AIM: How did abolitionist’s attempt to end slavery in America?

I. The Old South “Southerners are a mythological people, created half out of dream, and half out of slander, who live in a still legendary land.” Myth: The south was a stable agrarian society led by paternalistic white planters and their families, who lived in white-columned mansions who were kind to their slaves and devoted to the rural values of independence and chivalric honor celebrated by Thomas Jefferson.

Mary Boykin Chesnut “God forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system. Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines; and the mulattoes one sees in every family partly resemble the white children. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household but her own. Those, she seems to think, drop from the clouds.”

Southern Gentleman

“Southern Belle”

I. Methods of Abolitionism Gradualism Colonization Moral Suasion Political Action Radicalism

II. Arguments for Slavery George Fitzhugh, “Sociology for the South”

Arguments for slavery continued Superiority of white race and black inferiority. “Sambo Image” – Comic Stereotype included lazy, childishness, illiterate characteristics

Anti-Slavery Arguments 1. Quakers began first anti-slave movement. 2. Morally wrong! 3. Violation of the ethics of the bible. 4. Violates principles of democracy.

At the 1964 Republican Convention, Barry Goldwater (the Republican nominee) stated in a speech that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Would you agree or disagree with this statement?

5. Hinton R. Helper: “The Impending Crisis of the South 5. Hinton R. Helper: “The Impending Crisis of the South.” A southerner who argued slavery would hinder the economic development of the south.

Hinton R. Helper: The Impending Crisis of the South “In one way or another we are more or less subservient to the North every day of our lives. In infancy we are swaddled in Northern muslin, in childhood we are humored with Northern gewgaws: in youth we are instructed out of Northern book; at the age of maturity we sow our “wild oats” on Northern soil….”

James Ford Rhodes, Lectures on the American Civil War, 1913 “Abolitionism was an organized moral crusade centered in New England…to rid the nation of the sin of slavery. But the slaveholders, refusing to be moved by moral suasion and the principles of “true religion” made compromise impossible. Slavery, at war with laws of God and nature, thus perished by the sword.”

Avery Crave, The Coming of the Civil War, 1957 “The abolitionists were irresponsible fanatics who bear the responsibility for the secession of the south and the outbreak of war in 1861. By their unceasing opposition to “sin” and their unyielding attacks on the morals of slaveholders, the abolitionists succeeded only in convincing most Northerners that the South was a dangerous “slave power” bent on destroying the American dream…They created a psychological climate, North and South, where fear, hatred, and hysteria rather than reason prevailed. Civil war was then in the making.”