Chapter 16 The South and the Slavery Controversy
Testing the New Nation
- Civil War of 1861-1865 trial by fire of American nationhood.
o Lincoln: “All Americans knew that slavery was somehow the cause of this war”
o In Gettysburg Address, the war tested whether any nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…can endure”
- Slavery a “peculiar institution”
o Rooted in racism and economic exploitation
o Depended for its survival on brutal repression.
o Enslaved population in America only one to grow by own biological reproduction
§ HV this suggests American slave society less harsh and African-American culture managed to flourish.
§ HV was a scar in the model of social and political enlightenment.
- Nation had lived uneasily with slavery in the beginning.
o Thomas Jefferson only one among founding generation who felt conflict b/w equality and slavery.
o Early government banned slavery in Old Northwest 1787 and prohibited further importation of slaves by 1808
§ Also in MO Compromise declared that western territories above southern border of MO to be free states forever.
o MW southerners increasing dependent on slavery, esp with Eli Whitney’s invention of cotton gin.
- Controversy over slavery intensified from war w/ Mexico in 1840s.
o “Mexico will poison us” predicted Ralph Waldo Emerson.
o True, as lands from Mexico (most of SW today from Texas to California) reopened question of slavery
§ Following 1846-1861 had series of ultimately ineffective efforts to answer question
· Incl. Compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott case of 1857.
- AR issue to be resolved through arms.
- Lincoln also insisted war was about viability of a Union as well as strength of democracy itself.
o Could democratic gov rightfully deny some of its citizens its rights?
§ Southern rebels called the conflict “The War for Southern Independence”
- Civil War would end slavery and est. supremacy of the Union.
o HV victorious Union would set to “reconstruction” after the war’s end in 1865 and combination of weak northern will and residual southern power frustrated goal of making the freed blacks full American citizens.
Beginning: The South and the Slavery Controversey
- From Revolutionary idealism, some southern leaders like TJ openly talked of freeing slaves > others predicted slavery would eventually be unprofitable.
- HV Eli Whitney’s cotton gin 1793 made wide-scale cultivation of short-staple cotton possiblie.
o AR became dominant southern crop, eclipsing tobacco, rice and sugar.
o AR created an insatiable demand for labor, planters became overdependent on slaves
“Cotton is King!”
- Cotton Kingdom develops into huge agricultural factory.
o Quick profits drew planters to virgin lands of Gulf states.
o When soil was still good, yield was bountiful.
o AR slavers brought more slaves and land to grow more cotton.
- Northern shippers gained from cotton trade
o Loaded cotton to southern ports and transported them to England.
- AR to some degree prosperity of North and South relied on slavery
- Cotton accounted for half the value of all American exports of 1840
o Produced more than half of world’s supply of cotton.
- AR held foreign nations in partial bondage.
o MW Britain was leading industrial power
- Most single manufacturer in 1850s was cotton cloth where 1/5 of its population depended on its livelihood
· Where 75% of supply came from American.
- AR slavers in southerner states had considerable power over Britain
o “Cotton was King”
o If North and South broke out in war, then northern warships would cut off outflow of cotton.
- AR British would be fiber-famished and starving mobs would force London gov to break blockade and South would triumph.
The Planter “Aristocracy”
- Before Civil War South was more of an oligarchy (government by few)
o 1850 only 1733 families owned more than 100 slaves.
§ Select group were political and social leaders of the section where in the “big house” they dwelt with “cottonocracy”
§ Would educate children in finest schools (often in North or abroad)
§ Money provided leisure for study, reflection and stagecraft
· Incl. John C Calhoun and Jefferson Davis.
· Had felt keen sense to serve the public.
§ AR Virginia and other southern states had higher proportion of front-rank statesmen before 1860
o HV aristocracy basically undemocratic
§ Prevented tax-supported public education as planters sent children to private institutions.
o Favorite author of elite southerners was Sir Walter Scott who helped idealize a feudal society even when many of their economic activities were capitalistic.
§ Had stirred southern elitists to revive medievalism that was dying out in Europe.
§ Later Mark Twain accused Sir Wlater Scott of having a hand in starting the Civil War for arousing the southerners to fight for a decaying social structure.
o Southern structure boosted women social status
§ Mistress of great planter commanded sizeable household staff of female slaves.
§ Varying relations
§ HV no women slave-holders believed in abolition
Slaves of the Slave System
- Plant agriculture was wasteful as King cotton and subjects quickly despoiled earth.
o Quick profits à excessive cultivation à “land butchery” which promoted western expansion.
- Economic structure became increasingly monopolistic
o Small farmers sold to wealthy planters and moved west as land became increasingly thin.
§ Big got bigger and small got smaller.
