APUSH Talking Points 7.4Slavery and the Southern People

AP Focus The explosion of cotton production fastened the slave system deeply upon the South, creating a complex hierarchical racial and social that deeply affected whites as well as blacks.

American Pageant: Chapter #16The South and the Slave Controversy

Many Americans were embarrassed by the contradiction posed by a war fought for independence and liberty that kept black thousands of black people in slavery

How do you reconcile the exercise of slavery with the declaration of freedom and liberty? This question led many to set their sights on the elimination of Slavery

Vermont 1777 and New Hampshire 1779 banned slavery outrightMassachusetts in 1780 declared all men are born free and equal

Many religious sects slowly rallied toward the cause against slavery Pennsylvania Quakers between 1750 and 1800

Slavery was heavily concentrated in the South WHY?

The crop that demanded slave labor in the 17th century tobacco, was in the 18th century no longer the prize of North American agriculture. As the profitability of tobacco waned, so did the enthusiasm for Slavery

The Northwest Ordinance 1787 a federal ordinance under the Articles of Confederation that organized the Northwest Territories (modern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota) declared there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territories

Slavery is like a sleeping serpent Thomas Jefferson

The Constitutional Convention tackles the issues Debate over representation is centered on the 3/5th compromise and the Constitution grants the power of the federal government to regulate or even abolish the import of slaves after 1808 the word slavery is even conspicuously avoided throughout the document

The hour of emancipation is advancing - it will come Thomas Jefferson

Question? IF THE HOUR OF EMANACIPATION IS ADVANCING, WHY DO WE 620,000 PEOPLE LOSE THEIR LIVES IN THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES?

FATAL INVENTIONS

#1 A new series of artificially powered machines fuels the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and New England. Starting with the spinning jenny, which eliminated the handwork that had gone into making textiles. Within a generation, cheap mass-produced textiles had laid the foundation for the Industrial Revolution

#2 New Englander Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. The cotton gin transformed the processing of raw cotton by eliminating the tedious need to pick the cotton clean of seeds.

IMPACT OF THESE FATAL INVNETIONS

The cost of cotton production dropped, just as the hunger for Englands textile mills was growling even LOUDER

Americas new cash crop almost as valuable as sugar in the West Indes and much more valuable the tobacco had been to Chesapeake years before

Year

Slaves

Cotton (bales)

1790

750,000

3,000

1800

1,000,000

75,000

1810

1,375,000

178,000

1820

1,775,000

335,000

1830

2,235,000

732,000

1840

2,875,000

1,348,000

1850

3,650,000

2,136,000

1860

4,450,000

3,841,000

REACTION AND RESISTENCE

1739

Slave revolts in South Carolina (Stono Rebellion), Maryland, and NYC

1791

Slave revolt in the French Caribbean leads to 2 year Civil War

1822

Slave revolt led by Denmark Vesey in Charleston, South Carolina. Revolt fails - Vesey and 36 others are hanged

1831

Slave revolt led by Nat Turner in Virginia where 70 slaves killed 60 whites in a 40 hour terror spree

1839

Slaves Spanish ship Amistad seize control of ship and massacre all but two crew members. The Supreme Court orders slaves freed and returned to Africa

SLAVERY AND THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE

SOUTHERN REACTIONS

Faced with the need to protect their regions economy, and with the terror posed by Nat Turner and the Amistad case, southerners abandon emancipation and begin to manufacture a pro-slave ideology to suit their ECONOMIC NEEDS and RACIAL FEARS

In the antebellum period, pro-slavery forces moved from defending slavery as a necessary evil to expounding it as a positive good. Some insisted that African Americans were child-like people in need of protection, and that slavery provided a civilizing influence.

Others argued that black people were biologically inferior to white people and were incapable of assimilating in free society. Still others claimed that slaves were necessary to maintain the progress of white society.

SOUTHERN IDEOLOGIES

George Fitzhugh (1806-1881) was a social theorist who published radical racial and slavery-based sociological theories in the antebellum era. He argued that "the Negro is but a grown up child" who needs the economic and social protections of slavery.

Fitzhugh described capitalism for spawning a "war of the rich with the poor, and the poor with one another" -- rendering free blacks "far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition." Slavery, he contended, ensured that blacks would be economically secure and morally civilized.

