Final Exam African American History (5.5-9)

What was the type of resistance known as "lying out"?

A form of resistance in which slaves hid near their home plantations, often to escape undesirable work assignments or abusive treatment by their owners.

What was the gag rule?

A series of congressional resolutions passed by the House of Representatives between 1836 and 1840 that tabled, without discussion, petitions regarding slavery; the gag rule was instituted to silence dissent over slavery. It was repealed in 1844.

What was the importance of the North Star to runaway slaves?

A star, also known as Polaris, that always points north and was used by escaped slaves to navigate their way to freedom. Uneducated and for the most part illiterate, fugitive slaves had no maps and had to hide during the day and travel at night, guided only by the North Star.

Why did many African Americans acquire "fictive kin"? In what crucial ways did families help slaves survive the experience of slavery?

African Americans who lost their kinfolk to sale or migration often created new family connections by embracing nonrelatives as fictive kin. It is defined as people regarded as family even though they were not related by blood or marriage. These new family ties eased, but did not erase, the pain felt by slaves separated from their families by sale.

What specific military contributions did Blacks make during the War of 1812?

African Americans, who had long been one of the shipping industry's major sources of labor, made up 10 to 20 percent of the crews that defended America's coasts and Great Lakes and often fought with notable valor.

Why did he describe one period as "the longest year I ever lived"?

After Freeland's business failed, Brown was promptly hired out again. He ended up working as a steward for a slave trader named Mr. Walker, who employed Brown to tend to the slave cargo he shipped from St. Louis to New Orleans. Brown's twelve months in Walker's employ, which he called "the longest year I ever lived," left him with a renewed determination to escape. On the journey south, Brown worried that he would be sold himself once the boat reached New Orleans, and he loathed his duties, which included preventing Walker's slaves from escaping whenever the boat stopped.

How did Cuffe's actions influence a man named Robert Finley?

Although Cuffe's expedition had the support of black leaders such as Absalom Jones, it did not foster a colonization movement among American blacks. Instead, it captured the imagination of white reformers, whose enthusiasm soon had free black communities across the North worried about a forced migration. Reform-minded whites had long "indulge[d] a hope that ... free people of color be removed to the coast of Africa with their own consent," the Presbyterian minister Robert Finley wrote Cuffe in 1816, appealing to the ship captain to help him plan a mass migration.34 With Cuffe's voyage standing as testimony to the practical possibility of colonization, Finley founded a national organization to promote the colonization of free blacks.

To what extent were women field slaves treated any differently from men?

Although enslaved men and women both worked in the fields on plantations, tasks were commonly divided by gender. Field hands were usually split into sex-segregated work gangs and assigned different work regimes. Women were classified as three-quarters of a hand (rather than as a full hand), and on plantations with sufficient male workers, women were spared some of the most physically taxing labor. During planting season, women hoed the fields, and men plowed. When slave workers erected fences, the men split the rails, and the women assembled the fences. When additional labor was needed, however, female slaves might be assigned to any task. On Louisiana sugar plantations, for example, female work gangs toiled alongside male gangs. They worked sixty to seventy hours per week, under conditions that compromised their capacity to conceive, deliver, and nurture healthy children.

What ingenious methods did Ellen and William Craft and Henry Brown employ to successfully get away?

Although steamboats were often inspected for runaways, and blacks on trains had to carry passes or papers documenting their free status, successful fugitives, such as the slave couple Ellen and William Craft, found ingenious ways to evade detection. The Crafts, who left a plantation in Macon, Georgia, in 1848, escaped by passing off the light-skinned Ellen as a sickly young slave master traveling north to seek medical attention. Her husband played the role of the young invalid's faithful attendant. With Ellen swathed in bandages and pretending to be too ill to speak, the couple rode by train to Savannah, where they boarded a steamship bound for Philadelphia. A year later, the enslaved tobacco factory worker Henry "Box" Brown made an equally daring escape from Richmond. With help from a sympathetic white shopkeeper, Brown had himself shipped to Philadelphia in a large wooden crate, which traveled by steamboat, rail, ferry, and delivery wagon before finally arriving at its destination twenty-seven hours later. Such escapes were well publicized, leaving white southerners ever more vigilant.

What did most American Blacks think of their objectives?

Although the ACS was eager to recruit free blacks, most were both unwilling to move and deeply suspicious. Less than a month after the first ACS meeting in 1816, three thousand free blacks gathered in Richard Allen's Philadelphia church to adopt a set of resolutions denouncing colonization as an "unmerited stigma attempted to be cast upon the reputation of the free people of color." Many of those gathered were American-born blacks with few ties to Africa, and many suspected that colonization was merely a plan to prop up slavery by shipping America's free blacks out of the United States. They issued a statement saying, "We never will separate ourselves voluntarily from the slave population in this country."

What distinction could Boston's Maria Stewart claim in the 1830s?

Among the first to articulate this message of uplift was Maria W. Stewart, who, in Boston in the early 1830s, was the first American woman, white or black, to speak before a mixed audience of men and women — at the time a brave and highly controversial act. She had been influenced by David Walker, who encouraged her brief but electrifying public speaking career. Intensely religious, Stewart rejected Walker's call for violence, emphasizing the moral reform of the black community instead. Beginning in 1831, in speeches, essays, and editorials, she stressed the importance of education, especially that of girls, and black elevation generally. "How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles?" she asked. She also urged African American women to understand their duty as mothers to "create in the minds of your little girls and boys a thirst for knowledge." She implored men to "flee from the gambling board and the dance-hall; for we are poor, and have no money to throw away.... Let our money, instead ... be appropriated for schools and seminaries of learning for our children and youth."

What made David Walker the "most militant Black abolitionist" of the 1820s?

Among the free blacks who fled Charleston in the wake of the plot was David Walker, who moved north and made a name for himself as the most militant black abolitionist of his era. The rising hostility toward free blacks in Charleston had convinced him that "if I remain in this bloody land ... I will not live long."12 By 1825, the forty-year-old Walker had resettled in Boston, where he ran a used clothing store near the harbor, outfitting the sailors and other mariners who passed through the city. In Boston, Walker found a lively black community, married, and joined the African Lodge of the Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons. Members included local leaders such as the Reverend Thomas Paul, the minister of Boston's First African Baptist Church.David Walker was appalled by the ACS, viewing colonization as a doctrine designed to perpetuate slavery by banishing free blacks. Walker advocated abolition instead of emigration and denounced colonization as a proslavery plot. Convinced that all blacks should fight for freedom within the United States, he sheltered fugitive slaves in his home and became a contributor to the nation's first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal (founded in 1827), which opposed both colonization and slavery. Like the Journal's editors, Walker was convinced that African Americans could not defeat slavery and racism without pleading their own cause.