- South marked by financial instability
o Temptation to over speculate land tempted many (incl Andrew Jackson) caused many to buy a lot of slaves
§ Slaves were cheap to keep alive, but represented heavy investment of $1200 each
· Might deliberately hurt themselves or run away, or die to disease.
o Led to dependence on a one-crop economy.
§ Discouraged a healthy diversification of agriculture > “putting all of one’s eggs in a basket”
o Also opposed Northerners prosperity at the southerner’s expense.
§ Heavy outward flow of commissions and interest to northerners due to their dependence on Yankee manufacturing.
- Also repelled large-scale European immigration
o Instead had added to manpower and wealth of the North
§ 1860 4.4% of southern population were foreign-born
§ same year 18.7% in North
o German + Irish immigration to South generally discouraged due to competition of slave labor, high cost of fertile land and by European ignorance of cotton growing.
o AR South was most Anglo-Saxon section of nation.
The White Majority
- Down from wealthy slaveowners were less wealthy slaveowners.
§ 345,000 families where over 2/3 owned less than 10 slaves.
§ TF ¼ of white southerners owned slaves.
· Where smaller slave families who owned a slave or two resembled the small farmers in the North more than that of southern planter.
· Worked just as hard as their slaves.
o Then came body of whites with no slaves at all.
§ 1860 ¾ of all southern whites owned no slaves at all and were sustenance farmers for corn and hogs, not cotton.
§ Many were not simply lazy but sick, suffering from malnutrition and parasites, esp. hookworm.
· “Poor white trash” > called by even slaves.
§ HV were the strongest defenders of the slave system.
· Had hope of buying a slave or two to move up with “American dream” in social mobility.
· Also took pride in racial superiority.
o Even though most of them not economically well off as slaves.
§ MW included mountain whites in valleys of Appalachian range
· Lived under frontier conditions and ancient traditions.
· Ex: retaining Elizabethan speech forms that long died out in Britain.
· Like the whites of the flatlands, hated both planters and their slaves
o Included Andrew Johnson of Tennessee.
o Where Civil War viewed as “a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight”
· Would become important part of the Union Party in the Civil War, crippling the Confederacy.
o Would be the only concentrated Republican strength in solid South.
Free Blacks: Slaves without Masters
- About 250,000 free blacks in 1860 South.
§ In upper south, free black population due to emancipation inspired by idealism of Revolutionary Days
§ Deeper south, free blacks were the emancipated children of white planter and his black mistress.
- Blacks purchased freedom and earnings from labor after hours.
§ Many free blacks owned property (esp New Orleans)
§ Some (William T. Johnson) even owned slaves
- Free blacks were a “third race”
§ Prohibited from working certain occupations, testifying against whites in court.
§ Vulnerable to being enslaved again by slave traders.
§ Resented by defenders of the slave system.
- Unpopular in the North where another 250,000 of them lived.
§ Several states forbade their entrance
§ Most denied right to vote
§ Some barred from public schools.
· Schools that did allow were frowned upon extremely.
§ Esp. hated by Irish immigrants which competed for menial (low, traveling) jobs
§ AR much of anti-slavery feelings in North in 1840s and 1850s due to racial prejudice, not humanitarianism.
- Anti-black feelings frequently stronger in North than in South.
§ Former slave Frederick Douglass
· Abolitionist and self-educated orator of rare power mobbed several times.
§ While white southerner sometimes would like black as the individual but not as the race.
§ White northerner would profess to like the race but dislike the individual blacks.
Plantation Slavery
- 1860 had 4 mil black slaves.
§ Numbers had X4 since beginning of century due to invention of cotton gin.
- Legal importation of slaves to America ended in 1808
§ HV price of “black ivory” (the slaves) so high that thousands of blacks smuggled into South despite death penalty for slavers.
· HV convicted were often acquitted.
· N.P. Gordon only slave trader ever executed and that was during 2nd year of Civil War
§ Nevertheless most of population growth due to reproduction.
· Only one from other New World slave societies.
- Slaves regarded as investments
§ Approx 2 mil of southern capital invested into slaves by 1860
§ AR treated as valuable assets and refrained from building roof on house.
· A slave life very valuable ($1800 by 1860, a price that quintupled [X5] by 1800)
§ TF dangerous jobs left to Irishmen.
- Slavery hobbled economic development of region as a whole.
§ Profits from cotton boom sucked more slaves from upper to lower South.
§ AR 1860 Deep South states of SC, Florida, MS, AL and LA each had majority or near-majority of blacks
· All accounted for about half of slaves in South.
- Breeding slaves like breeding cattle were not openly encouraged.
§ HV thousands of slaves from soil-exhausted slave states “sold down the river” to toil in cotton frontier of lower Mississippi Valley.
§ Women who bore 13/14 babies prized.