Cannibals All! (1857) by George Fitzhugh

Cannibals All! was a sharp criticism of the system of "wage-slavery" found in the north. Fitzhugh's ideas were based on his view that the "negro slaves of the South" were considerably more free than those trapped by the oppression of capitalist exploitation.

Fitzhugh's ideas in Cannibals All!, while often used in the defense of anti-abolition, have a more socially egalitarian undertone which attempted to remedy inequalities in "property in man."

William Joseph Harper (1790 to 1847) Stated that slavery was an evil that was pushed on the South for the growth of the country, but that it was necessary for the US to continue down the path of economic stability.

One of his main defenses of slavery was that slaves are saved from ever having to be out of work, and that whipping was not harmful to them, because children are whipped all the time.

He also defended the place of women slaves, saying that their stature as helping in the work force actually helped raise women up to men's levels.

Finally, the effect that abolition would have on foreign commerce was covered in Harper's speech. He felt that if slavery was abolished, it would do nothing but hurt the country, rather than help it. Overall economics was valued over morals.

Quote: "Without [slavery], there can be no accumulation of property, no providence for the future, no taste for comfort or elegancies, which are the characteristics and essentials of civilization."

YOUR NOTES:

The Southern World View

Slavery is what it is deal with it!!!

Hierarchy and social order natural order and obsession with social strata Abolitionists are dangerous because they are challenging this social order

Tradition and social control

Human institutions evolve slowly over time and cannot be altered by human intervention it is dangerous to abruptly intervene in the evolution of human institutions

What is at stake in this world view?

White Southern defenders of Slavery are like other Americans products of the enlightenment.

Many believe in the power of intellect and the power of faith and reason to figure problems out. You can be a product of the enlightenment and still be deeply conservative.

Pro-slavery writes challenge the natural rights philosophy ideas like liberty and freedom are never absolute nobody is born equal.

Freedom must be balanced in order and this is prescribed in certain stations in life for the various statuses of humans. It must also be balanced with tradition. They see the world as it is, not as it ought to be!!

They have an extremely different point of view on the concept of equality.

Southerners stress human DUTY over human RIGHTS. The world is made up between a struggle between human autonomy and human dependency and you should never give up on that dependency

1820 Edward Brown slavery is the stepping ladder from barbarism to civilization - slavery is a positive good.

1831 Thomas Dew - There is a time for all things, and nothing in this world should be done before its time

Charles Coldcott Jones

APUSH Talking Points 7.6Manifest Destiny and Its Legacy

AP Focus Manifest Destiny, the belief that the United States is divinely inspired to spread across the continent, becomes the rationale for widespread territorial expansion. Critics repudiate it as nothing short of unbridled imperialism

American Pageant: Chapter #17: Manifest Destiny and Its Legacy

Manifest Destiny the silent driving force of U.S. expansionism to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.

- John L. OSullivan

Manipulating the Maine Maps - The Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842)

In 1842, the British wanted to build a road westward from the seaport of Halifax to Quebec, running through disputed territory. The London sent Lord Ashburton to Washington to settle the dispute. He and Daniel Webster negotiated and gave the Americans 7,000mi of the 12,000mi of land in dispute.

Oregon Fever Populates Oregon Fifty-Four Forty Or Fight! (1844-1846)

Four nations claimed Oregon Country at one time: Spain, Russia, Britain, and the United States. Spain dropped out of America with the Florida Treaty of 1819 and Russia dropped out with the treaties of 1824 and 1825.

Britain controlled the portion north of the Columbia River. By 1846, about 5,000 Americans settled south of the Columbia River. The British had a lesser population but it did not want to give up its claims to the Columbia River. The disputed territory in Oregon Country became an issue in the election of 1844.

By the terms of the Oregon Treaty (1846), a compromise solution was reached. The current U.S.-Canada Boundary east of the Rockies (49) Was extended westward to the Pacific Ocean, thus securing Puget Sound.

Some northern Democrats were angered and felt betrayed by Polks failure to insist on all of Oregon, but the Senate readily accepted the treaty

The Lone Star of Texas Shines Alone - The Annexation of Texas (1845)

The Texas Declaration of Independence was signed by members of the Convention of 1836. Mexico still considered Texas as a province in revolt and refused to recognize Texas's independence. Mexico threatened war if the America protected Texas.

Sam Houston immediately asked the U.S. government for recognition and annexation, but President Andrew Jackson feared the revival of the slavery issue, as the new state would come in on the slaveholding side of the political balance. He also feared war with Mexico and so did nothing.

