The Slavery Issue

1
The Slavery Issue
2
Slavery in History

• Biblical enslavement of Israelites in Egypt
  (Exodus Story)
• Ancient Greek/Roman societies practiced slavery
• Slavery practiced in Europe for centuries last
  slave in France not freed until the French
  Revolution in the late 1790s

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The South

• Prior to 1793, the Southern economy was weak
• Unprofitable slave system
• Jefferson (who freed 10 of his slaves), spoke of
  freeing slaves and of slavery gradually dying
  "We have a wolf by the ears"

4
Rise of King Cotton

• Cotton Kingdom developed into a huge agricultural
  factory
• Western expansion (Louisiana, Mississippi,
  Alabama)
• Slaves brought into new regions to cultivate
  cotton

5
Eli Whitneys Cotton Gin (1793)

• 50x more effective than picking cotton by hand
• Took a slave a whole day to handpick 1-3lbs of
  cotton
• Tobacco, rice, and sugar faded out

6
Trade

• Cotton a major export to Britain
• South produced 75 of worlds cotton
• For the South, the from the sale of cotton was
  used to by northern goods
• Prosperity of both the North South rested on
  slave labor for a time

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The Three Souths
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Generalizations

•   1. The further North, the cooler the climate,
  the fewer the slaves, and the lower the
  commitment to perpetuating bondage
• 2. The further South, the warmer the climate,
  the more the slaves, and the higher the
  commitment to perpetuating bondage

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Further Generalizations

• 3. Mountain whites along Appalachian Mountains
  would mostly side w/ Union
• 4. Southward flow of slaves (from sales)
  continued from 1790 to 1860
• 5. Not a unified South except from outside
  interference from the union

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Border South

• Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri
• Plantations scarce
• Tobacco main slave crop
• Unionists won out during the war
• 22 slave owners

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Middle South

• Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas
  
• Both unionist/disunions at different points
  during the war
• Many plantations
• 36 slave owners

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Lower South

• South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama,
  Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas
• Plantations prevalent
• Disunionists prevail
• 43 slave owners

13
The Planter "Aristocracy"
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South an Oligarchy

• Ruled by wealthy plantation owners
• Strong sense of obligation to serve the public
  through politics
• Chivalry, honor, hospitality, soft-spoken,
  courteous yet high-strung
• Carried on "cavalier" tradition of early
  Virginia reflected in its military academies.
• Sought to perpetuate medievalism (feudalism) that
  had died out in Europe

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Slaves and the Slave System

• The "Peculiar Institution"

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Plantation System

• Economy dominated by wealthy plantation owners
• Risky Slaves might die of disease, injure
  themselves, or run away
• One-crop economy caused resentment to the North
  who had markets/manufactures
• Repelled European immigration

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Plantation slavery

• Nearly 4 million slaves by 1860
• Legal imports of slaves ended in 1808 --
  Countless slaves smuggled in despite death
  penalty for slavers
• Increase due to natural production
• Owners rewarded slave women for many children
• Owners often fathered sizable mulatto population
  most remained slaves

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Slave Auctions

• Most revolting aspect of slavery
• Families often separated
• Slaverys greatest psychological horror
• Punishment brutal to send a message to other
  slaves not to defy masters authority
• Life in the newly emerging western areas
  particularly harsh (LA, TX, MS, AL)
• Afro-American slave culture developed

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Burdens of Slavery

• Slaves deprived of dignity and sense of
  responsibility that free people have, suffered
  cruel physical and psychological treatment, and
  were ultimately convinced that they were inferior
  and deserved their lot in life.
• Denied an education since seen as dangerous to
  give slaves ideas of freedom

21
Burdens of Slavery

•  3. Slaves often sabotaged their masters system
  -- Poisoned food, supplies often missing,
  equipment often broken, slow work.
• 4. Many attempted to escape -- Some success in
  Border South next to impossible in Lower South

22
Slave Revolts

• Stono Rebellion, 1739  -- South Carolina slaves
  fled toward Florida killing whites along way did
  not make it.
• Gabriel Prosser, 1800 -- Slave blacksmith in VA
  who planned a military slave revolt recruited
  150 men -- Rebellion did not happen and Prosser
  and 26 others were hanged

23
Slave Revolts

• 3. Denmark Vesey, 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

24
Nat Turners Revolt -- 1831

• 60 Virginians slaughtered, mostly children and
  women
• Wave of killing slowed down revolts aim of
  capturing armory
• Largest slave revolt ever in the South
• Over 100 slaves were killed in response Turner
  was hanged.   

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Significance

• Produced anxiety among southern plantation owners
  resulting in harsh laws clamping down on the
  slave institution

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The White Majority
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Slave Owners

• By 1860, only 1/4 of white southerners owned
  slaves or belonged to slave-owning families
• 75 of white southerners owned no slaves at all
• Some of the poorest known as "white trash",
  "hillbillies", "crackers", "clay eaters" --
  Suffered from malnutrition parasites esp.
  hookworm

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Social Structure

• Fiercely defended the slave system as it proved
  white superiority
• Poor whites took comfort that they were "equal"
  to wealthy neighbors
• Social status was determined by how many slaves
  one owned
• Poor Southern whites someday hoped to own slaves
  and realize the "American dream."            