· Would sometimes be promised slavery after 10+
· AR planters often focused on women slaves.
- Slave auctions were most revolting aspects of slavery.
§ Families separated usually for planter’s economic reasons of bankruptcy or division of “property” among heirs.
§ AR abolitionists decried greatest psychological horror
· Harriet Beecher Stowe put this as theme of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Life Under the Lash
- Condition of slaves varied from section to section, farms to farms.
§ HV meant hard work, ignorance, oppression.
§ Men and women toiled from dawn and dusk in fields under white overseer or black “driver”
§ No civil or political rights except from “cruel and unusual” murder.
· Some states banned sale of child under 10 away from his or her mother
· HV hard to enforce as blacks not allowed to testify in court or even have marriages legally recognized.
- Floggings common and most visible symbol of the planter’s mastery.
§ Strong-willed slaves often sent to “breakers” where they;d be subject to extreme lavishing.
· HV oftren hurt resale values, TF would not beat them on a regular basis only for economic purposes.
- By 1860 most slaves concentrated in “black belt” of Deep South
§ From SC and Georgia into new SW states of AL, MS and LA.
§ In general, work of the frontier states harder than in settled areas of Old South
- Majority of blacks lived on larger plantations w/ 20+ slaves.
§ In some places, also up to 75% of population.
· Here the family life of slaves relatively stable and distinctive African-American slave culture developed.
§ Family separation more frequent in small plantations and in Upper South.
§ Slave marriage vows sometimes proclaimed “Until death or distance do you part”
- Some managed to develop family culture
§ Continuity of family identity such as naming children after grandparents or adopting surname of forbear’s master.
§ Demonstrated culture by avoiding country b/w first cousins.
· Contrasted with frequent intermarriage in planter aristocracy.
§ Although heavily Christianized by 2nd GA, blacks molded own distinctive religious forms b/w Christian and African elements.
· Also persisted in “responsorial” style of preaching.
- Congregation would punctuate minister’s remarks.
The Burdens of Bondage
- Deprived slaves of dignity and sense of responsibility that come from independence and right to make choices.
§ Denied education as ideas brought discontent.
§ AR many states passed laws forbidding instruction
§ 9/10 of slaves at beginning of Civil War completely illterate.
· For all blacks, slave or free, “American dream” but a mockery.
- Blacks attempted to take revenge at masters
§ Often worked slow as non-whipping allows, stole food from kitchens, stole goods produced or purchased by their labor.
§ Sabotaged expensive equipment to stop working routine until repairs accomplished.
· Occasionally poisoned master’s food.
§ Many ran away to search for separated family member.
§ Would rebel but never successfully
· 1800 armed insurrection led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond Virginia failed due to informers and leaders hanged.
· Denmark Vesey, free black, led rebellion in Charleston 1822 and also betrayed by informers.
· 1831 semiliterate Nat Turner, visionary black preacher, led uprising that slaughtered about 60 Virginians, mostly women and children.
§ AR bred feeling of racial superiority but also lowered the whites into ditch of low morals.
· Booker T. Washington (distinguished black leader, former slave): “whites could not hold blacks in a ditch without getting down there with them”
Early Abolitionism
- Inhumanity of “peculiar institution” gradually caused antislavery societies to come
§ First stirred in Revolution, esp. Quakers.
§ Due to resentment against blacks, first societies focused on sending them back
· 1817 The American Colonization Society
- 1822 Liberia (capital Monrovia for Monroe) est. for the freed former slaves.
- Would transport 15000 freed blacks over next 40 years.
· HV most blacks did not want to be in strange civilization after being partly Americanized.
- By 1860 almost all southern slaves no longer Africans but native-born African Americans with own distinct history/culture.
- This process did appeal to some antislaveryites, incl Lincoln until time of Civil War.
- 1830s abolitionist took new energy and momentum
§ British counterparts had freed slaves in West Indies.
§ Religious spirit of 2nd GA inspired hate against slavery
§ AR famous abolitionists.
· Theodore Dwight Weld evangelized by Charles Grandison Finney in NY’s Burned Over District in 1820s
· Appealed w/ special power to rural audiences of untutored farmers.
· Aided by NY merchants Arthur and Lewis Tappan.
§ 1832 Tappan brothers would pay Weld’s way to Lane Theological Seminary which was presided by Lyman Beecher, father of the 3 antislavery Beechers
§ When Weld was expelled from school for antislavery talk, fanned across Old Northwest preaching antislavery gospel.
§ American Slavery As It Is (1839) among most effective abolitionist pamphlets
· Inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Radical Abolitionism
- 1831 William Lloyd Garrison published in Boston first issue of antislavery magazine The Liberator.
§ Triggered 31-year war of words.
- Other dedicated abolitionists 1833 founded American Anti-Slavery Society.