Why did it ultimately fail?

Armed with axes and hatchets, Turner and his men began by murdering Turner's owner, Joseph Travis, and his family and stealing their small cache of guns. They then moved from plantation to plantation freeing slaves; killing white men, women, and children; and gathering more weapons and recruits. Turner's force grew to more than fifty slaves and free blacks, who managed to kill sixty whites before a Virginia militia tracked them down two days later. The rebels scattered but were pursued by a growing force of armed whites, who went on a killing spree that lasted more than two weeks and resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred blacks — all of whom died without trial. An additional forty-eight suspects were captured, tried, and executed by the state, including Turner himself, who had managed to evade capture for three months until a white farmer discovered him in hiding.

How did Denmark Vesey gain his freedom?

As a highly skilled and valuable slave, Vesey might have remained in bondage all his life but for an extraordinary stroke of good luck in 1799. That year, he purchased a lottery ticket — likely with money earned from taking on extra work during his free hours — and won the princely sum of $1,500. He used $600 of it to purchase his own freedom and the remainder to move out of his master's house and establish a carpentry business.

What jobs tended to be available for them?

Black women worked as washerwomen, seamstresses, and cooks, and black men were employed as laborers, mariners, barbers, coachmen, porters, and bootblacks. Northern whites were quick to blame free blacks' poverty and low occupational status on inherent racial inferiority rather than social forces, which only compounded the discrimination that free blacks faced.

What trends were notable in regard to voting rights in the post-war period?

But despite the many contributions of African Americans to the war effort, their civil rights continued to erode. New Jersey blacks lost the right to vote in 1807, even before the war. Blacks also were disfranchised in Connecticut in 1814 and in Pennsylvania in 1838. Even in states where free blacks retained the right to vote, they faced voter discrimination. New York, for example, imposed prohibitively high property requirements on black voters, even after abolishing all such requirements for white voters in 1821.

Why did many Northerners hate it?

But it was the authorizing of federal marshals to call on citizen bystanders to aid in the capture of alleged runaways that especially angered northerners. Citizens who refused or who in any way aided an alleged fugitive could be fined $1,000 and sent to prison for six months. Many in the North who had not given much thought to slavery now felt that the federal government had far exceeded its powers. They perceived the federal effort to protect slave property as an attack on their own personal liberty, forcing them to act against their conscience. Wisconsin challenged the constitutionality of the law, and a Massachusetts statute sought to nullify it.

What were the objectives of his planned rebellion?

By 1820, with the help of several enslaved friends, Vesey had begun planning a rebellion. They spent more than a year recruiting other men. Armed with stolen guns and knives, they planned to raid Charleston's Meeting Street Arsenal and a nearby shop to gather additional weapons for their supporters, whom they expected to number in the thousands. Vesey was a lay preacher in Charleston's African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, and he reviewed the details of the plot at religious classes held in his home, in which he likened the planned rebellion to the delivery of the children of Israel from Egyptian slavery. The conspirators dreamed of freeing themselves and sailing off to Haiti,

What did Virginia's leaders do in the aftermath of the Turner revolt?

Convinced that Turner's uprising was caused by the abolitionist agitation of men such as David Walker, Virginia's leaders instead revised the state's legal code to bar slaves and free blacks from preaching or even attending religious meetings without white supervision. Virginia legislators also targeted free blacks with a colonization bill, which allocated new funding to remove them, and a police bill that denied free blacks trial by jury and subjected any free black convicted of a crime to sale and relocation. Lawmakers also took precautions that were unprecedented in scope. In 1835, southern legislators silenced congressional debates over slavery for almost a decade by passing a gag rule prohibiting the reading of antislavery petitions in Congress.

In what ways did the Compromise of 1850 address the issue of slavery?

Defined as a compromise aimed at reducing sectional tensions by admitting California as a free state; permitting the question of slavery to be settled by popular sovereignty in New Mexico and Utah Territories; abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia; resolving the Texas debt issue; and enacting a new fugitive slave law. The vote on California statehood was one of the issues finally settled by the Compromise of 1850, which consisted of a series of separate bills. Neither side got all it wanted. Antislavery northerners succeeded in abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia, while southerners prevented the abolition of slavery there. California entered the Union as a free state, but the decision of whether slavery would be allowed in the territories of New Mexico and Utah was left to the people living in those areas, a policy known as popular sovereignty. The federal government assumed the debt contracted by the Lone Star Republic, and, as a concession to the South, a new fugitive slave law was enacted.

What was the aim of the Wilmot Proviso?

Defined as a controversial congressional proposal that sought to prohibit slavery in the new territories gained as a result of the Mexican-American War. Although it did not pass the Senate, it sparked angry debate between the North and South.

What were the special challenges of being partners in an "abroad marriage"?

Defined as marriages between slaves who belonged to different owners and lived on different plantations. This was not typically not a coerced marriage and slaves were allowed to pick their own husbands/ wives. Abroad marriages required a strong commitment because enslaved men had to secure their masters' permission to visit their wives and then brave the slave patrols en route.

Why were the sections divided over tariff policy?

Despite such ties, the North and South had different economic and political interests. As the regions' economies diverged, northerners favored government measures designed to support American industrial production, such as protective tariffs on manufactured goods. Southerners, who produced few manufactured goods and imported many from abroad, opposed tariffs. Underlying such divergent interests were even deeper divisions over slavery.

What did she see as the keys to improving the conditions of northern Blacks?

Education. Stewart firmly believed that black moral and intellectual improvement would decrease white prejudice

Identify and state the importance of the ring shout.

Enslaved people gathered in their homes to hold their own religious ceremonies or assembled in secret "hush harbors" in the woods. Often led by community elders, these ceremonies might incorporate African spiritual practices such as juju and voodoo. Most common was the ring shout, often known simply as the "shout." In this form of worship, congregants formed a circle and moved counterclockwise while shuffling their feet, clapping, singing, calling out, or praying aloud. Practiced in both the West Indies and North America, the ring shout combined West African-based music and dance traditions with the passionate Protestantism of the Second Great Awakening to create a powerful new ritual that offered emotional and physical release.

Why were slaves unenthused about attending "white folks' church"?

