Transcript Jackson to Reform

Cotton, Slavery, and the Old South
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1793- Invention of Cotton Gin encouraged growth of staple
crop and perpetuated slavery into 19th century
After the War of 1812 Southerners expanded into the West
The growth of the cotton economy committed the South to
slavery.
In other parts of the nation, attitudes toward slavery were
changing. Congress banned the slave trade in 1808, so
the South relied on natural increase and the internal slave
trade (“down river”).
The expansion of cotton was concentrated in the rich soil
sections of the South known as the black belt.
Interdependent connection b/w the southern plantation
and the northern factory & shippers
Cotton = 50% of American exports after 1840; South
supplied 50+% of world’s cotton- England***
If civil war ever to break out, England’s need for cotton
force entry into war on behalf of South
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Southern Aristocracy = Oligarchy- relatively few planters
controlled southern slaves, plantations, and politics
Most slaveholders inherited their wealth
As slavery spread so did the slave-owning elite
Most wealthy planters lived fairly isolated lives.
Some planters cultivated an image of gracious living in the style
of English aristocrats, but plantations were large enterprises that
required much attention to a variety of tasks.
Plantations aimed to be self-sufficient.
By-products of self-perpetuating aristocracy:
 Increasing social stratification
 Absence of tax supported education (rich opted for private
schooling)
Plantation economy and Women- mistress of plantation gained
notable power
 Controlled house staff, oversaw plantation in husband’s
absence, forged deep conviction to resist abolitionism
 Following
southern paternalism, in theory,
each plantation was a family with the white
master at its head.
 The plantation mistress ran her own
household but did not challenge her
husband’s authority.
 With slaves to do much of the labor
conventionally assigned to women, it is no
surprise that plantation mistresses accepted
the system.
Butchery”- led to increased
speculation
 Social Stratification- small elite planter
class vs. small farmers
 “Investment” of labor and upkeep
 Dependence upon staple crop- lack of
diversification
 Sectionalism- North grew rich upon
southern cotton
 “Land
25% of white southerners were slave holders
Small slave owners did not own majority of slaves,
but did make up majority of the masters
 30 to 50 percent of southern whites were landless.
 Some yeomen hoped to acquire slaves
themselves, but many were content with self
sufficient non-market agriculture.
 Small farmers lived subsistence lifestyle, yet
staunch supporters of slavery
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 Racial/class superiority
 Hope of social mobility
 Mountain whites- independent farmers of south who
opposed slavery and were unionists
 Most
slaveholders owned only a few slaves.
 Bad crops or high prices that curtailed or
increased income affected slave-holding status
 Middle class professionals had an easier time
climbing the ladder of success.
 Andrew Jackson used his legal and political
position to rise in Southern society. Beginning
as a landless prosecutor, Jackson died a
plantation owner with over 200 slaves.
 250k
southern free blacks
 Emancipated due to Revolutionary War promises,
mulatto status, purchased freedom
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Some owned property and slaves
 Louisiana popular mulatto community
 Uneasy
position as lacked economic and
political rights
 Free blacks in North faced fierce
discrimination and hatred as well, particularly
from Irish- job competition
“Peculiar Institution”- forced labor rooted in
racism and motive for economic profit, yet was
able to co-exist in modern and democratic
country as slave population continually grew
 Slaves were primary source of wealth and
investment in South (property)
 Many slaves “sold down the river”- sold from
upper south to deep south along Mississippi
River
 Families broken at slave auctions
 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin***
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house servants, some skilled workers.
75% field hands, from sunup to sundown, heavy labor
needed for cotton crop.
“Life under lash” varied- no common American slave
experience
Floggins- primary tool to maintain order and secure
racial superiority
Dangerous work delegated to hired hourly workers
“Black Belt”- worst conditions
Stable family life possibility on large plantations
Christianity became very popular among southern
slave population
Literacy seen as dangerous
Slaves Resistance- sabotage, slow down, runaway,
rebellions
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Two key institutions of African American community
life: the family and the church.
Family –
 Parents gave children a supportive and protective
kinship network.
 Slave families often split up.
Church –
 Not permitted to practice African religions, though
numerous survivals did work their way into the
slaves’ folk culture.
 The first and second Great Awakenings introduced
Christianity to many slaves.
 In the 1790s, African American churches began
emerging.
 About
1,000 per year escaped, mostly from the
upper South.
 A few slaves organized revolts.
 Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey organized
large-scale conspiracies to attack whites in
Richmond and Charleston that failed.
 Nat Turner led the most famous slave revolt in
Southampton County, Virginia in 1831.
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Harriet Tubman was 40
years old when this
photograph (later handtinted) was taken.
Already famous for her
daring rescues, she
gained further fame by
serving as a scout, spy
and nurse during the
Civil War.
 Anti-slavery
Societies
Quakers
American Colonization Society- failure
 2nd
Great Awakening sparked
Abolitionist Movement
Abolitionist preachers- Theodore Weld and
Charles Grandison Finney
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William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator (1831)- antislavery newspaper based out of Mass
American Anti-Slavery Society- organized by leading
abolitionists including Wendell Phillips
Black Abolitionists
 David Walker- advocated bloody end to slavery
 Sojourner Truth- Feminist and abolitionist- “Ain’t I a
Woman?”
 Frederick Douglass- ex-slave who published
narrative of life experience
Abolitionist Political Parties of the 1840’s and 1850’s
 Liberty Party (1840)
 Free Soil Party (1848)
 Republican Party (1850s)
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“Oppression! I have seen thee, face to
face, And met thy cruel eye and
cloudy brow; But thy soul-withering
glance I fear not now -For dread to prouder feelings doth
give place Of deep abhorrence!
