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Welcome back!. Reminders about protocol in English class:. Have you been absent? It is your responsibility to . . . 1. Get your make up assignments from every teacher. 2. Do your make up assignments by the due date . 3. Hand in your assignments by the due date .
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Reminders about protocol in English class: Have you been absent? It is your responsibility to . . . 1. Get your make up assignments from every teacher. 2. Do your make up assignments by the duedate. 3.Hand in your assignments by the due date. Any assignment not turned in will become a zero in the grade book. Do you plan to be absent? It is your responsibility to . . . 1. Check with the office. 2. Check with EACH teacher for work to be done in advance. 3. Do your work according to the teacher’s directions. 4. Hand in assignments per the teacher’s directions. Failure to hand in your work on time will result in consequences. Mrs. W’s policy is that you may hand in late work up to two weeks after the assignments is due for 50% credit. Also, failure to check with the teacher after your absence will not excuse the work.
Welcome back! • During this quarter, we will be reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass [LoFD] by Frederick Douglass. • Tasks today: • Hand in your literature books. • Pick up a LoFD book and tell Mrs. W. the number when she asks for it. • Mrs. W. will hand out some papers and explain them. • We’ll get started with the semester!
SLAVERY IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA antebellum: means "prewar", from the Latin ante, "before", and bellum, "war.” The term involves elements characteristic of the Southern United States, especially the Old South, from after the birth of the United States in the American Revolution, to the start of the American Civil War.
SLAVERY IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA When Frederick Douglass was born in 1818, slavery was already an old institution in America. In 1619, the first 20 Africans landed in Virginia from a Dutch ship. Previously other blacks had been enslaved on the American continent, but had come from Barbados. After the abolition of slavery in the North, slavery had become the “peculiar institution”of the South – that is, an institution unique to Southern society.
SLAVERY IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA Despite the hopes of some of the Founding Fathers that slavery might die out, in fact the institution survived the crisis of the American Revolution and rapidly expanded westward. On the eve of the Civil War, the slave population had risen to 4 million, its rate of natural increase more than making up for the prohibition in 1808 of further slave imports from Africa.
SLAVERY IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA In the South as a whole, slaves made up one third of the total population and in the cotton producing states of the Deep South about one half. 1850: Slavery had crossed the Mississippi River and was expanding rapidly in AK, LA, and eastern TX. 1860: One third of the nation’s cotton crop was grown west of the Mississippi River.
“COTTON IS KING” The Old South was the largest and most powerful slave society the modern world has known. Its strength rested on a virtual monopoly of cotton, the South’s “white gold.” By the nineteenth century, cotton had assumed an unprecedented role in the world’s economy.
“COTTON IS KING” About three-fourths of the world’s cotton supply came from the Southern USA. 1830: Cotton had become the most important American export. On the eve of the Civil War, it represented well over half of total of American exports. 1860: The economic investment represented by the slave population exceeded the value of the nation’s factories, railroads, and banks combined.
SLAVERY AND THE NATION 1816: Henry Clay stated “Slavery forms an exception … to the general liberty prevailing in the United States” But Clay, like many of his contemporaries, underestimated slavery’s impact in the entire nation.
SLAVERY AND THE NATION The “free states”had ended slavery, but they were hardly unaffected by it. The Constitution enhanced the power of the South in the House of Representatives and Electoral College and required all states to return fugitive slaves from bondage (3/5 Compromise/Fugitive Slave Clause)
SLAVERY AND THE NATION Slavery shaped the lives of all Americans, white as well as black. It helped determine where they lived, how they worked, and under what conditions they could exercise their freedom of speech, assembly, and press.
SLAVERY AND THE NATION Northern merchants and manufacturers participated in the slave economy and shared in the profits. Money earned in the cotton/slave trade helped finance industrial development in the North.. Northern ships carried cotton to NY and Europe, northern bankers financed cotton plantations, north companies insured slave property, and northern factories turned cotton into cloth. Northern manufacturers supplied cheap fabrics (“Negro cloth”) to clothe the South’s slaves.
SLAVERY AND THE NATION Slavery led the South down a very different path of economic development than the North, limiting the growth of industry, discouraging immigrants from entering the region, and inhibiting technological progress. Southern banks existed primarily to help finance the plantations.
Yet the South’s economy was hardly stagnant, and slavery proved very profitable for most owners. • Southern railroads mostly consisted of small lines that brought cotton from the interior to coastal ports. • The South produced less than 10% of the nation’s manufactured goods.
SLAVERY AND THE NATION Slavery’s economic centrality for the South and the nation as a whole formed a powerful obstacle to abolition. Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina declared, “No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king.”
THE OLD SOUTH: SOME GENERALIZATIONS The further North, the cooler the climate, the fewer the slaves and the lower commitment to maintaining slavery. The further south, the warmer the climate, the more slaves, and the higher commitment to maintaining slavery.
THE OLD SOUTH: SOME GENERALIZTIONS The southward flow of slaves (from sales) continued from 1790 to 1860. There was not a unified South except for resistance to outside interference (federal government).
THE BORDER STATES Plantations were scare; cotton cultivation almost nonexistent; Tobacco was the main cash crop. • Unionists would overcome the Secessionists during and after the Civil War. • The Border States were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri.
THE BORDER STATES 1850: Slaves accounted for 17% of the population of the Border States. There was an average of 5 slaves per slaveholder. 22% of white families owned slaves. 1850: Over 21% of Border State blacks were free. Overall in the South – 46% of blacks were free. Produced over 50% of South’s industrial products.