Even blacks who worshipped alongside whites or received religious instruction from their masters tended to distrust white Christianity. Relegated to segregated pews or sometimes required to listen to the minister's sermon from outside the church, African Americans had few opportunities to worship on equal terms. In the "white folks' church," one former slave remembered, the slaves "couldn't do nuthin' — jes sit dere. Dey could sing, an' take de sacrement; but didn't have no voice — jes like animals!"26 The character of the religious instruction that slaves received made matters worse. White ministers often stressed obedience and humility, with popular teachings centering on scriptural passages such as "Servants be obedient to their masters" and "Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor." Slaves understood the obvious self-interest animating such teachings. As the ex-slave Wes Brady recalled, "You ought to have heard that 'Hellish' preaching.... 'Obey your Master and Mistress, don't steal chickens, don't steal eggs and meat,' and nary word 'bout having a soul to save."

What limited employment opportunities for Northern Blacks?

Even young and healthy free blacks had great difficulty finding anything but low-paying menial jobs. Whereas slaves had once been used in a variety of occupations, the slow progress of gradual emancipation allowed former slave owners and working-class whites time to craft racially discriminatory statutes and practices designed to keep blacks at the bottom of the northern labor market. As slaves, black northerners had not competed directly with white workers for paying jobs. Now white workers saw them as a threat. Many whites were unwilling to work alongside blacks, and many white employers were reluctant to hire former slaves for anything other than menial labor, so even highly skilled ex-slaves had difficulty securing well-paying jobs. Instead, free blacks were welcome only in service trades that were closely associated with slavery.

Who was its most tireless opponent?

Former president John Quincy Adams, now a representative from Massachusetts, tirelessly opposed this rule, believing that it imposed unconstitutional limitations on petitioners' freedom of speech. He also saw congressional support for the rule as evidence that the nation was falling under the control of a dangerous "slavocracy" led by wealthy southern slaveholders. Known as "Old Man Eloquent" for his rhetorical skills, Adams called for rescinding the gag rule every year until 1844, when he finally prevailed.

What was the story told in the novel, Clotel?

Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany published novels with plots centered on slave insurrections, and William Wells Brown's novel Clotel (1853) helped establish the character type of the "tragic mulatta," a white-looking black woman whose mixed-race identity typically led to tragedy. Both Clotel, allegedly Thomas Jefferson's daughter, and her mother, Currer, Jefferson's alleged mistress, were tragic mulattas.

What made Sojourner Truth a leading abolitionist? What causes did she embrace other than anti-slavery?

Frederick Douglass was certainly the most well-known African American speaker on the abolitionist lecture circuit, but Sojourner Truth may have been the most compelling. Born a slave named Isabella Baumfree, she had achieved freedom and secured custody of her son, who had been sold illegally, through a lawsuit. In 1843, she transformed herself by taking a new name and occupation. As a lecturer-spiritualist-preacher, she was both outspoken and plainspoken, powerful and fearless. In 1847, before a packed audience in Boston's Faneuil Hall, she challenged even Douglass, who had despaired of God's ability to bring about a peaceful end to slavery. Truth stood up and asked, "Frederick, is God dead?" The audience enthusiastically shouted support for her position. For Truth, as for many of her religiously motivated reform colleagues, the abolition of slavery was both part of God's divine plan and necessary for America to realize its democratic ideals. But as a woman, Truth also argued powerfully and effectively for women's rights. Truth did not present herself as a respectable middle-class reformer who argued for abolition and equality in the abstract. Her words grew out of her own experience as an enslaved person, a wage earner, and a mother. Her directness won both followers and detractors. In an 1858 speech in a small Indiana town, when hecklers questioned whether so forceful a speaker could actually be a woman, Truth bared her breast.

What was the importance of the Liberator?

Garrison's moral suasion approach had been shaped by the arguments of black abolitionists, and in 1831, with their support, he began publishing the Liberator, the most famous antislavery newspaper of the era. James Forten signed up subscribers in Philadelphia and sent Garrison's Boston office an advance payment on their subscriptions. Writing as "A Colored Philadelphian," he was also a frequent contributor to the paper's early issues. Garrison worked well with black activists and counted them among his friends. He published Maria Stewart's speeches in the Liberator and promoted the speaking career of Frederick Douglass, writing a preface to Douglass's slave narrative. In the pages of the Liberator, Garrison condemned slavery as immoral and contrary to Christian principles, and he called for immediate, uncompensated emancipation. He stated his opposition to colonization, and he promoted many of the era's reforms, including women's rights, prison reform, and temperance. Garrison believed that slavery could be ended and society perfected through a change in the human heart, not through political action. In fact, he perceived the Constitution as a proslavery document and the federal government as fouled by its proslavery connections.

In what ways did Harriet Tubman, William and Eliza Parker, Shadrach Minkins, Anthony Burns, and Harriet Beecher Stowe represent growing opposition to slavery in the 1850s?

Harriet Tubman- underground railroad William and Eliza Parker- civil disobedience Shadrach Minkins- resisted fugitive slave law and was freed in court with the help of the Boston Vigilance Committee Anthony Burns- " In the North, vigilance committees, an aboveground arm of the underground railroad, assisted arriving fugitives by providing temporary shelter, food, clothing, and sometimes legal assistance and jobs." Harriet Beecher Stowe- Uncle Toms Cabin

What was the purpose of Ohio's Black laws passed in 1804?

In 1804, Ohio passed black laws requiring all free blacks to supply legal proof of their free status and to post a $500 bond to guarantee their good behavior. Indiana, which became a state in 1816, and Illinois, which gained statehood in 1818, entered the Union as free states with similar laws. Though not uniformly enforced, such laws were common in the western states and imposed bond requirements for free blacks that eventually reached $1,000 — a sum well beyond the reach of most African Americans.

Where did Paul Cuffe take a shipload of Blacks in 1815?

In 1815 a wealthy black businessman and ship captain named Paul Cuffe, or Cuffee, took thirty-eight black Bostonians to the West African colony of Sierra Leone.

How did the Amistad become famous? How could its story be regarded as one of a successful slave revolt?

In 1839, a group of Africans who had just been kidnapped and enslaved seized control of the Spanish slave ship Amistad in international waters near Cuba. The U.S. navy captured the ship and made the rebels prisoners of the U.S. government, at which point Spain demanded their return. But the rebels' enslavement violated treaties prohibiting the international slave trade, and their status had to be determined in court. The Amistad case became a widely publicized abolitionist cause and ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which freed the rebels in 1841.

Why did the discovery of gold in California threaten to disrupt the federal union?

In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo sealed the U.S. victory over Mexico. In the treaty, Mexico ceded what became the territories of California, New Mexico, and Utah, as well as all of Texas north of the Rio Grande. Meanwhile, the discovery of gold in California drew so many prospectors to that territory (including more than 4,000 free blacks) that in 1850 it applied for admission to the Union as a free state. If admitted, California would tip the balance in the Senate to the free states.