When Jacksons successor, President Martin Van Buren also did nothing, Texas sought foreign recognition and support, which European nations eagerly provided, hoping to create a counterbalance to rising American power and influence in the Southwest. France and Britain quickly concluded trade agreements with the Texans.

Texas became a leading issue in the presidential campaign of 1844. The Democrats were pro-expansion and were for annexing Texas. President Tyler signed a resolution in 1845 that invited Texas to become the 28th state in America.

Misunderstandings with Mexico = American Blood on American Soil = Mexican War (1846 to 1848)

Due to rumors of Britain preparing to buy California, John Slidell- was sent to Mexico City in 1845 by Polk to buy California for $25 million-the offer was rejected.

Polk therefore sent U.S. troops under General Zachary Taylor (Old Rough & Ready) into southern Texas just north of the Rio Grande. On April 5, 1846, Taylor dispatched Washington "Hostilities have been commenced with Mexico,"

Polk received the news and he immediately went to Congress and asked for a declaration of war. He announced, quote, "Mexico had passed the boundary of the United States and had invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil,"

On May 9, 1846, Polk asked Congress to declare war on Mexico. On May 13, 1846, the House of Representatives voted a declaration of war, 174 to 14. The U.S. Senate voted 40 to 2, with a lot of abstentions from Northerners, to declare war on Mexico. And off we went.

Introducing Abraham Lincoln

Sitting in the U.S. House of Representatives at that very time, during the Mexican War, in his only two-year term in the U.S. Congress, there was a young congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. He voted against the Mexican War - "a half insane mumbling of a fever dream."

On December 22, 1847, the freshman representative introduced what became known as the "Spot Resolution." He demanded to see the spot of American soil upon which American blood had been shed by a foreign force.

The first major expansionist war in American history

This was going to be an adventurous war, it was going to be quick. It was going to be a war of destiny. An Illinois newspaper justified the war on the basis that Mexicans were, I quote, "reptiles in the path of progressive democracy."

Yankee Doodle is re-written

"They attacked our men upon our land, and crossed our river, too, sir. Now show them all with sword in hand what Yankee boys can do, sir."

Ralph Waldo Emerson on the Mexican War "The United States will conquer Mexico," he said, "but it will be as though a man swallows arsenic, which brings him down in turn. Mexico will poison us."

Fighting Mexico for Peace

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) gave Texas to America and yielded the area stretching westward to Oregon and the ocean, including California, for a cost of $15 million. Southerners realized that the South would do well not to want all of Mexico because Mexico was anti-slavery. The treaty was opposed by those who wanted all of Mexico and those who wanted none of it.

Profit and Loss in Mexico

The Mexican War provided field experience for the officers destined to become generals in the Civil War, including Captain Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant.

This Wilmot Amendment never passed the Senate because the Southern members did not want to be robbed of possible slave states to arise in the future from the land gain in the Treaty of Guadalupe.

The Wilmot Proviso (a rally cry of the Free Soil Movement).

David Wilmot proposed an amendment that stated that the territory from Mexico should remain slave-free.The language was borrowed from the Northwest Ordinance. All but one northern state legislature endorsed it. All southern legislatures condemned it (a sign of things to come???)

House of Representatives voted 83 to 64 (reflecting that the House had far more northern representatives because the north has more population). But it did not pass the Senate where the Slave states still have parity.

Quotable David Wimot

"I have no squeamish sensitiveness upon the subject of slavery nor no morbid sympathy for the slave. I plead the cause and rights of white freemen. I would preserve to free white labor a fair country, a rich inheritance, where the sons of toil of my own race and color can live without the disgrace which association with Negro slavery brings upon free labor."

The Mexican War brought about the conflict of slavery between the states!!!!!

STAY TUNED..

BY THE NUMBERS

TERRITORIAL EXPANSION - TEST YOURSELF

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

YOUR NOTES:

APUSH Talking Points 8.1The Legacy of 1848 - What did the Mexican War unleash?

AP Focus The issue of slavery in the territories acquired from Mexico disrupted American politics from 1848 to 1850. The Compromise of 1850, orchestrated by Henry Clay, attempted to deal with the issue of slavery.

