Chapter 11, part 1

Slavery shaped the lives of all Americans, white as well as black. How?

It helped to determine where they lived, how they worked, and under what conditions they could exercise their freedoms of speech/assembly/the press.

What was different between the upper and deep south?

Upper South: slaves/slave owners made up smaller % of total population. Had major centers of industry in Baltimore, Richmond, St. Louis. Economies were more diversified than in Deep South. Even after war began, refused to join Confederacy. Deep South: heavily dependent on cotton.

George Fitzhugh took the argument to its most radical conclusion, in which he stated that slavery...

"without regard to race and color, was the general, normal, natural basis of civilized society."

How did some proslavery men defend slavery?

- Many also defended slavery as the basis of hierarchical society. - Clergymen claimed that the submission of inferior to superior was a fundamental law of human existence.

Northern merchants/manufacturers participated in slave economy and shared its profits. How did northerners benefit from the slave trade and cotton?

- Money earned in the cotton trade helped finance industrial development and internal improvements in the N. - NYC's rise to commercial prominence depended as much on the establishment of shipping lines that gathered the South's cotton and transported it to Europe as on the Erie Canal. - Lords of the Loom (New England's factory owners) relied on cotton supplied by the Lords of the Lash (southern slave owners). - Northern manufacturers like Brooks Brothers supplied cheap fabrics (called "Negro cloth") to clothe the South's slaves.

_________ system prevailed in S Carolina and Georgia rice plantations.

Task labor

In 19th century, ________ replaced sugar as the world's major crop produced by slaves.

cotton

Alexis de Tocqueville observed that "the northerner loves to make money, the southerner to ________."

spend it

Improvements were meant to _______ slavery, not weaken it.

strengthen. if they had better health and diets elsewhere, they would have less access to freedom.

How was the "peculiar institution" for slaves?

the "peculiar institution" meant a life of incessant toil, brutal punishments, and family broken up by sale. Altho they had few legal rights, these were enforced haphazardly.

what did Abraham Lincoln observe about the proslavery community?

Abraham Lincoln observed that the essential function of the proslavery argument was to serve the interests of those who benefited from a system of extreme inequality.

how did American slaves compare to slaves in West Indies and Brazil? what was a factor in this?

American slaves enjoyed better diets, lower rates of infant mortality, and longer life expectancies. A factor is paternalism (even after prices rose after closing of African trade, it made economically sense to be concerned with health/living of slave)

The experience of emancipation in other parts of hemisphere affected debates over slavery in the US. Since many former slaves preferred to grow food for their own families, defenders of slavery charged that __________. Abolitionists disagreed with this, indicating the __________. The main idea was _________.

British emancipation was a failure; rising standard of living for freed slaves, spread of education among them, and other improvements; slavery was a declining institution (by 1840)

________ couldn't have arisen without the internal slave trade, and the economies of older states like VA came increasingly to rely on the sale of slaves.

Cotton kingdom

Among blacks, wrote Douglass, "the distinction of the slave and free is not great." Why?

Many regulations restricting the lives of slaves also applied to free blacks--no voice in selecting public officials, prohibited from owning dogs, firearms, liquor, strike a white person in self defense.

which line between MD and PA became dividing line between slavery and freedom?

Mason-Dixon

The only city of significant size in Cotton Kingdom was ________ (6th largest city), which consisted of features opposite of that of many other southern cities.

New Orleans, which shows that slavery and economic growth can reinforce one another.

Which region was the largest and most powerful slave society the modern world has known? Why was this? How did cotton sales benefit Americans?

Old South--Strength rested on a virtual monopoly of cotton, the South's "white gold." Cotton had become by far the most important commodity in international trade in 19th Century, due to factories using cotton as raw material to manufacture cloth. ⅗ of world's cotton supply was from southern US., and cotton sales allowed the US to pay for imported manufactured goods.

How did slavery limit the development of the south compared to the north?

Slavery limited the growth of industry, discouraged immigrants from entering the region, and inhibited technological progress in S. Many Southern cities served as gathering places to ship cotton. Southern banks loaned money for the purchase of land and slaves. Railroads consisted of short lines that brought cotton from interior to coastal ports.