Why did the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 spark violence?

In 1854, Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas, who had engineered passage of the Compromise of 1850, reopened the issue of slavery in the territories by promoting popular sovereignty for Kansas and Nebraska. By the terms of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), the people who settled those territories would vote to determine whether, as states, they would be slave or free (Map 7.2). The result was a series of violent confrontations between proslavery and antislavery settlers. In May 1856, when proslavery forces from Missouri attacked the antislavery town of Lawrence, Kansas, John Brown, the self-appointed "captain" of antislavery forces, took revenge by murdering five proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek. The furor over "Bleeding Kansas" also brought violence to the floor of the Senate when South Carolina representative Preston S. Brooks beat Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner into unconsciousness at his desk. Brooks claimed to be upholding the honor of his kinsman, South Carolina senator Andrew P. Butler, whom Sumner had singled out for insult in his earlier speech "The Crime against Kansas."

Where were Black men able to vote by 1860?

In 1860, black men could vote only in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Blacks constituted just 6 percent of the population in these five states.

What claims about race did Samuel Morton and Louis Agassiz make in early 1800s?

In the 1820s and 1830s, Dr. Samuel G. Morton of Philadelphia collected human skulls from all over the world and classified them according to race. Measuring skull cavities, he proposed in Crania Americana (1839) that Europeans had the most brain capacity, Africans the least. His studies in craniology claimed to prove racial hierarchies popularized in studies such as Types of Mankind, or Ethnological Researches (1854) by Josiah Clark Nott and George Robins Gliddon, with a contribution by Louis Agassiz. Agassiz, a Swiss zoologist and geologist who taught at Harvard, lectured widely on the separate origins of the races and their distinctive characteristics.

In what ways were vigilance committees a reaction to this measure?

In the North, vigilance committees, an aboveground arm of the underground railroad, assisted arriving fugitives by providing temporary shelter, food, clothing, and sometimes legal assistance and jobs.

Why did Blacks see his death in 1830 as suspicious?

In the South, Walker's Appeal strengthened the determination of whites to suppress black dissent. By 1830, the pamphlet had reached Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, and Alabama, where whites discovered copies in the hands of black seamen and slaves. Terrified by its message, they offered a $3,000 bounty for Walker's death and a $10,000 reward for anyone willing to kidnap Walker and deliver him alive. His pamphlet was the subject of special meetings of several southern state legislatures, and it inspired new laws restricting the rights of slaves and free blacks in Georgia and North Carolina. In the midst of this controversy, Walker was found dead in the doorway of his home in June 1830, just after the publication of the third edition of his Appeal. He probably succumbed to tuberculosis, which was rampant in nineteenth-century Boston. But given the size of the reward that Walker's enemies offered to see him dead, many free blacks were convinced that he was the victim of foul play. Either way, Walker's death did not end his influence. His pamphlet had shown that slavery had enemies throughout the nation.

What happened to the Black community of Seneca Village in 1857?

Ironically, the very success of black entrepreneurs attracted the animosity of whites, and successful communities were often victims of violence. Seneca Village, in upper Manhattan, was a thriving black community in the 1830s and 1840s, with churches, schools, businesses, cemeteries, and various community institutions. Wealthy blacks invested in it because of its promise; poorer blacks lived there because of its affordability and welcoming atmosphere. Community gardens, with "cabbage, and melon-patches, with hills of corn and cucumbers, and beds of beets, [and] parsnips,"9 sustained those who lived there. Known as a haven for runaway slaves, Seneca Village was also a center of abolitionism and growing agitation for black rights. In 1857, city officials razed it to make way for Central Park.

What was the importance of his and other autobiographical slave narratives?

It provided a first hand experience written on paper that really exemplified the horrors of slavery. In 1845, Douglass published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. It sold more than 30,000 copies in its first five years in print, and in 1855, he published an expanded version, My Bondage and My Freedom. Douglass's books reached a wide range of readers and exemplify the genre of slave narratives that emerged as this era's most original and significant form of African American literary expression. Addressed largely to white audiences, these narratives charted individual yet representative journeys from southern slave to free black person. By revealing the details of what it meant to be a slave, they affirmed the humanity of enslaved African Americans.

What African country did they help establish?

Liberia

What were the greatest hardships of their journeys?

Losing their family and friends and being sold. Once in the Lower South, enslaved people faced new traumas. On arrival, they were marketed at auction houses and slave trading centers across the region. Prospective buyers appraised them as if they were farm animals, inspecting their bodies for signs of illness or other physical weakness and for scars from frequent whippings, which might indicate a rebellious nature.

How did Louisa Everett's marriage to Sam reveal the brutality of slavery?

Louisa Everett's marriage began when her owner came into her cabin with a male slave named Sam and forced Sam to undress. According to Louisa, her owner then asked her, " 'Do you think you can stand this big n*****?' He had that old bull whip flung acrost his shoulder, and Lawd, that man could hit so hard! So I jes said 'yassur, I guess so,' and tried to hide my face so I couldn't see Sam's nakedness, but he made me look at him anyhow. Well he told us what we must git busy and do in his presence, and we had to do it. After that we were considered man and wife. Me and Sam was a healthy pair and had fine, big babies, so I never had another man forced on me, thank God. Sam was kind to me and I learnt to love him."

Where did most free Blacks in the North tend to live? Why?

Most free blacks lived in port cities, which had had large black communities even during the colonial era. No longer bound to rural masters, the ex-slave population congregated in major northern cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, all of which attracted fugitives from slavery as well. . City life offered safety in numbers to runaways and also held significant advantages for free blacks, including greater opportunities for independence and employment. With their new freedom, African Americans sought to build their own households and sustain larger black communities that could support churches, schools, and social organizations.

What new security measures did Charleston adopt in the aftermath of the Vesey conspiracy? Describe the treadmill installed in 1823. What was the purpose of the South Carolina Negro Seaman Act?