American Pageant: Chapter #18 Renewing Sectional Struggle, 1848-1854

A QUICK REVIEW of the TREATY of GUADALUPE HIDALGO

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) gave Texas to America and yielded the area stretching westward to Oregon and the ocean, including California, for a cost of $15 million

What are the legacies of the Mexican War? Daniel Webster probably the most powerful and important Massachusetts Whig kept warning that this really wasn't all that important.the problem of slavery in the west is "an imaginary negro in an impossible place - the southwest, it's all desert isn't it?"

PERSPECTIVES ON THE SPOILS OF WAR THE NORTHERN VIEWWhy was the North concerned about slavery in the West?

#1 Northerners believed that slavery could take root in the southwest because..- Slaves could be used to mine for silver and gold - Slaves could be used to build railroads and canals- Slaves are competition for white free laborers

#2 Northerners favored a non-extension approach to slavery on constitutional grounds. They would not attack slavery where it already existed--because slaves were property and protected by the Fifth Amendment--they nevertheless believed they could use the Constitution, under Congress's sole authority to admit new states to the union, to stop this system from expanding (cordon off slavery and blunt its future).

#3 There where bills before Congress to establish the territories now of Utah and New Mexico and large swaths of land that could become more than two states. Northerners who found these bills simply personally obnoxious, and they were being asked to be complicitous now in the expansion of slavery.."Look, I can't stop anything that's going on in Alabama and I won't try, but don't ask me to vote to create a new territory that will become a slave state."

#4 The Free Soil Party, (eventually in that Republican Party) goal was to make slavery sectional but freedom national. Slave labor--sectional, regional, bound to a place--but free labor national, eternal and the definition of a future.

#5 The race card There was also racism as a motive in this. Many northerners saw the West as the hope of the northern immigrant, young farmers in Ohio who's got three sons, and they want to go West, and they don't want black people around.

PERSPECTIVES ON THE SPOILS OF WAR THE SOUTHERN VIEW

Why did the South care about slavery in the West?

#1 Practical - It is destiny of the American people to expand west, it was not only the destiny of the slave society to expand west- slavery must expand or it would die!! Slaves in existing states, came to realize, were becoming a burden, possibly a danger. As the slave population in a Georgia or an Alabama or a Mississippi continues to grow and grow and grow and grow, but nowhere to expand to, that slave population may become indeed a powder keg.

#2 Economic - If they couldn't expand this system beyond its limits and beyond its borders--get into Arkansas, get out into Oklahoma, Texas, West Texas, further west, Caribbean--that the south would begin to shrink as an economic entity, as a political culture, as a force in the national government. And if you cordoned off slavery, what's going to happen to the price of slaves around its borders? Well, they might begin to go down.

#3 Political - Every new state meant two new senators. And the number of states--free states to slave states, in 1850, was 15 to 15. They wanted to sustain that parity. California is out there--it's going to have a sudden statehood in 1850 because of gold being discovered--is going to be the problem and the test case.

#4 Constitutional - The question of checks and balances (the states' rights question) Did anybody have the right to prohibit anybody from taking their property anywhere? John C. Calhoun claimed You have no right--you northerners have no right to stop me from taking my wagon and my horse and my slave anywhere I wish." And he would just recite the Fifth Amendment.

#5 Moral - The idea set in among northerners that the legal status of slavery in the western territories stood as a measure of its moral standing everywhere. If you tell Southerners that slavery is wrong enough that you will not have it in America's future, then you're telling Southerners it's wrong where they have it!!

PLANS FOR THE WESTERN TERRITORIES

What kind of future will America have? Four plans are going to come together around this debate over slavery in the territories

#1 The Wilmot Proviso (a rally cry of the Free Soil Movement). David Wilmot proposed an amendment that stated that the territory from Mexico should remain slave-free.The language was borrowed from the Northwest Ordinance. All but one northern state legislature endorsed it. All southern legislatures condemned it (a sign of things to come???).

#2 State sovereignty (states' rights) The question of the individual's constitutional right of ownership in slaves as property and transport of slaves as property. State sovereignty, states' rights was indeed deeply at the root of the South's growing position here that, ultimately, no Federal Legislature, President--no Federal authority--existed to stop slavery's expansion.

#3 Popular sovereignty (a compromise position) not a new idea in the midst of the Mexican War and its aftermath the idea that there would be no Act of Congress on slavery in the territories. Take Congress out of the story and simply let the people in the Western Territory have a vote. Let them have a referendum. Let there be popular democracy.

#4 Geographical division Remember the Missouri Compromise of 1820 the 3630' parallel from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean and slavery would never exist north of that line. The problem was that half of California was already north of that line.