THE MIDDLE SOUTH The Middle South: VA, NC, TN, and AK. • Each state had one section resembling the Border States and another resembling the Lower South.
THE MIDDLE SOUTH Some industrial production – used slave labor. • Unionists prevailed before the War; Secessionists prevailed after War began.
THE MIDDLE SOUTH There were many plantations in eastern VA and western TN. 1850: Slaves accounted for 30% of the population of the Middle South. There was an average of 8 slaves per slaveholder. 36% of white families owned slaves.
THE LOWER SOUTH The Lower South: SC, FL, GA, AL, MS, LA, and TX. Most slaves were located in the “cotton belt”or “black belt”of the Deep South. • Plantations were prevalent. Cotton was king. • Produced 95% of South’s cotton and almost all of its sugar, rice, and indigo crops.
THE LOWER SOUTH Secessionists would prevail after Lincoln’s election in 1860. 1850: Slaves accounted for 47% of the Lower South’s population. There was an average of 12 slaves per slaveholder. 43% of white families owned slaves.
THE LOWER SOUTH Less than 2% of Lower South’s blacks were free. Lower South was the area where the brutality of slavery was most harsh.
THE PLANTER ARISTOCRACY There was a huge gap between rich and poor. South had a very poor public education system thus planters sent their children to private schools. Planters carried on the “cavalier”tradition of early VA. Planters: a landed genteel class
THE PLANTER ARISTOCRACY The South was ruled politically and economically by wealthy plantation owners. 1850: Only 1,733 families owned more than 100 slaves; yet they dominated Southern politics. The South was the least democratic region of the country.
THE SOUTHERN WHITE MAJORITY 75% of white Southerners owned no slaves. Mostly subsistence farmers and did not participate in the market economy. Poorest were called “white trash,”“hillbillies,” or “crackers.” Fiercely defended the slave system as it proved white superiority.
THE SOUTHERN WHITE MAJORITY Poor whites took comfort that they were “equal” to the planter class. They hoped someday to own slaves. Slavery proved effective in controlling blacks and ending slavery might result in race mixing and blacks competing with whites for jobs.
FREE BLACKS OF THE SOUTH By 1860 free blacks numbered about 250,000. In the Border South, emancipation increased starting in the late 1700s. In the Lower South, many free blacks were mulattos – white father and black mother. This was evidence of the sexual intimidation and abuse by male slaveholders.
FREE BLACKS OF THE SOUTH Some were able to buy their freedom from their labor after hours. (Task System) Some owned property. A few even owned slaves though this was very rare.
FREE BLACKS OF THE SOUTH They had no political rights. They were always in danger of being forced back into slavery by slave traders. • Faced discrimination in the South. • They were prohibited from certain occupations and from testifying against whites in court.
FREE BLACKS OF THE NORTH Free blacks numbered about 250,000. • Some states forbade their entrance or denied them public education. • Most states denied them suffrage.
FREE BLACKS OF THE NORTH Some states segregated blacks in public facilities. They were especially hated by Irish immigrants with whom they competed with for jobs. Racist feelings often stronger in the North than in the South. Much of Northern sentiment against spread of slavery into new territories due more to intense racial prejudice than humanitarianism.
FREE BLACKS “The distinction between slave and the free is not great.” ~Frederick Douglass
THE PRO-SLAVERY IDEOLOGY In the 30 years before the outbreak of the Civil War, even as Northern criticism of the “peculiar institution”began to deepen, pro-slavery thought came to dominate Southern public life Fewer and fewer white Southerners shared the view, common among the Founding Fathers, that slavery was, at best,“a necessary evil.”
THE PRO-SLAVERY IDEOLOGY In 1837, John C. Calhoun stated: “Many in the South once believed that slavery was a moral and political evil… That folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world.”
THE PRO-SLAVERY IDEOLOGY Even those who had no direct stake in slavery shared with planters a deep commitment to white supremacy. Indeed, racism – the belief that blacks were innately inferior to whites and unsuited for life in any conditions other than slavery – formed one pillar of the pro-slavery ideology.
THE PRO-SLAVERY IDEOLOGY Most slaveholders also found legitimation for slavery in Biblical passages such as the injunction that servants should obey their masters. Others argued that slavery was essential to human progress. Without slavery, planters would be unable to cultivate the arts, sciences, and other civilized pursuits.
Slavery in the Bible Psalm 123:2 (NIV)): As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he shows us his mercy. Ephesians 6:9: And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him. Colossians 3:22: Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.
Slavery in the Bible Colossians 4:1: Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven. Titus 2:9: Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them,
Slavery in the Bible 1 Peter 2:18: Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. Slaveowners would read these verses to slaves as part of the worship services that they allowed (and controlled) as a means of encouraging the proper attitude among their slaves. Based upon these isolated verses, slaveowners claimed that the Bible supported slavery and taught slaves to be obedient to their masters. http://www.reunionblackfamily.com/apps/blog/show/7183511-biblical-verses-used-by-slave-masters-to-justify-slavery
THE PRO-SLAVERY IDEOLOGY Still other defenders of slavery insisted that the institution guaranteed equality for whites by preventing the growth of a class doomed to the life of unskilled labor. They claimed to be committed to the ideal of freedom.
THE PRO-SLAVERY IDEOLOGY Slavery for blacks, they claimed, was the surest guarantee of “perfect equality” among whites, liberating them from the “low, menial” jobs like factory labor and domestics service by wage laborers of the North. Slavery made possible the considerable degree of economic autonomy enjoyed not only by planters but by non-slaveholding whites.