Neither death nor deportation could erase the memory of Vesey's plot, however, and like Richmond whites in the aftermath of Gabriel's rebellion in 1800, white South Carolinians moved quickly to limit the mobility and autonomy of their slaves. State officials banned enslaved people from hiring themselves out, and they forbade free blacks to hire slaves. The City of Charleston took the additional precaution of hiring a permanent force of 150 guardsmen to patrol the city around the clock. Any enslaved person caught on the street after 9 p.m. without a written pass could be arrested and whipped or, worse, assigned to walk on a prison treadmill installed at the Charleston jail in 1823. The treadmill consisted of a wheel with steps, which was propelled by a group of manacled slaves, who climbed the rotating steps under the supervision of a driver brandishing a cat-o'-nine-tails. The mill was used to grind corn sold to offset the jail's daily expenses, but even when there was no grain to grind, prisoners could be assigned to hard labor on the treadmill. Bitterly aware that Vesey and most of his key collaborators could read and write, South Carolina officials reinforced existing laws against teaching slaves to read, and the state legislature adopted new legislation forbidding free black education. In the fall of 1822, municipal authorities also razed the AME church where Vesey had preached, although they could find no evidence that church leaders had participated in the plot. As one nineteenth-century commentator later noted, the church was threatening because it "tended to spread the dangerous infection of the alphabet."11 Free blacks were also subject to new legislation and surveillance designed to make them feel unwelcome in the state. One law required all free black males over age fifteen to find white guardians willing to post bonds for their good behavior, and another barred free blacks who left the state from returning. The state also put new restrictions on the free black sailors who worked on ships that docked in South Carolina. Passed in 1822, The South Carolina Negro Seamen Act required black sailors be incarcerated while in South Carolina. The ship captains who employed free black sailors were responsible for jail costs, and if they did not pay them, or if they left any of their sailors behind, these black men could be sold into slavery.

Why did White mobs attack Blacks in Cincinnati in 1829? Where did some Blacks relocate as a result?

Racially motivated riots were almost commonplace in northern cities, as white mobs attacked black neighborhoods with much loss of property and even loss of life. A series of riots in Cincinnati offers an example. Directly across the Ohio River from the slave state of Kentucky, Cincinnati was where southern blacks who had been emancipated or had purchased their freedom often relocated. It was also a common destination for fugitive slaves and, in time, a key stop along the underground railroad. The city's black population grew so rapidly as to alarm its white population, and in late June 1829, local officials announced that they would rigorously apply Ohio's black laws. As the city's blacks began to investigate the possibility of resettling in Canada, white mobs attacked them. Over the summer, half the black population was driven from the city. Some two hundred eventually settled in Upper Canada, where they named their new community Wilberforce, after the British abolitionist William Wilberforce, who led the effort to end slavery in Britain's colonies. His goal was accomplished in 1833, when Parliament passed a compensated emancipation law that applied to the entire British empire.

What inspired Nat Turner to lead a bloody slave revolt?

Raised in a Methodist household, Turner was a pious young man who spent much of his spare time praying and fasting. He experienced powerful religious visions, which eventually convinced him that "the great day of judgment" was at hand. Turner bided his time for years, waiting for "signs in the heavens that it would make known to me when I should commence the great work." On the evening of August 21, 1831, he struck, accompanied by a small band of fellow slaves who shared his vision of "slay[ing] my enemies with their own weapons."

What led Richard Allen and Absalom Jones to break away from the Methodist Church?

Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and other early members of Philadelphia's Free African Society, for example, attended St. George's Methodist Church. Allen, who was a gifted preacher, even led special services for African Americans there. But as Allen's sermons drew more black worshippers to St. George's, these congregants became increasingly unwelcome. White leaders began to segregate them, asking them first to sit along the walls and then moving them to seats in the balcony. "You must not kneel here," a church trustee told Absalom Jones when he and several others defied this segregated seating plan, claiming seats on the first floor and kneeling to join the rest of the congregation in prayer one Sunday morning in 1792.20 Heads still bowed, Jones and his followers refused to move until the prayer was over, at which point the trustee summoned several white men to help him force the black congregants to the balcony. Disgusted, the black members of St. George's got up and walked out of the church. -Allen and Jones never entered that church again

Why did Jarena Lee quarrel with Richard Allen? To what extent did she become a leader within the AME?

She sought religious instruction, eventually making her way to Richard Allen's Bethel AME Church, where her "soul was gloriously converted to God." Lee's conversion would propel her toward religious leadership. She became a faithful member of Mother Bethel, and five years after her sanctification, she felt called to preach.However, when Lee sought Richard Allen's permission to address his congregation, he discouraged her. Methodism, he told her, "did not call for women preachers."22 But not long after the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816, Allen relented, granting Lee permission to lead prayers meeting outside the church and address congregations as an exhorter, or lay preacher. Lee began preaching in 1818 and sustained a successful itinerant ministry for decades. Still, despite her efforts, the AME would not ordain its first female minister until 1889.

How were the Northern and Southern economies becoming more and more different by the 1820s? How were these economies nonetheless bound together through trade?

Slave labor predominated throughout the South, which maintained a largely agricultural economy even as industrialization moved many northern workers from fields to factories. As a result, the North and South became increasingly distinct and divided by the 1820s, especially with regard to the expansion of slavery. But strong economic ties also connected the regions. The South was crucial to American industrialization: Enslaved African Americans cultivated and harvested many of the raw materials used in northern factories. Likewise, the South depended on the North for textiles and manufactured goods — and provided the North with a lucrative market for those goods.

Identify the Black Seminoles and John Horse.

Slaves and maroons played a vital role in helping the Seminole tribe resist the incursions of U.S. troops. Black Seminole leaders such as John Horse, pictured here, gathered recruits and spearheaded efforts to drive the troops out of Florida. In the years immediately following his relocation to Oklahoma, Horse continued to work on behalf of the Seminole tribe and served as an interpreter. In 1849, he emigrated to Mexico and became a captain in the Mexican army. This engraving, titled Gopher John, Seminole Interpreter, first appeared in an 1848 history of the Second Seminole War.

Describe the indignities of the auction block especially as seen in the painting from New Orleans (p. 209).

Slaves experienced tremendous degradation in the process of their auction and sale. Potential buyers, almost all of whom were white men, inspected them bodily and subjected them to questioning. Slave couples and parents of slave children were burdened with the additional fear of having their families torn asunder. In this engraving of an auction house in New Orleans, a family is on the auction block. The auctioneers and buyers treat them merely as goods to be sold, on par with the sale of paintings, deeds, and various agricultural commodities shown in the picture.

Why was Frederick Douglass upset when Brown told his story?

Some abolitionists, however, including Frederick Douglass, disapproved of Brown's disclosure of his escape method, feeling that it prevented other slaves from escaping by similar means.

What method did masters devise for whipping pregnant slaves?

Some even whipped pregnant slaves, and such whippings were common enough that owners developed a special method for administering them. According to one former slave, pregnant slaves were made to "lie face down in a specially dug depression in the ground," which protected the fetus while the mother was abused.

Why weren't slave marriages legally recognized? Why did many slave owners nonetheless encourage slaves to marry?

