Ch 16: The South and the Slavery Controvery (1793-1860)
As the 19th c opened, the reinvigoration of slaver carried fateful implications for blacks & whites alike, & threatened the survival of the union.
A) The World for Southern Whites
1. The Cotton Empire’s Economy
-Britain was tied to the South--> Southerners assumed that they ruled the world
-Cotton & greedy planters despoiled good earth w. excessive cultivationàWestward expansion
-Dangerous dependence on one crop, whose price level was at mercy of world conditions
-Temptation to overspeculate (no profit w/ material held) in land/slavesàfinancial instability
2. Social Hierarchy of Southern Whites
-Smaller “: 1,725,000 fams (1850), 2/3 of which owned fewer than 10 slaves; this category= majority of masters, but minority of slavesà small farmers who worked besides slaves
-Whites who owned no slaves: 3/4s of all southern whites; subsistence farmers, but were stoutest defenders of slavery b/c they eventually wanted to own a slave & fulfill “Am dream”
-Mountain whites: lived in Appalachians; separated from civilization & hated haughty planters & slavesà supported Lincoln's Union party & helped cripple Confederacy
B) The World for Blacks in America
1. Free Blacks: Slaves Without Masters
2. Plantation Slavery
C) The Abolitionist Movement
1. Early Abolitionism
2. Radical Abolitionism
1. The Cotton Empire’s Economy
- Prosperity from cotton dependency
-Britain was tied to the South--> Southerners assumed that they ruled the world
- Negative results
-Cotton & greedy planters despoiled good earth w. excessive cultivationàWestward expansion
-Dangerous dependence on one crop, whose price level was at mercy of world conditions
-Temptation to overspeculate (no profit w/ material held) in land/slavesàfinancial instability
2. Social Hierarchy of Southern Whites
- Oligarchy: undemocratic govt by the few, dominated by favored aristocracy
- Only ¼ white southerners owned slaves or belonged to slaveholding families.
-Smaller “: 1,725,000 fams (1850), 2/3 of which owned fewer than 10 slaves; this category= majority of masters, but minority of slavesà small farmers who worked besides slaves
-Whites who owned no slaves: 3/4s of all southern whites; subsistence farmers, but were stoutest defenders of slavery b/c they eventually wanted to own a slave & fulfill “Am dream”
-Mountain whites: lived in Appalachians; separated from civilization & hated haughty planters & slavesà supported Lincoln's Union party & helped cripple Confederacy
- Most Anglo-Saxon part of nation b/c slave labor, high cost of land, and ignorance of cotton growing repelled German & Irish immigration
B) The World for Blacks in America
1. Free Blacks: Slaves Without Masters
- Many mulattos (½ black ½ white) freed & settled in New Orleans
- S: always resented & vulnerable to being recaptured; forbidden to testify agst white in court
- N: more unpopular; denied entrance/suffrage/public edu. The Irish also detested them.
- S liked the black as individual but hated race, while N professed to like race, but hated indiv
2. Plantation Slavery
- “Black ivory” was expensive--> blacks were smuggled into the South
- Most of slave pop increase came from natural reproduction
- Planters regarded slaves as investments & were primary form of wealth in South
- Slave auctions separated families, perhaps slavery’s greatest psychological horror
- Both men & women toiled from dawn to dusk in the fields, under watchful eyes of white overseer
- No civil/pol rts (other than protectn from murder & unusu cruel punishmt, but hardly enforced)
- "Black Belt"- region where most slaves were concentrated; stretched from SC/GA into AL/MS/LA
- Nvtl, Blacks managed to sustain family life in slavery & mold unique rel forms (Xtian + Afr elems)
- Denied edu & not permitted to read
- Slowed pace of labor to barest min (no lash), sabotaged expensive equipment, poisoned food
- Pined for freedom and sometimes rebelled (tho not successfully)
C) The Abolitionist Movement
1. Early Abolitionism
- Am Colonization Society founded in 1817-->Republic of Liberia
- In 1830s, the rel spirit of 2nd Gt Awa inflamed hearts of abolitionists agst sin of slavery
2. Radical Abolitionism
- William L Garrison: militantly anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator; publicly burned a copy of Const
- Sojourner Truth: freed black woman who fought for black emancipation and women's rights.
- Frederick Douglass: lectured widely for abolitionism; looked to politics to end slavery.
- In 1832, states were moving to make the emancipation of any kind illegal.
- Nullification crisis of 1832 also silenced voice of white southern abolitionism.
- Proslavery whites launched massive defense of slavery as positive good. (supported by Bible)
- Gag Resolution required all anti-slavery appeals to be tabled without debate in House of Reps
- In 1835, fed gov ordered southern postmasters to destroy abolitionist material due to anti-abolitionist mobbing and rioting at a postal office in Charleston, South Carolina.
- Proslavery arguments widened chasm b/w backward-looking South & forward-looking North
- Abolitionists were, for a long time, unpopular in many parts of the North.
- S planters owed much $$ to northern bankers-should the Union dissolve, the debts would be lost.
- Yet by 1850s the abolitionist outcry had made a deep dent in the northern mind. Many citizens had come to see the South as the land of the unfree and the home of a hateful institution.
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