§ Prominent were Wendell Philips aka “abolition’s golden trumpet”
· Would not eat cane sugar/cotton cloth as they were produced by slaves
- Others incl. David Walker and his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829) who advocated a bloody end to white supremacy.
- Sojourner Truth, freed black women in NY who fought for black emancipation and women’s rights.
- Martin Delaney, one of few black leaders to take seriously mass recolonization of Africa.
- Greatest of abolitionists was Frederick Douglass.
§ Escaped from bondage 1838
§ 1845 Narrative of the Life of Federick Douglass
· Of his origins as son of black save and white father, struggle to read and white and escape to the North
§ Would continue to lecture widely for cause despite beatings and threats.
o Frederick Douglass as flexibly practical as Garrison was stubbornly principled
§ GARRISON would sometimes would focus more on his own righteousness than in evil of slavery itself.
· Demanded that “virtuous” North secede from the “wicked” South, but didn’t explain how that would end the “damning crime” of slavery.
· Renounced politics 1854 Indep Day and publicly burned a copy of Constitution as “a covenant with death”
o Some critics argue he was a moral wound in America.
§ HV DOUGLASS looked to politics to end slavery.
· Political abolitionists backed the Liberty Party 1840 and Free Soil Party in 1848, eventually Republican Party in 1850s.
· Eventually abolitionists, even Garrison, would follow out logic on their beliefs and support the frightfully costly fratricidal war as the price for emancipation.
· Asked question “when is evil so enormous that it must be denounced, even at the risk of precipating bloodshed and butchery?
The South Lashes Black
- Many anti-slavery societies rose south of Mason-Dixon Line (originally southern boundary of colonial PA)
§ HV after 1830 white southern abolitionism silenced where Virginia legislature debated and eventually defeated various emancipation proposals in 1831-1832.
· Debate as turning point.
§ AR all slave states tightened slave codes, moved to prohibit emancipation of any kind.
· Nat Turner’s rebellion 1831 frightened planters and made them increase defenses (such as wearing pistols)
· MW The Liberator bitterly condemned as terrorist and Georgia offered $5000 of arrest and conviction of Garrison (the author)
· Nullification crisis of 1832 further implanted haunting increased hysteria
- AR soon a large defense of slavery as a good thing.
§ Forgot their section’s previous doubts about slavery as a “peculiar institution”
§ Claimed slavery was supported by Bible, wisdom of Aristotle.
· Was good for Africans, lifted from barbarism of jungle.
· Slavemasters encouraged religion in slave quarters “like a family”
§ Quick to contrast the “happy” lot of their “servants” to the wage slaves of the North.
· Provided w/ jail-like form of Social Security, they were cared for in sickness and old age unlike northern workers.
· AR arguments only widened North + South division and whites became increasingly defensive.
- MW controversy over the free blacks endangered free speech in country.
§ Petitions from antislavery reformers
§ AR 1836 sensitive southerners drove through the house the Gag Resolution.
· Required all antislavery appeals to be tabled without debate.
· This attack on the right of petition aroused John Quincy Adams and he waged a successful eight-year fight for its repeal.
§ MW southern whites opposed abolitionist literature.
· Most blacks could not read, but could still interpret the drawings.
· After 1835 burning of a post office in SC, weak Washington government in 1835 ordered postmasters to destroy abolitionist material.
o “freedom of the press” endangered.
The Abolitionist Impact in the North
- Abolitionists esp. extreme Garrisonians were for long time unpopular in many parts of North (weren’t the north in general opposing slavery due to economic reason?)
§ Northerners have been brought up to revere the Constitution and to regard the clauses on slavery as a lasting bargain.
§ Ideal of Union promoted by Daniel Webster had taken deep root.
- MW North had heavy economic stake in Northern states.
§ 1850 southern planters owed northern bankers $300 million and immense sum would be lost (it later was) if Union dissolved.
§ New England textile mills fed by cotton raised by slaves and disrupted labor system would bring unemployment.
§ TF northern opposition against antislavery societies in the North
- Extreme abolitionists provoked many mobs.
§ 1834 mobs broke into Lewis Tappan’s house
§ 1835 Garrison tied rope around him and dragged him through streets.
§ Reverend Elijah Lovejoy not content to attack slavery and attacked the chastity of Catholic women.
· HV his printing press destroyed four times.
· 1837 killed my bob and became the “martyr abolitionist”
§ TF ambitious politicians incl. Lincoln usually avoided Garrisonian abolition.
- HV by 1850s abolitionist outcry deep in northern mind.
§ Many saw South as the land of the unfree.
§ Few northerners prepared to abolish slavery outright, but growing number incl. Lincoln opposed extending it to western territories.
· These were “free-soilers”
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