Southern courts never recognized slave marriages because, according to slave codes, chattel slaves were " 'not ranked among sentient beings, but among things,' and things are not married." In practice, however, enslaved African Americans courted, loved, and formed lasting unions. Enslaved couples came together and remained together largely at the discretion of their owners, many of whom had little interest in their happiness. Owners were anxious for female slaves to reproduce and for male slaves to be tied down by family loyalties; they generally encouraged their slaves to marry informally and often conducted the ceremonies themselves.

What actions did she take to free herself and her children?

That fall, Baumfree freed herself by sneaking out of Dumont's house early one morning with a baby in one arm and her clothing in the other. She left behind her husband, whom Dumont had picked for her, and the rest of her children, who still owed Dumont many years of labor. But she did not travel far from her family. She took refuge with two antislavery neighbors, Maria and Isaac Van Wagenen, who sheltered Baumfree despite her owner's objections. When Dumont tried to drag Baumfree and her baby back to his home, Isaac Van Wagenen told his neighbor that even though he had "never been in the practice of buying and selling slaves; [and] he did not believe in slavery," he would buy out the remainder of Baumfree's time rather than see her return. Dumont accepted his offer of $20 for Baumfree's freedom and $5 for her baby's. Baumfree still had to fight to free her other children, who remained with Dumont, and even took him to court to achieve that end.

Who were the leading supporters of the American Colonization Society?

The American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States, more popularly known as the American Colonization Society (ACS), first met in Washington, D.C., in 1816. Made up of prominent white clergymen, lawyers, financiers, and politicians — including Speaker of the House Henry Clay — the ACS appealed to both slaveholders and those opposed to slavery. Although Finley hoped colonization would eventually bring an end to slavery, the ACS planned to colonize free blacks only.

What features of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 were most designed to appease slaveowners?

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made it easier for fugitive slaves to be captured and returned to their owners by strengthening federal authority over the capture and return of runaway slaves. Many northerners had long objected to the actions of slave catchers, and some northern states had passed personal liberty laws forbidding the kidnapping and forced return of fugitives. These laws were ruled unconstitutional in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), but in that decision the U.S. Supreme Court also affirmed that the return of fugitives was a federal matter, in which state officials could not be required to assist. Northern states had then passed new personal liberty laws that forbade state officials to assist in fugitive cases and prohibited the use of state courts and jails for alleged fugitives. Under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, federal marshals were required to pursue alleged runaway slaves, and federal commissioners were appointed to oversee runaway cases. The fees these officials received — $10 for a runaway returned to the claimant, $5 for a runaway set free — reflected the law's bias.

What were the major terms of the Missouri Compromise of 1820?

The Missouri Compromise, as it became known, retained the balance of power between the regions, but it also included a major concession to antislavery northerners: Congress agreed that slavery throughout the rest of the Louisiana Purchase would be prohibited north of latitude 36°30′, which runs along Missouri's southern border (Map 6.2). Slavery would not travel north, as many northern whites feared. But the Missouri Compromise was deeply disappointing to African Americans in both regions. It stopped the southward progression of gradual emancipation at Missouri's southern border and shored up slavery in the South.

What was the aim of the Tappan brothers?

The Tappan brothers, by contrast, saw the Constitution as an antislavery document. Consequently, they fought to end slavery through political action, including electing antislavery candidates and creating antislavery political parties. They believed it best to work within the political system to build a climate favorable to abolition. Political abolitionists gained growing influence as increasing numbers of northern politicians took a stand against slavery. Their strong support for the antislavery wing of the national Whig Party enhanced their impact, and they were actively involved in two antislavery parties: the Liberty Party, founded in 1840, and the Free-Soil Party, which absorbed the Liberty Party upon its founding in 1848.

What was the importance to Frederick Douglass of his fight with Mr. Covey?

The famous fugitive Frederick Douglass almost lost his life at age sixteen when he physically resisted a whipping from a particularly brutal master. Born on a Maryland plantation, Douglass spent much of his youth in Baltimore, working as a house servant. But when he became an unruly teenager, Douglass's owner sent him out of the city to work for a poor white farmer named Mr. Covey, who was known for his ability to subdue even the most recalcitrant slaves. Covey subjected Douglass to a brutal work regime and terrible weekly beatings that left Douglass feeling utterly "broken in body, soul, and spirit." One day, however, he found himself fighting back against his tormentor. "From whence came the spirit I don't know," Douglass later recalled. The two men exchanged blows until both were exhausted, and thereafter Douglass recovered his "long-crushed spirit." He took no more beatings from Covey and "let it be known ... that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me."21 Douglass was lucky to survive this resolution, given that enslaved people who physically resisted risked death. They had no right to self-defense under southern law, which gave white people uncontrolled authority over slaves' bodies.

What was notable about Black rates of incarceration by the early 1800s? What explains this?

The legal system, too, discriminated against blacks. Law enforcement officers routinely left black life, liberty, and property unprotected, and blacks had little redress in the courts. A white Cincinnati lawyer admitted to Tocqueville that the lack of legal protection for local blacks often led to "the most revolting injustices."5 Blacks were also imprisoned at far higher rates than whites for all kinds of offenses — real and imagined, minor and major — in part because of racist views that held them prone to criminality. In a most alarming pattern that would only expand over time, blacks tended to be overrepresented in crime statistics, including arrests, convictions, and imprisonment rates. As a result, black women and men have historically been incarcerated at rates that exceed their percentage of the population at local, state, and national levels, owing principally to antiblack racism. Relatedly, because blacks could not serve on juries or function as witnesses or lawyers, blacks accused of crimes were more likely to be convicted and sentenced than whites similarly accused. Not until the late 1850s were blacks permitted to serve on juries, and then only in Massachusetts.

What made Frederick Douglass such an important spokesman for the freedom struggle?

The most influential newspaper was published by Frederick Douglass. In 1847 he launched the North Star as an explicitly abolitionist paper aiming to "attack slavery in all its forms and aspects; advocate universal emancipation; exalt the standard of public morality; promote the moral and intellectual improvement of the colored people; and hasten the day of freedom to the three millions of our enslaved fellow countrymen."19 The North Star attracted white readers as well as black. In 1851, it merged with the Liberty Party Paper to become Frederick Douglass' Paper, which continued in publication until 1863. Its longevity both derived from and contributed to Douglass's stature as the preeminent black leader of his day. The paper also published contributions from well-known correspondents, such as James McCune Smith, who in 1855 argued vigorously for race pride. "We must learn to love, respect and glory in our Negro nature," he asserted. In addition to the influential role Frederick Douglass played in the newspaper business, he was a powerful lecturer who captivated audiences by recounting the realities of his life as a slave. He had escaped slavery in 1838 and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he worked as a day laborer.

How was the Naturalization Act of 1790 clearly racist in content?