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The Fear

• Slavery proved effective in controlling
  Afro-Americans ending slavery might result in
  the mixing of the races and A.A.s competing with
  whites for work

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Free A.A.s
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Quick Facts

• About 250,000 in the South by 1860
• In Border South, emancipation from revolutionary
  days increased
• In Lower South, many free blacks were mulattos
  (white father, black mother)
• Some had purchased their freedom
• Some owned property
• A few even owned slaves (rare)

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Discrimination in the South

• Prohibited from certain occupations and from
  testifying against whites in court
• Always in danger of being forced back into
  slavery by slave traders
• Became a fearful symbol of what might be achieved
  by emancipation

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Discrimination in the North

• Numbered about 250,000
• Some states forbade their entrance or denied them
  public education
• Most states denied them suffrage
• Some states segregated blacks in public
  facilities.       

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Discrimination in the North

• Especially hated by Irish immigrants with whom
  they competed with for jobs
• Much of Northern sentiment against spread of
  slavery into new territories due to intense race
  prejudice, not humanitarianism
• Anti-black feeling frequently stronger in the
  North than in the South

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Early Abolitionism
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Early Movements

• First abolitionist movements began around the
  time of the Revolution esp. Quakers
• Some of these movements focused on transporting
  blacks back to Africa

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American colonization Society

• Founded in 1817 to create practical solutions for
  free blacks if slavery was ended
• Re-colonization was the solution supported by
  many prominent Northerners and Southerners who
  were afraid that manumission would create a
  surplus of free blacks in American society

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Transplanting AAs

• Republic of Liberia established W. African Coast
  for former slaves in 1822
• 15,000 freed blacks transported over next four
  decades
• Most blacks did not wish to be removed to an
  unfamiliar environment
• Believed they were part of Americas growth had
  American culture
• By 1860, virtually all southern slaves were
  native-born Americans

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Colonization Highly Encouraged

• Colonization appealed to most Northerners and
  some anti-slavers (including Lincoln) who
  believed that blacks and whites could not coexist
  in a free society
• Some feared a mongrelization of the white race
• Others thought AAs inferior, did not want them in
  large s in their states

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Abolitionists in the 1930s

• Second Great Awakening convinced abolitionists of
  the sin of slavery
• Abolitionists inspired that Britain emancipated
  their slaves in the West Indies in 1833

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Wendell Phillips

• Perhaps most important abolitionist major impact
  on politics during the Civil War for emancipation
• One of the finest orators of the 19th century
• Product of the Puritanical fervor of the 2nd
  Great Awakening.

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Others

• David Walker -- Appeal to the Colored Citizens of
  the World (1829) -- Advocated bloody end to white
  supremacy
• Martin Delaney -- One of few blacks to seriously
  advocate black mass re-colonization in Africa
• William Lloyd Garrison Published the Liberator,
  a militant antislavery newspaper, which demanded
  that the "virtuous" North secede from the
  "wicked" South

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Elijah Lovejoy

• Militant editor of antislavery newspaper in
  Illinois
• Printing press destroyed four times 4th time
  press thrown into a river and Lovejoy was killed
  by a mob who burned his warehouse
• Became an abolitionist martyr

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Southern Payback
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In the South

• In 1820s, southern antislavery societies
  outnumbered northern ones
• After 1830s, white southern abolitionism was
  silenced

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Causes of Southern Concern

• Nat Turners revolt correspond with Garrisons
  Liberator
• South sensed a northern conspiracy and called
  Garrison a terrorist
• Georgia offered 5,000 for his arrest and
  conviction

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Nullification Crisis of 1832

• Gave southerners haunting fears of northern
  federally supported abolitionist radicals
  inciting wholesale murder in the South
• Jailing, whippings, and lynching's of
  anti-slavery whites emerged

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Abolition in the Mail

• Increasing abolitionist literature flooded
  southern mail
• Abolitionist literature banned in the Southern
  mail
• Federal Gov ordered southern postmasters to
  destroy abolitionist materials and to arrest
  federal postmasters who did not comply

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Pro-Slavery Campaign

• Defense of slavery as a positive good
• Slavery supported by the Bible (Genesis) and
  Aristotle (slavery existed in ancient Greece)
• It was good for barbarous Africans who were
  civilized and Christianized
• Master-slave relationships resembled those of a
  "family."

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George Fitzhugh

• Most famous of pro-slavery apologists
• Contrasted happiness of their slaves with the
  overworked northern wage slaves.
• Fresh air in the south as opposed to stuffy
  factories
• Full employment for blacks
• Slaves cared for in sickness and old age unlike
  northern workers

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Gag Resolution" -- 1836

• Southerners drove it through Congress
• All antislavery appeals in Congress to be ended
  without debate antislavery petitions also
  prohibited -- Seen by northerners as a threat to
  the 1st Amendment
• Rep. John Quincy. Adams waged a successful 8-year
  fight against it repealed in 1844
• (Banning of antislavery materials in the mails
  was a separate issue)

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Abolitionist Impact in the North
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The Northern View

• Abolitionists, esp. Garrison, were unpopular in
  many parts of the North
• Northerners brought up to revere the
  Constitution, which slavery was protected
• Ideal of Union (advocated by Webster others)
  had taken deep root Garrisons pleas to disunite
  was seen as dangerously radical

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Northern Dependence

• North dependent on the South for economic
  well-being
• Northern bankers owed by southern planters about
  300 million
• New England mills fed by southern cotton

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Northern Response to Radicals

• Mob outbursts
• 1835, Garrison dragged through the streets of
  Boston with a rope tied around him
• Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy killed

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Politically

• Ambitious politicians avoided abolitionists
  (e.g., Lincoln) abolitionism was political
  suicide

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Northern Psyche

• Many saw slavery as unjust, undemocratic, and
  barbaric
• Many opposed extending slavery to the newly
  acquired territories
• "Free-soilers" swelled their ranks during the
  1850s