1. Chapter 11 The Peculiar Institution
Important Vocabulary:
The “peculiar Institution”
“Cotton is King”
Proslavery Argument
Underground Railroad
Harriet tubman
Denmark vessey’s conspiracy
Nat Turner’s rebellion

2. The Old South

3. Cotton is King
Cotton replaced sugar as the world's major crop produced by slave labor in the nineteenth century.
The strength of American slavery rested on cotton.
Cotton industry
Three-fourths of the world's cotton supply came from the southern United States.
Cotton supplied textile mills in the North and in Great Britain.
As early as 1803, cotton represented America's most important export.

4. Slave Population, 1850

5. The Second Middle Passage
Although the African slave trade was prohibited, the sale and trade of slaves within the United States flourished.
The main business districts of southern cities contained the offices of slave traders, and auctions took place at public slave markets.

6. Slavery and the Nation The North was not immune to slavery.
Northern merchants and manufacturers participated in the slave economy and shared in its profits.
Slavery shaped the lives of all Americans.

7. The Southern Economy
Southern economic growth was different from northern.
There were few large cities in the South.
The cities were mainly centers for gathering and shipping cotton.
New Orleans was the only city of significant size in the South.
The region produced less than 10 percent of the nation's manufactured goods.

8. Plain Folk of the Old South
Three-fourths of white southerners did not own slaves.
Most white southerners lived on self-sufficient farms.
Most whites supported slavery.
A few, like Andrew Johnson and Joseph Brown, spoke out against the planter elite.
Most white southerners supported the planter elite and slavery because of shared bonds of regional loyalty, racism, and kinship ties.

9. The Planter Class
In 1850, the majority of slaveholding families owned five or fewer slaves.
Fewer than 2,000 families owned 100 slaves or more.
Ownership of slaves provided the route to wealth, status, and influence.
Slavery was a profit-making system.
Men watched the world market for cotton, invested in infrastructure, and managed their plantations.
Plantation mistresses cared for sick slaves, oversaw the domestic servants, and supervised the plantation when the master was away.
Southern slave owners spent much of their money on material goods.

10. The Paternalist Ethos
Southern slave-owners were committed to a hierarchical, agrarian society.
Paternalism was ingrained in slave society and enabled slave-owners to think of themselves as kind, responsible masters even as they bought and sold their human property.

11. Slaveholding Size, 1860

12. The Proslavery Arguments
By the 1830s, fewer southerners believed that slavery was a necessary evil.
The proslavery argument rested on a number of pillars, including a commitment to white supremacy, biblical sanction of slavery, and the historical precedent that slavery was essential to human progress.
Another proslavery argument held that slavery guaranteed equality for whites.

13. John C. Calhoun, Speech in Congress, 1837
Transcript
We of the South will not, cannot surrender our institutions. To maintain the existing relations between the two races, inhabiting that section of the Union, is indispensable to the peace and happiness of both. It cannot be subverted without drenching the continent in blood, and extirpating one or the other of the races....I appeal to all sides whether the South is not equal [to the North] in virtue, intelligence, patriotism, courage...and all the high qualities which adorn our nature. I ask whether...we have not constantly inclined most strongly to the side of liberty, and been the first to see and first to resist the encroachments of power. In one thing only are we inferior - the arts of gain; we acknowledge that we are less wealthy than the Northern section of this Union....I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good - a positive good....I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and cultivated society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other....I fearlessly assert that the existing relation between the two races in the South...forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions.

14. Abolition in the Americas
Abolition in the Americas influenced debates over slavery in the United States.
Proslavery advocates used post-emancipation decline in sugar and in other cash crops as evidence of British abolitionism's failure.
Abolitionists argued that the former slaves' rising living standards (and similar improvements) showed that emancipation had succeeded.
By mid-century, New World slavery remained only in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and the United States.

15. Slavery and Liberty
White southerners declared themselves the true heirs of the American Revolution.
Proslavery arguments begin to repudiate the ideas in the Declaration of Independence that equality and freedom were universal entitlements.
John C. Calhoun believed that the language in the Declaration of Independence was dangerous.
George Fitzhugh, a Virginia writer, argued that "universal liberty" was the exception, not the rule.
By 1830, southerners defended slavery in terms of liberty and freedom; without slavery, freedom was not possible.