What state also had a labor system of gangs?

Slaves in sugar fields of Louisiana also labored in gangs. Conditions here were among the harshest in the S.

On eve of Civil War, nearly ½ mil free blacks lived in US, a majority in ________.

South

Beginning in 1830s, _________, the only southern state where majority of white families owned slaves, became the home of an aggressive defense of slavery that repudiated idea that freedom and equality were universal entitlements.

South Carolina

What was the main reason why the S did not develop an industrial base?

They did not provide a market for manufactured goods

Few free blacks managed to prosper within slave society--give two examples.

William Johnson. Slaves in VA freed by Richard Randolph prospered as farmers and skilled craftsmen in a community called Israel Hill.

British Parliament in 1833 mandated almost immediate emancipation, with a 7-year transitional period of "_________."

apprenticeship

What were the jobs of the wives of planters or "plantation mistresses?"

cared for sick slaves, directed domestic servants, and supervised the entire plantation when their husbands were away

Very few free blacks lived in the Lower South in 1860. Most lived in...

cities like New Orleans and Charleston, where prosperous free black communities resided. They worked as craftsmen, had an education, became wealthy, etc. These elite blacks did everything they could to separate themselves from slaves.

The large majority of slaves--75% of women and 90% of men--worked in the fields. The precise organization of their labor varied according to the ________ and _________.

crop and the size of the holding

the outlook of paternalism both masked and justified the brutal reality of slavery--how?

enabled slave owners to think of themselves as kind, responsible masters. Some even tried to reform the system to eliminate its most oppressive features, like Reverend Charles C. Jones

After abolition in the N, slavery had become the "_________" of the S, unique to Southern society.

peculiar institution

The extent to which authorities enforced or bent the law depended on the decisions of the individual owners. The entire system of southern justice, from the state militia and courts down to armed patrols in each locality, was designed to...

enforce master's control over the person and labor of his slaves.

In Upper S, where large majority of southern free blacks lived, they worked ________.

for wages as farm laborers. Planters hired local free blacks to work alongside slaves at harvest time.

At base, the system of slavery rested on ________.

force--whippings often occurred, even for minor errors.

who became a prominent advocate for abolition of slavery, understanding that knowledge was "the pathway from slavery to freedom?"

frederick douglass

The largest concentration of slaves lived and worked on plantations in the Cotton Belt, where they labored in...

gangs often under direction of an overseer and a slave "driver" who assisted them

In most Latin American nations, the end of slavery followed the pattern established earlier in the northern US--which is what?

gradual emancipation accompanied by some kind of recognition of the owners' legal right to property in slaves (Laws of the free womb).

The dominant southern conception of the good society diverged more sharply from that of the North. Give an example.

in the S, upper/lower-class whites adhered to a code of personal honor, in which men were expected to defend, w/ violence if necessary, their own reputation and their families. However, Southern women still remained in the "domestic circle."

Frederick Douglass called the southern plantation a "________, with its own language, its own rules, regulations, and customs."

little nation by itself

What is paternalism?

outlook of agrarian society in which slaveholding gentlemen took personal responsibility for the physical and moral well-being of their dependents--women, children, and slaves

¾ of white families in the south owned no slaves because...

planters monopolized the best land, so most small white farmers lived outside plantation belt in hilly areas unsuitable for cotton production. They used family labor.

Probably the most powerful weapon used by slave owners to maintain productivity was the threat of _________.

sale, which separated slaves from their families and from the communities that African Americans created on plantations throughout S.

Many southern and yeoman farmers were economically _________.

self-sufficient

What happened in the Missouri court case involving Celia?

she was a slave who killed her master in 1855 while resisting sexual assault. State law deemed any woman in such circumstances act in self-defense but Celia was not deemed a woman by the law. Thus, she was sentenced to death after her baby was born.

Racism, kinship ties, common participation in democratic political culture, and regional loyalty against outside criticism all served to __________ between planters and plain folk.

tighten bonds

Ownership of slaves provided the route to what?

wealth, status, influence in state/local offices, leadership in both political parties, and fertile land