GEOGRAPHIC DIVISION - REVISTED

Slavery as an issue come to a head in 1849-1850. Gold was discovered in California in1849.

The population of the state went from 14,000 to 100,000 in less than a year. California needed a government so they applied for statehood. Since there was no slavery in California. They applied as a free state (September 1849)

The Compromise of 1850Called for the admission of California as a free state, organizing Utah and New Mexico with out restrictions on slavery, adjustment of the Texas/New Mexico border

Abolition of slave trade in District of Columbia, and tougher fugitive slave laws.

Fugitive Slave Law - Enacted by Congress in 1793 and 1850, these laws provided for the return of escaped slaves to their owners. The North was lax about enforcing the 1793 law, with irritated the South no end. The 1850 law was tougher and was aimed at eliminating the underground railroad.

YOUR NOTES:

APUSH Talking Points 8.2"A Hell of a Storm" 1850 to 1854

AP Focus: The issue of slavery in the territories acquired from Mexico disrupted American politics from 1848 to 1850. There where bills before Congress to establish the territories now of Utah and New Mexico and large swaths of land that could become more than two states. The Compromise of 1850, orchestrated by Henry Clay, attempted to deal with the issue of slavery.

American Pageant: Chapter #18: Renewing the Sectional Struggle and Chapter #19: Drifting Toward Disunion

THE COMPROMISE OF 1820First serious controversy over slavery since the creation of the constitution

DEBATE: Tallmadge Amendment said : No more slaves in Missouri;

Any slaves born in Missouri would gain their freedom at age 25!

The amendment passed in the House but was defeated in the SenateCOMPROMISE:

#1 Missouri would enter the Union as a slave state

#2 Maine would enter the Union as a free state

#3 A line would be drawn at 3630 the southern border of Missouri#4 Slavery would be allowed below the line and slavery would be prohibited above the line (The only exception would be the state of Missouri above the line but a slave state)

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

Called for the admission of California as a free state, organizing Utah and New Mexico with out restrictions on slavery, adjustment of the Texas/New Mexico border

Abolition of slave trade in District of Columbia, and tougher fugitive slave laws.

Fugitive Slave Law - Enacted by Congress in 1793 and 1850, these laws provided for the return of escaped slaves to their owners. The North was lax about enforcing the 1793 law, with irritated the South no end. The 1850 law was tougher and was aimed at eliminating the underground railroad.

CASE STUDIES - REACTIONS TO THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT Harriet Beecher Stowe (1853) and Harriet Tubman (1860)

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Toms Cabin in 1852. The book was loosely based on a visit to a plantation in Kentucky. The book, which exposed the evils of slavery, was a best seller in the North and helped the abolitionists cause. Southerners, on the other hand, believed the book exaggerated or lied about slavery.

It sold 300,000 copies in the first year, by far broke every sales record of any book ever published, ever, anywhere. Reprinted into at least 20 languages in its first five years of existence. Made into stage plays within two years. It brought an awareness to the slavery problem as never before.

On April 26, 1860, escaped slave Charles Nalle was kidnapped from a Troy bakery and taken to the District Circuit Court at State and First Streets, in Troy where he was to be sent back to Virginia under the Fugitive Slave Act. Hundreds of people, including Harriet Tubman, rushed to the site where a riot ensued, allowing Nalle to escape across the Hudson to West Troy and ultimately to freedom.

KANSAS- NEBRASKA ACT 1854Popular Sovereignty popular democracy in the quest for statehood

New territories in the West made renewed expansion of slavery a real likelihood. Many Northerners wanted slavery prohibited in the western lands. One group of moderates suggested that the Missouri Compromise line be extended to the Pacific with free states north of it and slave states to the south. Another group proposed that the question be left to POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY. The government would allow settlers to flock into the new territory with or without slaves as they pleased and, when the time came to organize the region into states, the people themselves should determine the question. Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois pushed through a piece of legislation to do just that; it was the Kansas-Nebraska Act

In 1855, Kansas held elections to choose a legislature--either pro or anti-slave. Hundreds of border ruffians from Missouri rode into Kansas and voted illegally. Kansas was in chaos; newspapers called the territory Bleeding Kansas. Brutal murders, masterminded by John Brown occurred at Pottawatomie Creek. By late 1856, over 200 people had been killed. To many people, this brutal act was just more proof that slavery led to violence.

YOUR NOTES: