Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
- Southerners didn't industrialize because they were ignorant but because they had enough
money from plantations and railroads were risky
To Be a Slave
- Grew from 700,000 in 1790 to 4 million in 1808
The Maturing of the American Slave System
- Dependence on King Cotton meant dependence on slave labor
- All northern states had abolished slaveholding
- Most slaves were in the Lower South where cotton was grown
- Upper South owners sold their slaves to Lower South which needed them
desperately
The Challenge to Survive
- Mortality rates for children under 5 were twice that of white children
- Horrific treatment of too frequently pregnant women
- Malaria, yellow fever, and cholera were endemic in the South
- Blacks died easily due to overwork, poor diet, poor housing, and poor sanitation
From Cradle to Grave
- Slavery was a lifelong labor system
- Southerners claimed that by clothing and housing slaves for life they were more
benevolent than industrialists who fired and hired according to the market
- Masters clothed, housed and fed slaves
- Children learned life from parents
- Slaves sabotaged to slow work and flattered masters
- masters thought slaves were dumb
- Frederick Douglass - educated slave who led abolitionist movement
House Servants
- House slaves were better clothed
- Masters thought that house slaves would be loyal but were wrong
Artisans and Skilled Workers
- A small number of slaves were skilled workers: weavers, seamstresses,
blacksmiths, mechanics
carpenters,
Field Work
- Most slaves were field workers
- Slaves took pride in their strength - indicated their worth
- Elderly slaves were given other tasks (caring for children)
The African American Community
- African Americans created an enduring culture of their own, that would influence white
society
- Slaves had contacts with other slaves in different plantations - able to plot
- Whites knew that unhappy slaves were unproductive
- menality was to let them have two things, family and church
Slave Families
- No southern state recognized slave marriages in law
- Masters liked marriage among slaves, believed it made men less rebellious
- Wanted children = more slaves
- Slave marriages were equal
slaves to
freedom
for a few
Slave Revolts
- Gabriel Prosser, a literate blacksmith gathered more than a thousand slaves for an assault
on Richmond - later caught and hanged
- Denmark Vesey's (free black) conspiracy raised fears among whites concerning Black
religion and the free black people
- Wanted to raise a rebellion in Charleston and sail to Haiti
- When some co-conspirators of the plot squealed, the slaves were able to convince their
masters that they were dumb. However the second time someone squealed they were hanged
- Charlestonians were panicking, blamed the free blacks and destroyed the AME, where
radical ideas were hatched
- Nat Turner's revolt, his master treated him well but he still killed him
- Turner was literate and intelligent
Free African Americans
- Most free blacks in the South were freed in the early 1800's when anti-slavery
was
breeding in the South and before the cotton boom
- Most free blacks lived in the countryside of the Upper South, where they worked
tenant farmers of farm laborers
- Urban black women did menial jobs - laundry, peddling
- Urban black men did blacksmithing and carpentering
- Formed their own churches
- Some were wealthy and even owned slaves (a small elite)
- Free blacks could not carry firearms, could not purchase slaves (unless they
were
members of their own family)
as
- Could not vote, serve in the militia, and be liable to whipping and summary
(court without jury)
judgments
would
market by
side by
white
universal
include
cash crop
direct
family,
good to
- Every Southern state except for Kentucky, Tennessee, and Maryland made it
illegal for
slaves to read
- Slaves were forbidden to gather
- Most antislavery people in the South stayed silent
- James Henry Hammond claimed that slavery was the best organization of society that had
existed
- Most Southerners were convinced that slaves were happy and free as their
responsibility was borne by the masters
Changes in the South
- Most dissent came from up-country nonslaveholders
- In Virginia nonslaveholding delegates forced a two week debate on the merits of gradual
abolition
- It became harder to become a slave holder as all slaves were "home grown"
- Therefore they were becoming more expensive
- Extensive railway building in the up-country threatened the yeomen