Chapter 10: The South and Slavery

Why did white Southerners fear the presence of free blacks in their midst?

Free blacks challenged the basic assumption that white equaled freedom and black equaled slavery.

Why might many white Southerners have blamed Nat Turner's revolt on William Lloyd Garrison?

Garrison's the Liberator was first published the same year as Turner's revolt.

Which statement best describes how the expansion of cotton production in the South affected industry in the North?

Profits from the slave trade and cotton shipping and brokerage provided capital for new factories in the North.

Why was Harriet Tubman unusual as a runaway slave?

She was a woman, and most runaways were young men.

Why were slave children taught to call all adults of a certain age "aunt" or "uncle" and children of their own age "brother" and "sister"?

Since slave marriages were often broken, slave communities sought to act like larger families.

How did slave communities respond to the threat of separation through the internal slave trade?

Slave communities attempted to act like larger families

How did attitudes in the South toward slavery change after the invention of the cotton gin?

Slavery increased

What pro-slavery arguments were developed in the first half of the nineteenth century?

Some arguments in favor slavery developed in the first half of the nineteenth century were that it was the way of God converting the African race, others saw it as caring for an inferior race like a father and son/mother and daughter.

Why were planters around Natchez, Mississippi, known by the Hindi term "nabob"?

The Hindi word described Europeans who had amassed fabulous wealth in India.

Which statement best explains why southern cities offered both slaves and free blacks greater opportunities in skilled occupations than did northern cities?

The South failed to attract as much immigrant labor as the North.

Which statement best describes the intention of the black codes that were adopted after 1830?

The black codes defined the role and limited the rights of free blacks in the South.

Why might wealthy cotton planters have viewed successful commercial and industrial enterprises in southern towns with suspicion?

The growth of commerce and industry threatened planters' independence, as well as their social and political leadership in the South.

Who made up the planter elite?

high class slave owners.

While masters expected Christianity to make slaves obedient and peaceful, slaves subverted their masters' expectations by __________.

holding night prayer meetings and developing forms of religious expression of their longings for freedom and justice

Which statement best describes changes in American society after 1793?

While the North became more urban and industrial, the South remained rural and agrarian.

For southern yeomen, what was the key to rising prosperity and social status?

buying more slaves and land to grow commercial crops

What were the values of yeoman farmers?

work with slavea

From the 1830s onward, how did the southern slave system change?

Fewer people owned slaves, and slave owners became wealthier.

When did the Second Great Awakening have its greatest impact in the South?

1790s

About what percentage of southern white people owned more than fifty slaves in 1830?

2.5

About what proportion of white Southerners did not own any slaves?

2/3

About what percentage of the slave population of the Upper South was uprooted and sold to the Lower South in the internal slave trade between 1820 and 1860?

50%

What was life like for the typical slave in the American South?

A typical slave had horrific working and living conditions, slaves in the south were rarely freed by their white owners.

Who deserves the most credit for what humanity survived in the southern slave system, despite often intolerable conditions?

African Americans and the communities they created

How did African Americans endure and resist slavery?

African Americans relied heavily on religion to endure their suffering, but not much could be done to resist besides mild inconveniences at the expense of the white people.

Which statement best describes how the majority of the southern slaveholding elite in the 1830s had acquired their wealth?

Almost all slave owners had inherited their wealth.

Why did poor southern whites insist, sometimes violently, on their superiority over blacks?

As the gap between rich and poor whites widened, white skin privilege was the only element of superiority poor whites could claim.

How did the cotton gin affect the plantation economy?

By making it possible to clean fifty pounds of cotton in a day, it made cotton profitable.

How did the southern defense of slavery affect national politics after the 1830s?

By stifling debate in the South, it made compromise with the North impossible.

Which invention in the 1790s did the most to transform the southern economy?

Cotton Gin

Who invented the cotton gin?

Eli Whitney

Southern slaveholders claimed that their paternalism justified their ownership of slaves, but paternalism implied obligations as well as privileges. How well do you think slaveholders lived up to their paternalistic obligations?

I do not believe southern slaveholders lived up to their paternalistic obligations. This would imply that they treated them humanely, which they obviously did not. Southern slaveholders would not dare put their own children to work in those conditions.

Why did slave owners resist teaching their slaves to read?

Ignorant slaves would be less likely to cause trouble or run away.

What role did black Christianity play in the slave community?

It helped slaves survive, giving them a spiritual freedom whites could not destroy.

As the urban population of the South rapidly grew in the 1840s‒1850s, how did middle-class Southerners respond to slavery?

Most of them believed the slave system was essential to social peace and economic development.

Who was responsible for the most successful slave rebellion, one in which fifty-five whites were killed in 1831?

Nat Turner

What legal consequences did white masters face if they punished slaves excessively, generally abused their slaves, or raped slaves?

No legal action was taken against them.

What would a slave woman most likely do if she was raped by a male master?

Nothing

What uncomfortable truth that many Southerners would have preferred to ignore was demonstrated by Nat Turner's revolt?

Only force kept African Americans enslaved.

Which statement best explains why yeoman farmers with no slaves still supported the slave system that mainly benefited wealthy planters?

Planters and non‒slave-owning yeomen shared a belief in white skin privilege.

Aside from the slaves themselves, which group probably benefited least from the southern slave labor system?

Poor whites

What did it mean to say that someone was seized with "Alabama Fever" in the 1810s?

The person was rushing to move to the cotton lands of the Old Southwest

How did southern states respond to abolitionist criticism of slavery from the 1830s onward?

They tightened laws controlling slaves and free blacks.

How would the methods employed by southern plantation owners in managing their slaves be best described?

a paternalistic system of coercion and violence

The rapid growth of cotton production in America after 1790 would best be described as __________.

an international phenomenon prompted by events occurring far from the American South

How did field workers on cotton plantations generally do farm work?

in gangs of twenty to twenty-five, under an overseer's supervision

In what sort of communities did most slaves live from 1800 to 1860?

in groups of ten or more on plantations

To whom does the term "yeomen" apply in the antebellum South?

independent farmers with family farms

As the experience of James G. Birney and the Grimké sisters demonstrates, Southerners who questioned slavery were __________.

pressured to leave the South if they would not be silent

Adopted in 1836, what was the congressional "gag rule" intended to do?

prevent discussion of abolitionist petitions

How did the American slave population grow from 700,000 in 1790 to more than 4 million in 1860?

primarily from natural increase, through births in the slave community

Which phrase best describes the role of the southern commercial middle class?

small but vital to the agricultural economy