The nation's first immigration law, the Naturalization Act of 1790, instituted residence and racial requirements for potential citizens. Naturalization was available to "free white person[s]" who had been in the United States for at least two years. Free blacks, by contrast, were not classified as full citizens under the laws of the Republic: They were barred from joining the national militia, carrying federal mail, or holding elected office in the District of Columbia. Moreover, the Constitution did not protect blacks from racially discriminatory laws imposed by individual states. Emancipation would not bring full freedom for black northerners, and just achieving emancipation was a struggle for many blacks.

What stands out about the execution of Vesey and other rebels? What finally ended the executions?

The rebels were deliberately denied funerals or proper burials. Aware that Africans and African Americans cherished funeral rites as a way to free the spirit of the deceased, Charleston authorities had the rebels cut down and dismembered after they were hanged. As the death toll mounted, however, it became clear that the costly executions could not proceed indefinitely. The loss of slave property and labor imposed a severe economic burden on both the slaves' owners and the state. By late July, Carolinians were ready to see the hangings come to an end. As a lawyer told one of Charleston's magistrates, "You must take care and save negroes enough for the Rice crop." the remaining thirty-seven rebels were transported to slave societies outside the United States at their owners' expense.

What were the forms of slave resistance that were safer and more common than rebellion?

Theft was perhaps the most common form of disobedience, although few slaves regarded it as a crime. Enslaved people also feigned illness to avoid unpleasant work assignments. Some slaves defied their owners by running away and hiding to avoid punishment or other harsh measures. Mostly temporary, such escapes were often propelled by despair and fear rather than being carefully planned.

What characterized slavery as practiced by the Seminoles?

This act came on the heels of several decades of conflict, most of which involved disputes over the Indians' traditional homelands, which were coveted by white settlers. But the Seminole tribe, which lived in northern Florida, also clashed with state and federal authorities on the issue of slavery. Although the Seminole people owned slaves, their system of bondage differed dramatically from that of the other four tribes, whose slave owning practices resembled those of southern whites. Among the Seminole, enslaved people were adopted as kin: they could not be sold to whites, and they rarely passed their enslaved status on to their children. The tribe also allied with runaway slaves and sheltered entire communities of fugitives. Known today as Black Seminoles, the members of these maroon communities remained free by paying their Seminole hosts an annual tribute in livestock or crops, and they helped the Seminole tribe defend their land from white squatters.

Why did slavery continue in some parts of the North through the 1820s?

Throughout the North, former slaves were liberated on terms that were neither swift nor generous. Slavery was outlawed in Massachusetts and Vermont during the Revolution, and it was abolished by means of gradual emancipation laws in the other northern states — with the exception of New Hampshire, which passed no abolition law and instead let its tiny slave population dwindle to nothing through manumission and attrition. The first state to adopt a gradual emancipation law was Pennsylvania. Passed in 1780, Pennsylvania's Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery provided a model for similar laws in Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784, New York in 1799, and New Jersey in 1804. These laws applied only to enslaved blacks born after the legislation was passed — those born before then generally remained enslaved for life — and liberated those it freed in their mid- to late twenties, after they had labored long enough, in effect, to pay for their own freedom. As a result, despite their efforts to speed the application of these laws, thousands of black northerners remained in bondage through the 1820s.

In what sense might their thinking be called "scientific racism"?

Throughout the nineteenth century, leading scholars in Europe and America investigated and debated racial origins and character. For American slaveholders, these early studies in the field that would become anthropology helped justify the enslavement of African Americans. For white northerners, these ideas fed notions of white supremacy and suggested reasons to view free blacks as a problem population. Many favored schemes to remove the problem by colonizing African Americans outside the United States, but the American Colonization Society's efforts to sponsor the emigration of free blacks to Liberia were largely unsuccessful. Most free blacks opposed the idea of colonization, as they believed that the United States was their home. A group of Rochester blacks asserted, "We do not consider Africa to be our home, any more than the present whites do England, Scotland, or Ireland."

What was the purpose of mutual aid societies?

- Absalom Jones and Richard Allen founded the city's first black mutual aid society in 1787 -defined as an organization or voluntary association in which members agreed to assist one another in securing benefits such as insurance. -meant to benefit blacks who needed it, especially orphans and widows -benefits included help with sickness, disability benefits, burial insurance, and pensions to widows and orphans -Mutual aid societies also helped free blacks establish other institutions that would be crucial to their community's well-being. Most notable among these were black churches.

What denominations did each of these men go on to found?

-The group worshipped in a rented storefront until July 29, 1794, when the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church — led by Allen and later renamed the Bethel AME Church — finally opened its doors. Bethel AME joined several other black Methodist churches to form an independent AME denomination in 1816, at which point the new denomination's congregants elected Allen to serve as the AME's first bishop. -But not all African Americans who had attended St. George's joined Bethel AME. Some abandoned Methodism altogether, registering a permanent protest against the segregationist policies of white Methodists. Among them was Absalom Jones, who with help from Allen and other members of the Free African Society founded the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, the nation's first African American Episcopal church, and became an ordained Episcopal minister in 1804.

What did Black churches provide aside from religious services?

-mutual aid societies -education -Early black churches hosted mutual aid society meetings, public lectures, protest meetings, and other gatherings and served the needs of newly freed men and women who came in search of educational opportunities and economic assistance as well as Sunday services. Virtually all early black churches also served as schools at various points in their history. Richard Allen founded the nation's first black Sunday school in his church in 1795, and he opened a night school for adults a few years later.

When was Isabella Baumfree supposed to gain her freedom? Why didn't that happen?

-she was one of many black northerners who struggled to achieve the freedom promised her by law. Born in upstate New York in 1797, two years too early to qualify for gradual emancipation, Baumfree had little hope of ever obtaining her freedom until 1817, when the New York legislature revised state law, setting July 4, 1827, as the date by which all New York slaves would achieve freedom, regardless of birth date. This revision did not release slave children born before that date from their service obligation, but it reduced the term to twenty-one years. Baumfree, who endured several abusive owners and many hardships as a slave, was understandably eager to be freed, and she no doubt welcomed the law's reduction of the terms of service for her five children. As 1827 approached, she even managed to get her owner, John Dumont, to agree to release her a year early if she behaved well and served him faithfully. But July 4, 1827, came and went, and Baumfree remained enslaved. Dumont insisted that Baumfree owed him more time because she had worked less than usual that year due to a "badly diseased hand."

What did white racism become more intense as Blacks gained more freedom?

-teachers and school institutions were racist -white churches against blacks -racist against blacks getting jobs -racist against blacks getting any rights regarding owning land, voting, participating in govt, etc. -Emancipated blacks, concentrated in urban areas and often impoverished, formed a highly visible underclass in northern cities, where they performed much of the noisiest, dirtiest work.

Why did slaves dread being sold to the Lower South?

. Between 1820 and 1860, 1.2 million African Americans moved from the Upper South to the Lower South in a mass migration that relocated almost half of the region's slave population. Approximately one-third of these involuntary migrants belonged to Upper South slaveholders who took their slaves with them as they migrated west and south to establish new plantations in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Arkansas, and Texas. The remaining two-thirds were bought, transported, and resold in the Lower South by slave traders. Most slaves made the grueling journey on foot, in coffles that could contain anywhere from thirty to three hundred men, women, and children. The men were usually chained together in handcuffed pairs, while the women and children trailed behind them or were carried in wagons. Traders on horseback, with whips and guns, accompanied the coffles. After walking twenty to twenty-five miles during the day, the slaves often slept outdoors, sometimes under tents or just huddled together on the ground. As the South's transportation network improved, some traders began to ship their slaves south on steamships that chugged down the Mississippi or on oceangoing ships that docked in New Orleans. By the 1850s, transporting slaves by rail was also common. Lyman Abbott, a northerner who visited the region in 1856, found that "every train going south has ... slaves on board, twenty or more, and a 'slave car,' which is very generally also the smoking-car, and sometimes the baggage-car."5 Regardless of how the enslaved people traveled, the journey represented a new Middle Passage for them. Slaves dreaded being "sold down the river" to the Lower South, knowing, above all, that such sales usually meant permanent separation from their families and friends.

How did the Indian Removal Act of 1830 affect the Five Civilized Tribes?

White settlers and federal officials used a combination of treaties, warfare, and forced migration to drive the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole tribes from their homelands. Known among whites as the Five Civilized Tribes, because they had adopted European institutions in an attempt to live peacefully alongside their white neighbors, these tribes occupied large amounts of land that became increasingly appealing to settlers as the South's plantation economy expanded. The conflicts that white encroachment created culminated in the federal government's passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, which forced Indians living east of the Mississippi River to relocate to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

How did William Lloyd Garrison and the Tappan brothers differ over abolitionist aims and tactics?

William Lloyd Garrison led the moral suasion wing of the abolitionist movement, and the wealthy brothers Arthur and Lewis Tappan led the political action wing. Together the three men founded the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Among the sixty-three delegates from eleven states at the society's first meeting in Philadelphia were three African Americans: Robert Purvis, James McCrummell, and James G. Barbadoes. The delegates framed two goals: "the entire abolition of slavery in the United States" and the elevation of "the character and condition of the people of color."

How did William Wells Brown experience the full horrors of slavery?

William Wells Brown was born into slavery on a Kentucky plantation in 1814. His early experiences in bondage were varied and painful. Until he was twelve, he lived in rural Missouri, where his master, Dr. Young, moved his household of forty enslaved people shortly after Brown was born. Young employed Brown's mother and four older siblings on a tobacco and hemp plantation outside St. Louis, where Brown observed the brutal discipline imposed on plantation field hands. As an infant, he often rode on his mother's back while she worked in the fields because she was not allowed to leave the fields to nurse. As a young boy, he was routinely awakened by the sounds of the whippings that Young's overseer gave field hands — including Brown's mother and siblings — who were not at work by 4:30 a.m. He was close enough to the fields to "hear every crack of the whip, and every groan and cry," and he wept at the sounds

What did Lewis Woodson add to her arguments?

Writing in the Colored American, the Pittsburgh AME minister and educator Lewis Woodson expressed the commonly held belief that deportment and dress reflect inner character: "Every one must agree that the moral effect of mean dress is, to degrade us in our own eyes and in the eyes of all who behold us." Articulating a particular concern among black women and men, Woodson maintained that "colored females should be extremely attentive to cleanliness and neatness of dress" because "of the prejudices which exist against them in the community in which they live; and they should consider how imprudent it is, by neglecting their personal appearance, to heighten and aggravate that prejudice."

Would she have likely supported the Seneca Falls convention of 1848?

Yes

In what sense was he "smoked" by his master?

Young hired the boy out to a variety of masters, leaving him with a broad understanding of enslaved life and labor in the antebellum South. His first employer, a tavern owner named Major Freeland, was short-tempered, unstable, and prone to lashing out at people he enslaved without warning. To punish those he deemed disobedient, Freeland employed a technique he had learned in his home state of Virginia. Brown recalled that "he would tie them up in the smokehouse, and whip them; after which, he would cause a fire to be made of tobacco stems, and smoke them. This he called 'Virginia play.' "2 Brown was so terrified of Freeland that he ran away and hid in the woods, where another local slaveholder who kept a pack of bloodhounds for this purpose recaptured him. On his return to Freeland's tavern, Brown, too, was whipped and smoked.

What was Bobalition?

defined as a rendition of the word abolition, based on what whites heard as a mispronunciation by blacks. It was used on broadsides and in newspapers to mock free black celebrations of abolition. -Racial violence increased in the early nineteenth century as white troublemakers and mobs began targeting black institutions, disrupting services at black churches, and sometimes even attacking black congregations. They also began to mock emancipation itself. Racist broadsides made fun of black gatherings to commemorate the abolition of slavery by calling these events Bobalition

What is colonization?

defined as the idea that blacks should be sent back to Africa or moved to another territory outside the United States. During the late eighteenth century, when many blacks were still relatively recent arrivals, some were eager to return to the land of their ancestors.

By what name did she come to be known?

later named herself "Sojourner Truth"

Why did it fail?

more than a month before the scheduled rebellion, two Charleston slaves divulged the plan to their owners. Local authorities swiftly suppressed the uprising. Over the next month, officials arrested 131 slaves and free blacks, 72 of whom were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. More died in custody, and 27 were ultimately released. Vesey was hanged on July 2, 1822, with 5 other men in a public spectacle that drew thousands of black and white Charlestonians. The event was followed by several other mass hangings the same month.

Why did the "Missouri question" threaten to blow the country up?

the nation was made up of eleven free states and eleven slave states. The admission of Missouri threatened to upset the balance. Missouri Territory had no restrictions on slavery, and some of its most fertile farmland had been settled by slaveholders such as William Wells Brown's owner. By 1818, when Missouri applied for statehood, the territory was home to more than two thousand enslaved people. Nevertheless, northern congressmen were reluctant to admit Missouri as a slave state. The admission of another slave state would increase the South's power in Congress at a time when northern politicians had already begun to regret the Constitution's Three-Fifths Compromise.