultivation or “land
butchery,” slowly destroying the land
and causing much of the population to
move to the West and Northwest
B. The economic structure of the South
became increasingly monopolistic
•
•
As the land wore thin, many small
farmers sold their land to their more
prosperous neighbors and moved to
the West or Northwest
Large farmers got bigger, small
farmers got smaller
C. The plantation system was financially
unstable
•
•
•
Temptation to overspeculate in land and
slaves
Many planters plunged deep into debt
Slaves represented a heavy investment--perhaps $1200 apiece
---Could be fed for 10 cents a day but there
were other expenses
---Slave might injure himself on purpose or
otherwise or might run away
---Entire slave quarter might be wiped out
by illness or lightening
D. South had one crop economy
•
•
•
Price level was at the mercy of world
conditions
System discouraged diversification of
agriculture and industrialization
Thus, the growing of cotton on large
plantations was economically
inefficient and agriculturally unsound
E. The South came to resent the fact that
the North was growing rich at their
expense
•
•
Northern middlemen --- bankers, agents,
shippers --- took their share of the profits of
the South
Southerners were born and wrapped in
Yankee-made blankets and swaddling,
served the Yankees for their entire life,
when they died they were placed in coffins
held together with Yankee made nails and
buried in graves dug with Yankee shovels -- the South furnished the corpse and the
hole in the ground
F. The Cotton Kingdom was not attractive to
European immigrants so the South lacked
the manpower of the North
•
In 1860, only 4.4% of the South was
foreign born as compared to 18.7% of the
North
• German and Irish immigration was
discouraged, because
---The slaves had the jobs they might
ordinarily have taken
---Fertile land too costly
---Ignorant of how to grow cotton
G. South was the most Anglo-Saxon section of the
country
IV. The White Majority
A. In the South of the 1850s, only a
handful of southern whites lived in the
opulence of Gone with the Wind
1. Only 1,733 families owned a
hundred or more slaves
The Southern “Belle”
2. Below them were the less wealthy
landowners
•
•
345,000 families (1,725,000 white
people) who owned less than 100
slaves
Over 2/3 of these owned less than 10
slaves
Slave-Owning Families (1850)
3. Only ¼ of white Southerners owned
slaves or belonged to a slaveowning
family, which means that ¾
of
Southern landowners
owned no slaves at all
B. Small slaveowners made up a majority
of slaveowners (although they did not own
a majority of slaves)
1. Except for owning a slave or two, their
life style resembled that of small
farmers in the North more than it did
the Southern planter aristocracy
2. Lived in modest farmhouses and
worked side by side with their slaves
Slave-Owning Population (1850)
C. Beneath the slave owners was the great
mass of whites who owned no slaves at
all
1. By 1860, they numbered 6,120,825 --3/4 of southern landowners
2. Pushed off the rich lands by the big
planters
3. Planted on the backcountry or mountain
valley soil, which was thinner
4. These were red necked yeoman who in
no way resembled GWTW and in fact
sneered at their pretensions
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%]
5. Some of the least prosperous
nonslaveholding whites were scorned
even by slaves as
•
•
•
•
Poor white trash (term dates
back to the 1820s)
Hillbillies
Crackers
Clay eaters*
Clay eating is called geophagia and may be related to
anemia (iron deficiency)
6.
These people were said to be misshapen,
but may have just been suffering from
malnutrition and parasites --- especially
hookworm
Hookworm enters the human body through a break in the skin.
Hookworm can cause anemia
7. All of these whites without slaves had no
direct stake in the preservation of slavery,
but they still defended the slave system
Question:
Why?????
