The South and the Slavery Controversy

1. Introduction  We will be addressing three main questions over the next several chapters:  1) Is the United States dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal?  2) How did the Civil War come about?  3) What were its results?

2.a-c. Southern Economy and Social Structure  1793  Eli Whitney invents the Cotton Gin  The U.S. prospers, but problems arise  Planters continued to rely on slave labor because land was plentiful and the southern soil was very fertile.  “King Cotton” amounted to 50% of U.S. exports and provided more than 50% of the WORLD’s cotton.  75% of Britain’s cotton came from the South.  Negatives of the Southern plantation system:  1) The South was run by a rich aristocracy which made a very wide gap between the rich and the poor.  2) There was no tax-supported education; so only the rich were educated.

Plantation House - Natchez, Mississippi

2. d. Southern Economy and Social Structure  Most slaves were owned by large scale planters  The average slave holder held a few slaves each and worked with their slaves in the fields  1850 – there were 345,000 slaveowning families – this was 25% of the Southern white population  Of those, 7,929 owned more than 50 slaves  2% of slaveowners owned more than 50 slaves  A tiny minority held the majority of slaves  75% of southerners owned no slaves at all  Surprisingly, whites who didn’t own slaves were even looked down upon by slaves who had rich masters but…even the most wretched poor southerner still supported slavery. Why?  The way the South was run meant that owning a slave would make you prosperous  The logic of southern business gave many whites the illogical belief that they were superior to the slave

3.a-d. Conditions of Slavery  The slave trade had been outlawed in 1808  But through natural reproduction, the slave population had grown to 4 million by 1860  Unlike the North, wealth in the South was measured in land and slaves  Slaves had no political or civil rights  1) They were sold as property at auctions  2) They weren’t paid for their labor; not getting whipped or beaten was their incentive  Black famlies were surprising resilient stayed intact often; religion was Christian mixed with African roots

4. Abolitionism  The Quakers (who we talked about during the Colonial Era) was the first group to advocate abolitionism.  In the 1820s, a movement rose up attempting to send African-Americans back to Africa, to the West African country of Liberia.  The movement attracted some – including Abraham Lincoln  It didn’t work out. By that time, these were no longer Africans, but now African-Americans, with their own culture  Abolition became bigger after Britain abolished slavery in the West Indies in 1833 and the spirit of the Second Great Awakening

4. Abolitionism  Abolitionists took center stage  William Lloyd Garrison – a radical white abolitionist  Wanted the North to secede from the South  High strung and religious  Frederick Douglass – a “practical” abolitionist  Not as fiery as Garrison; he believed slavery could be solved peacefully by looking to politics to end slavery legislatively

William Lloyd Garrison

Frederick Douglass

4. Abolitionism  So how did the North feel about slavery?  Northerners did not have the fiery independent state’s rights ideology of the South – most were strict Unionists  They were raised to believe the Constitution, and everything in it, slavery included, was a lasting bargain  They also made serious cash off Southern cotton  Abolitionists were often the targets of mob outbursts and even murder  Even politicians against slavery avoided the subject, one of these being Abraham Lincoln  Early on ( s), abolitionists were treated with hostility, but by 1850, the North began to cry out in greater numbers for the end of slavery in the U.S.