16. Life Under Slavery

17. Slaves and the Law
Slaves were considered property and had few legal rights.
Slaves were not allowed to:
Testify against a white person
b.Carry a firearm
Leave the plantation without permission
Learn how to read or write
Gather in a group without a white person present
Although, some of these laws were not always vigorously enforced.
Masters also controlled whether slaves married and how they spent their free time.
Trial of Celia: Celia killed her master while resisting a sexual assault.
Celia was charged with murder and sentenced to die, but she was pregnant and her execution was delayed until she gave birth, so as not to deny the current master his property right.

18. Conditions of Slave Life
American slaves as compared to their counterparts in the West Indies and in Brazil enjoyed better diets, lower infant mortality, and longer life expectancies.
Reasons for the above include the paternalistic ethos of the South, the lack of malaria and yellow fever in the South, and the high costs of slaves.

19. Free Blacks in the Old South
By 1860, there were nearly half a million free blacks in the United States and most of them lived in the South.
Free blacks were not all that free.
Free blacks were allowed by law to own property and marry and could not be bought or sold.
Free blacks could not testify in court or serve on a jury.
The majority of free blacks who lived in the Lower South resided in cities like New Orleans and Charleston, whereas those living in the Upper South generally lived in rural areas, working for wages as farm laborers.

20. Slave Labor Labor occupied most of a slave's daily existence.
There were many types of jobs a slave might perform.
Many slaves working in the fields also labored in large gangs.
On large plantations, they worked in gangs under the direction of the overseer, a man who was generally considered cruel by the slaves.

21. Distribution of Free Blacks, 1860

22. Major Crops of the South, 1860

23. Slavery in the Cities
Most city slaves were servants, cooks, and other domestics.
Some city slaves were skilled artisans and occasionally lived on their own.

24. Maintaining Order The system of maintaining order rested on force.
There were many tools a master had to maintain order, including whipping, exploiting divisions among slaves, incentives, and the threat of sale.

25. Slave Culture

26. The Slave Family
Despite the threat of sale and the fact that marriage between slaves was illegal, many slaves did marry and create families.
Slaves frequently named children after other family members to retain family continuity.
The slave community had a significantly higher number of female-headed households as compared to the white community.

27. The Threat of Sale
Slave traders paid little attention to preserving family ties.

28. Gender Roles Among Slaves
Traditional gender roles were not followed in the fields; but during their own time, slaves did fall into traditional gender roles.

29. Slave Religion
Black Christianity was distinctive and offered solace to the slaves.
Almost every plantation had its own black preacher.
Slaves worshipped in biracial churches.
Free blacks established their own churches.
Masters viewed Christianity as another means of social control and required slaves to attend services conducted by white ministers.
Many biblical stories offered hope and solace to slaves.

30. The Desire for Liberty
Slave culture rested on a sense of the injustice of bondage and the desire for freedom.
Slave folklore glorified the weak over the strong, and their spirituals emphasized eventual liberation.

31. Resistance to Slavery

32. Forms of Resistance
The most common form of resistance was silent sabotage-the breaking of tools, feigning illness, doing poor work.
Less common, but more serious forms of resistance included poisoning the master, arson, and armed assaults.
The slaves who ran away were more threatening to the stability of the slave system.
Of the estimated 1,000 slaves a year to escape, most escaped from the Upper South.
In the Deep South, fugitive slaves often escaped to the southern cities, to blend in with the free black population.
The Underground Railroad was a loose organization of abolitionists who helped slaves to escape.
Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave who made twenty trips to Maryland, leading slaves to freedom.

33. Underground Railroad

34. The Amistad
In 1839, a group of slaves collectively seized their freedom while on board the Amistad.
The U.S. Supreme Court accepted John Quincy Adams's argument that the slaves had been illegally seized in Africa and should be freed.

35. Slave Revolts
1811 witnessed an uprising on sugar plantations in Louisiana, which saw slaves marching toward New Orleans before the militia captured them.
In 1822, Denmark Vesey was charged with conspiracy in South Carolina.
Vesey was a religious man who believed the Bible condemned slavery and who saw the hypocrisy of the Declaration of Independence.
The conspiracy was uncovered before Vesey could act.

36. Nat Turner’s Rebellion
In 1831, Nat Turner and his followers marched through Virginia, attacking white farm families.
Eighty slaves had joined Turner and sixty whites had been killed (mostly women and children) before the militia put down the rebellion.
Turner was captured and executed.
Turner's was the last large-scale rebellion in the South.
The Virginia legislature debated plans for gradual emancipation of the state's slaves, but voted not to take that step.
Instead, Virginia tightened its grip on slavery through new laws further limiting slaves' rights.
1831 marked a turning point for the Old South as white southerners closed ranks and defended slavery more strongly than ever.