Answer:
•
•
The carrot on the stick: The hope of one
day having the money to buy a slave or two
and of parlay their holdings into riches
--- American dream
--- Upward mobility
They also took pride in their racial
superiority: Were hardly better off than
some slaves and in some cases, were
worse off, yet they felt good that they
outranked someone and they felt racially
superior
D. The southern mountain whites were in a
special category
•
They lived in the valleys of the Appalachian
range from Virginia to northern Georgia and
Alabama under Spartan conditions
•
Anachronistic --- retained Elizabethan
speech forms and habits
•
Independent small farmers hundreds of
miles distant from the cotton kingdom and
slavery
• Hated the haughty planters and their slaves
• Andrew Jackson was one of them
• Saw the impeding Civil War as a “rich man’s
war but a poor man’s fight”
• When the war came, they constituted a
“peninsula of unionism”
V. Free Blacks: Slaves without Masters
A. By 1860, there were 250,000 free blacks in
the South, and their position was extremely
precarious
•
In the upper South, genesis of free black
population was a small wave of emancipation
inspired by the idealism of the Revolution
• In the deep south, many free blacks were
mulattoes, usually the emancipated children
of a white planter and his black mistress
• Throughout the South, there were free blacks
who had purchased their freedom with
earnings from after hours work
B. Many free blacks owned property and some
even owned slaves
•
•
William T. Johnson, the “barber of Natchez”
Johnson’s diary shows in June of 1848, he
flogged two slaves and a mule
William Johnson’s house
in Natchez, Mississippi
William Johnson’s diary
A barber shop, Richmond, 1861
A barber shop, Richmond, Virginia---1861
Free blacks dominated the barber's trade in Richmond on
the eve of the Civil War. As meeting places for men, barber
shops supplied newspapers and political discussion. Black
barbers were politically informed and prosperous. As was
the custom at the time, barbers also performed medical
procedures like drawing blood. (Valentine Museum, Cook Collection)
C. Free blacks in the South were a sort of
third race --- neither black or white
•
•
•
•
They were prohibited from certain
occupations
They were prohibited from testifying against
whites in court
They were always vulnerable to being
hijacked back into slavery by unscrupulous
slave traders
They were resented by defenders of slave
system, Who feared they could become role
models for slaves!!!!
D. Free blacks were also unpopular in the North
where another 250,000 of them lived
•
•
•
•
•
•
Several states forbade their entrance, and most states
denied them the right to vote
Some barred them from public schools --- In 1835,
New Hampshire farmers destroyed a school that
enrolled 14 blacks, hitched their oxen to it and
dragged it into a swamp
Northern blacks were especially hated by the Irish
Much of the agitation in the North against the spread
of slavery into the new territories in the 1840’s and
1850’s grew out of racial prejudice and not
humanitarianism
Anti-black sentiment was often stronger in the North
than in the South
Frederick Douglass, former slave, was several times
mobbed and beaten by northern rowdies
Free blacks had a
difficult life in both the
North and the South
before the Civil War.
E. It was observed that Southerners, who
were often raised by blacks, liked the
blacks as individuals but despised the
race; Northerners, on the other hand,
often professed to like the race but
disliked individual blacks
VI. Plantation Slavery
A. At the bottom of the social ladder in the
South of 1860 were the nearly 4,000,000
slaves
1. Legal importation of slaves ended in
1808; however, they were still being
smuggled despite death penalty for slavers
•
Several thousand were captured, but
southern juries repeatedly acquitted them
• Only one slave trader was ever executed,
and that was in New York in the second
year of the Civil War
2. Slave population had quadrupled since the start
of the country, but this was mostly due to
natural reproduction
•
•
•
Slave owners considered slaves to be
investments into which they had sunk
nearly $2 billion of capital by 1860 and
generally treated their slaves as a
valuable economic investment
Slaves were the primary form of wealth
in the South and were cared for as an
asset is cared for by a prudent capitalist
Sometimes they were spared dangerous
work (roofing a house, tunnel blasting,
swamp draining) and an Irish laborer was
hired --- if someone is going to break a
neck, let it be the Irishman and not a
prime field hand
Scarlet and Mammie
(Hollywood Again!)
A Real Mammie & Her Charge
Slaves Working
in a Sugar-Boiling House, 1823
B. Slavery was profitable for large plantations,
but it stunted the economic development
of the region as a whole
•
•
Cotton sucked slaves from the upper
South to the lower South
Breeding of slaves was not openly
encouraged but it happened --women who bore 10 children were
promised freedom
C. Slave auctions were brutal
1.
Human flesh being sold, sometimes with
cattle and horses
2. Families were separated, usually for
economic reasons (bankruptcy)
3. Breaking up of families was probably the
greatest psychological horror of slavery
• Abolitionists decried it
• Harriet Beecher Stowe seized on the
emotional power of this in her book Uncle
Tom’s Cabin
Slave Auction Notice, 1823
Slave Auction:
Charleston, South Carolina---1856
The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave by Henry Byam Martin, 1833
The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave by Henry Byam Martin,
1833
White southerners could not escape the fact that much of the Western world
loathed their "peculiar institution." In 1833, when a Canadian sketched this
Charleston slave auction, Britain abolished slavery in the West Indies.
(National Archives of Canada)
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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
VII. Life Under the Lash
A. There is no simple answer to the questions, “How
did slaves live?”
1. Conditions varied from region to region, from
plantation to small farm, from master to master
2. Slavery always meant hard work, toiling from
dawn to dusk in the fields being watched
constantly by a white overseer or a black “driver”
3. Slaves had no political rights other than minimal
protection from arbitrary murder or cruel
punishment
4. Some states banned the sale of a child under 10,
but laws hard to enforce
5. Slaves were forbidden to testify in court
Slave Accoutrements
Slave Master
Brands
Slave muzzle
Slave Accoutrements
Slave leg irons
Slave shoes
Slave tag, SC
Torture Mask, woodcut, 1807
Torture Mask, woodcut,
1807
The laws of southern states
had long stipulated that
masters could use whatever
means they deemed
necessary to prevent slave
runaways and insolence. In
the early 1800s, some
planters adopted this socalled restraining mask to
punish slaves. (Library of
Congress)
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
6. Floggings were common
•
•
•
•
Substitute for wage incentive program
Strong willed slaves were sent to
“breakers” who relied on the lash to
whip them into submission
However, lash marks hurt resale value
and made the workers sullen
For financial and humane reasons,
beatings probably weren’t too common
From Frederick Douglass’s biography
After being on the farm for one week, Frederick was given a serious
beating for letting an oxen team run wild. During the months to follow,
he was continually whipped until he began to feel that he was "broken".
On one hot August afternoon his strength failed him and he collapsed
in the field. Covey kicked and beat Frederick to no avail and finally
walked away in disgust. Frederick mustered the strength to get up and
walk to the Auld farm, where he pleaded with his master to let him stay.
Auld had little sympathy for him and sent him back to Covey. Beaten
down as Frederick was, he found the strength to rebel when Covey
began tying him to a post in preparation for a whipping. "At that
moment – from whence came the spirit I don't know - I resolved to
fight," Frederick wrote. "I seized Covey hard by the throat, and as I did
so, I rose." Covey and Frederick fought for almost two hours until
Covey finally gave up telling Frederick that his beating would have
been less severe had he not resisted. "The truth was," said Frederick,
"that he had not whipped me at all." Frederick had discovered an
important truth: Men are whipped oftenist who are whipped easiest."
He was lucky, legally, a slave could be killed for resisting his master.
But Covey had a reputation to protect and did not want it known that he
could not control a 16 year old boy.
B. By 1860, most slaves were concentrated in
the “black belt” of the Deep South that stretched
from South Carolina and Georgia into the new
southwest states of Alabama, Mississippi and
Louisiana
1.
This is the area into which the Cotton
Kingdom had spread explosively
2. This was the frontier and the life of the
slaves was harsher here than it was in the
deep South
C. Most slaves lived on large plantations with
20 or more slaves
D. In some parts of the South, blacks were
more than 75% of the population
• Family life here tended to be stable and
distinctive African-American culture
developed
• Forced separations of spouses, parents and
children were more common on smaller
plantations and in the upper South
• Slave marriage vows: “Until death or
distance do you part”
• Most slaves were raised in stable, two
parent homes
• Avoided marriage between first cousins, as
opposed to the planter aristocracy
A Slave Family
E. African roots were visible in their religion
1.
2.
3.
4.
Heavily Christianized due to the Second Great
Awakening, but molded their own religion from
elements of African and Christian religions
Emphasized the part of Christianity that was
pertinent to their own situation, especially the
captivity of the Israelites in Egypt
Spirituals
Tell old Pharaoh
“Let my people go.”
Nobody knows de trouble I’ve had
Nobody know but Jesus
African practice of responsorial style of preaching
in which congregation punctuates the minister’s
remarks with assents and amens
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. [especially
spirituals].
Southern Agriculture
Slaves Picking Cotton
on a Mississippi Plantation
Slaves posing
in front of
their cabin on
a Southern
plantation.
VIII. The Burdens of Bondage
A. Slavery, the “peculiar institution,” was
intolerably degrading to the victims, who
were deprived of dignity and sense of
responsibility that comes from independence
and the right to make choices
•
Denied an education because reading
brought ideas and ideas discontent
• Many states passed laws forbidding
instruction
• At the start of the Civil War, about 9/10 of
the slaves were totally illiterate
• For slaves, the “American dream” was nonexistent
B. Slaves devised countless
ways to get back at their masters
•
•
•
•
Slowing pace of work, thus fostering the
myth of black “laziness”
Appropriated food and other goods that they
had produced from the “big house”
Sabotaged expensive equipment, thus
stopping the work routine until it could be
fixed
Sometimes even poisoned their masters
Slave Resistance
1. Refusal to work hard.
2. Isolated acts of sabotage.
3. Escape via the Underground Railroad.
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.].
C. Slaves pined for freedom, and some
rebelled, but they were never
successful
1.Stono Rebellion, 1739 -- South
Carolina slaves fled toward Florida
killing whites along way; did not
make it.
2. Gabriel Prosser, 1800
•
•
Slave blacksmith in
Virginia who planned
a military slave revolt;
recruited 150 men (or
1,000 men,
depending on source)
Rebellion did not
materialize and
Prosser and 34
others were hanged.
3. Denmark Vesey
•Vesey was a mulatto in
Charleston, devised the
largest revolt ever in
1822
•A slave informer advised
his master of the plot
•Vesey and 30 others
publicly hanged
4. Nat Turner’s revolt -- 1831
• Sixty Virginians slaughtered, mostly
children and women
•Wave of killing slowed down revolt’s aim of
capturing armory
•Largest slave revolt ever in the South
•Reprisals were swift and bloody: Over 100
slaves were killed in response; Turner was
hanged
•Significance: Produced a wave of anxiety
among southern plantation owners that
resulted in harsh laws clamping down further
on the slave institution
Nat Turner, artist unknown
No pictures of famed slave revolt leader Nat Turner are
known to exist, but this nineteenth-century painting
illustrates how one artist imagined the appearance of
Turner and his fellow conspirators. White southerners
lived in terror of scenes such as this and passed severe
laws designed to prevent African Americans from ever
having such meetings. (Granger Collection)
Slave Rebellions in the Antebellum South:
Nat Turner, 1831
There were many lurid tales that fanned the flames of fear
in white Southerners.
Caption reads: "The above is intended to represent the
horrid Massacre of the Whites in Florida, in December
1835, and January, February, March and April 1836,
when near Four Hundred (including women and children)
fell victim to the barbarity of the Negroes and Indians."
Southern Population
Slave Rebellions Throughout the Americas
D. Slavery left its mark on whites, too
1. Brutality of the whip, bloodhound,
branding iron
2. White southerners lived in a state of
siege
• Propaganda from the North
• Felt they were racially superior
• South became backwards
E. Booker T. Washington said whites
could not hold slaves down in the ditch
without getting down there with them
XIX. Early Abolitionism
A. Because of the inhumanity of the “peculiar
institution,” antislavery societies began to
develop
B. First stirrings of abolitionism came from the
Quakers about the time of the Revolution
• There was widespread loathing of blacks,
so early efforts concentrated on transporting
them back to Africa
• The American Colonization Society founded
in 1817
American Colonization Society
•
•
•
•
1822 --- Republic of Liberia was
founded on the West Coast of Africa
Established by former slaves
Capital is Monrovia---named after
President Monroe
15,000 free blacks transported there
over the next decade
Abolitionist Movement
1816  American Colonization Society
created gradual, voluntary
emancipation.
British Colonization Society symbol
C. HOWEVER, most blacks did not wish to be
transported into a strange civilization after
being partially Americanized
•
•
By 1860, all slaves were native born
Americans with their own distinctive
history and culture
Yet, colonization appealed to many,
including Abraham Lincoln
D. In the 1830’s, abolition movement got
new energy and became an actual
crusade
• 1833, Britain freed slaves in the West
Indies and American abolitionists took
heart
• Second Great Awakening gave many
abolitionists religious zeal to make
abolitionism a holy war
Anti-Slave Pamphlet
E. Anti-slavery crusaders
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Theodore Dwight Weld had been moved by Charles Grandison
Finney in New York’s Burned Over District in the 1820s
Weld was aided materially by two wealthy NY merchants:
Arthur and Lewis Tappan who paid Weld’s way to Lane
Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was presided
over by …
Lyman Beecher, father of Harriet Beecher Stowe, reformer
Catherine Beecher, and preacher-abolitionist Henry Ward
Beecher
Weld was expelled from Lane in 1834 for organizing 18 day
debate on slavery---he and the other “Lane Rebels” who were
expelled with him fanned out across the Old Northwest and
preached antislavery gospel
Weld married Angelina Grimke, a southern abolitionist.
Weld wrote propaganda pamphlet in 1839: American Slavery
As It Is
---Powerful anti-slavery tract
---Influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe
Other White Abolitionists
Lewis Tappan
James Birney
Liberty Party.
Ran for President in
1840 & 1844.
Arthur Tappan
Anti-Slavery Alphabet
XX. Radical Abolitionism
A. On January 1, 1831, William Lloyd
Garrison published the first edition of
his militantly antislavery newspaper,
The Liberator
B. Garrison was
• Twenty six years old
• A spiritual child of the Second Great
Awakening
• Emotionally high strong, child of an
alcoholic father
The Liberator
Premiere issue  January 1, 1831
R2-5
Garrison’s opening editorial said:
I will be as harsh as truth and as
uncompromising as justice . . . I
am in earnest---I will not
equivocate --- I will not excuse --I will not retreat a single inch --and I WILL BE HEARD.
C. Garrison demanded "virtuous" North secede
from the "wicked" South
•
•
•
•
Yet, he never explained how such an act would
end southern slavery
He was criticized by even some of his followers
for offering no solution
His detractors said he was more interested in his
own righteousness than he was in ending
slavery and he was never popular in the North
He renounced politics and on July 4, 1854, he
publicly burned a copy of the US Constitution
William Lloyd Garrison
(1801-1879)
Said slavery & Masonry
undermined republican
values
Called for immediate
emancipation
with NO compensation
Said slavery was a
moral, not
an economic issue
D. Garrison inspired dedicated abolitionists like Wendell
Phillips to found the American Anti-Slavery Society in
1833. Wendell Phillips . .
1. Was an ostracized Boston patrician--his family tried to have him declared
insane
2. Was called "abolition’s golden
trumpet“, because he was one of the
finest orators of the 19th century
3. Would eat no cane sugar and wear
no cotton clothing
4. Was perhaps most important
abolitionist; major impact on politics
during the Civil War for emancipation
5. Followed Garrison’s views until
political reason took him in new
direction in 1860s
American Anti-Slavery
Almanac, 1840
Northern antislavery
propagandists indicted the
southern way of life, not just
slavery. These illustrations
depict the South as a region
of lynchings, duels, cockfights,
and everyday brawls. Even
northerners who opposed the
abolition of slavery resolved to
keep slaveholders out of the
western territories. (Library
of Congress)
E. Black Abolitionists
1. David Walker (1785-1830)
1829 Wrote --> Appeal to the
Coloured Citizens of the World
MESSAGE: Fight for freedom rather than
wait to be set free by whites.
Advocated a bloody end to white supremacy
FROM: Appeal to the Coloured
Citizens of the World
Let no man of us budge one step, and let slaveholders come to beat us from our country.
America is more our country, than it is the
whites — we have enriched it with our blood
and tears. The greatest riches in all America
have arisen from our blood and tears: — and
will they drive us from our property and
homes, which we have earned with our
blood?
– David Walker
2. Sojourner Truth (1787-1883)
or Isabella Baumfree
•Freed black woman in
New York
•Fought for
emancipation & women’s
rights
•1850 --> The
Narrative of Sojourner
Truth
3. Martin Delaney
• One of few blacks to
seriously advocate black
mass recolonization in
Africa
• In 1859, he visited West
Africa’s Niger Valley
looking for a suitable
location
And the greatest of
all black
abolitionists was . . .
.
4. Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
Frederick Douglass
•
•
•
•
•
•
Former slave who escaped slavery at age 21
In 1841, abolitionists were stunned at an
impromptu speech he gave at an antislavery
meeting in Massachusetts
Lectured widely for the cause despite many
beatings and threats
Published The North Star, his own abolitionist
newspaper
Wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass -- Depicted his life as a slave, his
struggle to read & write & his escape to North
Flexibly practical (in contrast to Garrison who
was stubbornly principled)
Douglass looked
to politics to end
slavery -- Backed
the Liberty party
in 1840, the Free
Soil Party in
1848, and the
Republican party
in the 1850s
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
Abolitionists eventually were
forced to confront the age old
question: When is evil so
enormous that it must be
denounced, even at the risk of
precipitating bloodshed and
butchery?
John Stuart Mill, British philosopher:
War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of
things. The decayed and degraded
state of moral and patriotic feeling which
thinks that nothing is worth war is much
worse. The person who has nothing for
which he is willing to fight, nothing
which is more important than his own
personal safety, is a miserable creature
and has no chance of being free unless
made and kept so by the exertions of
better men than himself.
Free Soil Party
Free Soil!
Free Speech!
Free Labor!
Free Men!
 “Barnburners” – discontented northern Democrats.
 Anti-slave members of the Liberty and Whig Parties.
 Opposition to the extension of slavery in the new territories!
XXI. The South Lashes Back
A. In 1820s, Southern antislavery
societies outnumbered northern ones,
but after 1830s , abolitionism south of
the Mason Dixon line (the line dividing
the North and South) was silenced
B. Virginia legislature debated and
eventually defeated various proposals
for emancipation in 1831-1832
Colonel and Mrs. James A Whiteside, Son Charles & Servants
by James A. Cameron
This portrait captures the patriarchy as well as the
graciousness that whites associated with the ideal plantation.
The slave waiter, nurse and planter's wife all appear
overshadowed by the master's presence.
Minor Winn Gracey and
Mourning Smith Gracey
by William Frye, 1851
This grand portrait of
Minor Winn Gracey and
his wife, Mourning Smith
Gracey, of Alabama,
celebrates the planter
class's wealth and status
in the artifacts
surrounding the couple.
C. What silenced Southern abolitionism?
1. Nat Turner’s revolt coincided with Garrisons
Liberator
•
South sensed a northern conspiracy and
called Garrison a terrorist
• Georgia offered $5,000 for his arrest and
conviction
2. Nullification Crisis of 1832
• Gave southerners haunting fears of northern
federally supported abolitionist radicals
inciting wholesale murder in the South
• Jailings, whippings, and lynchings of antislavery whites emerged
AND . . . . .
3. Increasing abolitionist literature that
flooded southern mails
•
•
Abolitionist literature banned in the
Southern mails
Federal government ordered southern
postmasters to destroy abolitionist
materials and to arrest federal
postmasters who did not comply
C. Pro-slavery whites responded by
launching a massive defense of
slavery as a positive good
1. Argument: Slavery was supported by
the Bible (Genesis) and Aristotle
(slavery existed in ancient Greece)
2. Argument: Slavery was good for
barbarous Africans who were civilized
and Christianized
Southern Pro-Slavery Propaganda
Catechism for blacks:
Question: Who gave you a master and a
mistress?
Answer: God gave them to me?
Question: Who says you must obey them?
Answer: God says that I must.
Question: What book tells you these things?
Answer: The Bible
Question: Does God love to work?
Answer: Yes, God is always at work.
Question: Do the angels work?
Answer: Yes, they do what God tells them.
Question: Do they love to work?
Answer: Yes, they love to please God.
3. Master-slave relationships resembled those of a
"family" which may have been true of some of the
Old South in Virginia and Maryland
Slave’s tombstone:
John:
A faithful servant:
Kindly, and considerate:
Loyal, and affectionate:
The family he served
Horours him in death:
But, in life they gave him love:
For he was one of them
4. George Fitzhugh was the most famous
of pro-slavery apologists
Contrasted happiness of their slaves with the
overworked northern wage slaves
• Fresh air for slaves in the South as opposed
to stuffy factories for workers in the North
• Full employment for slaves in the South
• Slaves in the South were cared for in
sickness and old age unlike Northern
workers
Slavery As It Exists In America. Slavery As
It Exists In England.1851.
In the first scene black slaves dance and play,
observed by four white men--two Southerners and
two Northerners. The southern gentleman comments
to the Northerner: "It is a general thing, some few
exceptions, after mine have done a certain amount of
labor, which they finish by 4 or 5 P.M., I allow them
to enjoy themselves in any reasonable way."
In the second scene, which takes place at a British
textile factory. Notice the conversation between two
barefoot youths: "I say Bill, I am going to run away
from the Factory, and go to the Coal Mines where
they have to work only 14 hours a Day instead of 17
as you do here." Behind them, an impoverished
mother comments about life in the factory: "Oh
Dear! what wretched Slaves, this Factory Life makes
me & my children." The idea that slaves enjoyed a
higher standard of living compared to industrial
workers in Northern U. S. and British cities, meaning
better diets and better working conditions, was
commonly argued in defense of slavery. For southern
apologists for slavery, the wage slavery of England
and the northern states was worse than actual
slavery because employers felt no responsibility for
the welfare of their "wage slaves."
D. The pro slavery arguments of the South only
widened the divide between the North
(forward looking) and the South (backward
looking), and the south became intolerant of
any dissent
E. Anti-slavery reformers sent piles of petitions
to Congress, so in retaliation, Southerners
drove a "gag resolution" through Congress
in 1836
1. All antislavery appeals in Congress to be
ended without debate; antislavery petitions
also prohibited -- Seen by northerners as a
threat to the 1st Amendment
2. Rep. John Quincy. Adams waged a
successful 8-year fight against it; repealed
in 1844
F. Southerners also resented the amount of antislavery propaganda that was flooding their
mails
1.
Blacks couldn’t usually read, but they could
interpret the incendiary drawings (like masters
knocking out the teeth of their salves with clubs)
2. In 1835, a mob in Charleston, South Carolina
looted a post office and burned a pile of
abolitionist propaganda
3. Washington government capitulated to
Southern pressure
• Ordered southern postmasters to destroy
abolitionist materials
• Ordered state officials to arrest federal
postmasters who did not comply
XXII. The Abolitionist Impact in the North
A.
•
•
Abolitionists were not very popular in the North, and
this was especially true of the extreme ones like
William Lloyd Garrison and his followers
Most Northerners had great respect for the
Constitution, and Garrison’s talk of secession upset
many Northerners
The North also had a large economic stake in the
South
---By late 1850s, Southern planters owed Northern
bankers and other creditors lots of money ($300
million), which would be lost should the Union dissolve
---Northern (New England) textile mills depended on
cotton from the South
---Thus North and South were tied together, and the
antics of Garrison and his followers were threatening
The need of Northern factories
for Southern cotton created
an alliance between “the
lords of the lash and the
lords of the loom.”
B. Rabble-rousing by abolitionists in the North
provoked many mob outbursts in the North
1.
2.
3.
•
•
•
1834 --- gang broke into New York home of Louis
Tappan in demolished interior while a crowd on
the street cheered
1835 --- Garrison was dragged through the
streets of Boston with a rope tied around him by
Broadcloth Mob --- Garrison escaped
Reverend Elijah Lovejoy of Alton, Illinois was the
militant editor of antislavery newspaper in Illinois
Also impugned (assailed by words or arguments,
attacked) the chastity (purity) of Catholic women
His printing press was destroyed 4 times---the 4th
time (1837) press thrown into a river and Lovejoy
was killed by a mob who promptly burned his
warehouse
Became an abolitionist martyr
C. Nevertheless, by 1850, abolitionist outcry had
made its impact on the minds of the
Northerners
•
•
Many Northerners came to see the South
as land of the unfree and oppression
Not many Northerners proposed the
outright abolition of slavery, but many
wanted to make sure it did not spread
into the Western territories --- hence the
name “free soilers”
D. Eventually, most abolitionists (including pacifist
Garrison) would support the Civil War to end slavery