Scorning the disgrace Of slavish
knees that at thy footstool bow, I also
kneel -- but with far other vow Do hail
thee and thy hord of hirelings base: -I swear, while life-blood warms my
throbbing veins, Still to oppose and
thwart, with heart and hand, Thy
brutalising sway -- till Afric's chains
Are burst, and Freedom rules the
rescued land, -“Trampling Oppression and his iron
rod: Such is the vow I take -- SO HELP
ME GOD!- William Lloyd Garrison
 With
growth of abolitionism in North, South
responded by tightening grip over slaver
system
 Stricter slave codes
 Growth of lynching, jailing, and whipping
 Public defense of slavery- justified by bible, civilized
by WASPs
 “Happy Slaves”
 Seized abolitionist “propaganda”
 Gag
Resolution (1836)- prevented any
resolutions on abolishing slavery to be
automatically tabled
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This Louisiana slave named
Gordon was photographed in
1863 after he had escaped to
Union lines during the Civil
War. He bears the permanent
scars of the violence that lay
at the heart of the slave
system. Few slaves were so
brutally marked, but all lived
with the threat of beatings if
they failed to obey.
SOURCE:National Archives
and Records Administration.
 Slavery
gave rise to various pro-slavery
arguments including:
• in the post-Revolution era, Southern whites
found justifications in the Bible or classical
Greece and Rome
• the Constitution recognized slavery and that
they were defending property rights
• by the 1830s arguments developed that
slavery was good for the slaves.
2nd G.A.- began in South and rolled thru NE
Aroused more people than did 1st G.A.
Evangelicalism led to prison reform, temperance
movement, womens movement, and abolitionist
movement
 “Camp Meetings”- responsible for spread of
religion on frontier
 Methodists and Baptists adopted personal
conversion, rather than predestination
 Middle Class Women- played huge part in
“feminizing” religion
Majority of new church members
Formed benevolent and charitable organizations
to save society
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 Western
Upstate New York “burnedover”by hellfire and damnation
 Initiated growth of more denominations
Millerites/Adventists- planned arrival of Christ
on October 22, 1844- failed to arrive
 2nd
Great Awakening widened classes
and regions like 1st GA
 Baptist and Methodist Churches split over
slavery issue
 Tax
supported school system sparse in
early U.S.
Pursued in order to assure civic responsibility
and stability for democratic U.S.
 Horace
Mann- campaigned for higher
quality public education
 Noah Webster- developed patriotic
school lessons as well as standardized
English language
 1st
state supported universities emerged in
early 1800s
 Women and education
Frowned upon in early 19th century
Oberlin College in Ohio became first
college to offer coed education
 Growth of tax supported libraries as well as
popular magazines
 Product
of 2nd Great Awakening- inspired
reformers to tackle social evils
 Provided women with opportunity to escape home
and enter arena of public affairs
 Reformers were traditionalists who did not recognize
they were in the middle of industrialization and the
spur of the market economy
 Debtor’s
prison eventually abolished
 Prison sentences and nature of punishments
lightened- penitentiaries
 Dorthea
Dix- pursued and gained reforms for
mental and insane asylums
 Temperance Movement- sought to limit
society’s dependence on “evil alcohol”
from society to maintain societal values
 American Temperance Society
 Neil Dow- “Father of Prohibition”- passed Maine
Law in 1851- prohibited sale or drink of alcohol
 10%
of women voiced displeasure of
marriage and society by avoiding
marriage altogether- “spinsters”
 Market economy, in addition to social
distinctions, emphasized separate
economic roles
Cult of Domesticity- raise and shape children
 Women’s
righters joined temperance and
abolitionist reforms as well
 Lucretia
Mott- Quaker and abolitionist
refused from 1840 London anti-slavery
Convention
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton- Advocated womens
suffrage
 Susan B. Anthony- militant lecturer and
female rights advocate
 Sarah and Angelina Grimke- abolitionists
 Lucy Stone- retained her maiden name after
marriage
 Elizabeth
Cady Stanton- drafted
Declaration of Sentiments
Implored that “all men and women are created
equal”
Advocated women’s suffrage
 Women’s
rights eclipsed by abolitionist
crusade
 Women not granted suffrage until 19th
Amendment in 1920
 Emergence
of communities of
cooperation
 Robert Owen- founded utopian society at
New Harmony, Indiana- failure
 Brook Farm- transcendental community
 Oneida Community- founded by John
Humphrey Noyes- advocated free love,
birth control, selective parenting
 Shakers- led by Mother Ann Lee
 Product
of Nationalism following War of 1812
 Romanticism
 Washington Irving- wrote “Knickerbocker’s History
of NY” , Legend of Sleepy Hollow
 James Fenimore Cooper- wrote Leatherstocking Tales
& Last of the Mohicans
 William Cullen Bryant
 Edgar Allan Poe
 Herman Melville
 Golden
Age of American Journalism
 Transcendentalism- truth transcends the
senses, individual inner light to illuminate the
truth
 Stressed individualism, hostility to conformity and
formal institutions
 Backbone of reform movements such as abolitionism
 Ralph Waldo
Emerson- inspired American
writers to reject European traditions and
pursue American social landscape
 Ideas stressed importance of self-reliance, freedom,
abolitionism, and union
 Henry
David Thoreau- non-conformist
and abolitionist; wrote Walden & Essay on
Civil Disobedience
 Walt Whitman- poet, wrote Leaves of
Grass- embraced emotionalism and
nationalism
 George
Bancroft- co-founder of Navy
Academy at Annapolis; “Father of
American History” due to patriotic
prose
 Historians and textbooks until end of 19th
century usually from New England;
reflected abolitionist cause; condemned
the South