1. Slavery & Southern Antebellum Society

2. Yeoman —A funny word Yeoman (plural Yeomen)
Not Yoeman, nor Yo-Man, nor Yowman
Definition—An independent farmer.
What makes one independent?
Another definition “A self-working farmer”
So… did yeomen own slaves?
Some did…but would only be 1-2 & they worked alongside them
What percentage of the South’s population were Yeomen?
Approximately 80%

3. Yeoman Farmer

4. Andrew Jackson’s Houses: Social Mobility Did Exist in the South

5. Harmony actually existed between Slaveowners & Non-Slaveowners
Non-slave owners aspired to become slaveowners
If slavery exists, there’s always somebody lower than you
Kin – most non-slaveowners had at least 1 relative that did own slaves
Political power is held by the common man – all yeoman farmers could vote & slaveowners were taxed for their property (slaves)
Economic transactions occurred between non-slave and slave owners…renting of cotton gins for example

6. Good Society Argument
By 1830s slavery seen as a positive good – benefits rising for N & S
One of long-term effects of economic profitability of slavery via Whitney’s cotton gin
Replaced Jeffersonian view that slavery was a necessary evil with no real solution

7. COTTON IS KING! 50% of all exports after 1840
S produces 50% of world’s cotton supply
75% of BR cotton comes from S – BR is world’s leading industrial power

8. Before Ind. Rev., most Southern planters made little profit from slave labor
BUT, invention of cotton gin by ELI WHITNEY made slave labor profitable throughout the South
Positive Effect:
Production increased ; cotton is biggest export
Negative Effects:
More Americans began to think of slavery as a “positive good” - less criticism of slavery
Slave labor quintupled between this invention & the Civil War

9. Where did slaves work? Cotton 55 percent Tobacco 10 percent
Sugar/rice/hemp percent
Servants percent
Trades/industry percent

10. Slave Crops Highest percentage of slave population in SC
BLACK BELT – SC to TX – called this due to the soil
Sugar Bowl in Southern LA – another high % of slave population

11. Cotton—4.5 million bales (1860)

12. Slave Distribution Note SC:
Only state in Union where every census from 1800 on shows slaves outnumbering whites so it’s no coincidence that pre-Civil War forefront problems are in SC
Almost 50% of all slaves are in “deep south” – SC, FL, MS, GA, AL – the “Black Belt”
these states all had black majorities or near majorities

13. RATIO OF SLAVEHOLDERS TO FAMILIES, (1860)
STATE: SLAVEHOLDERS TOTAL FAMILIES PCT
MISSISSIPPI
SOUTH CAROLINA
GEORGIA
ALABAMA
FLORIDA
LOUISIANA
TEXAS
NORTH CAROLINA
VIRGINIA
TENNESSEE
ARKANSAS
Total
Works out to 1 in 3 families actually owned slaves – 31% of families in the South

14. PLANTER ARISTOCRACY Government by the few in the South
Wealth & power concentrated in the hands of an elite upper class – cottonocracy
1,733 families own 100+ slaves

15. SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH:
Planter Aristocracy on top (Whigs)
“Lesser Masters” (less than 10 slaves- most own 1 or 2)
Yeoman Farmers (subsistence farmers - usually Democrats)
Majority of white population by 1860
“crackers, hillbillies, clayeaters”
Aspire to slaveowning
Non-slaveholding whites (approximately 1/4 of all southern whites)
“Poor white trash”- mountain whites (will support Union during war)
Slaves

16. FREE BLACKS South – 250,000, 1860 Manumission:
Upper – after Rev. War
Deep – mulattos; manumitted in willls
Some purchased freedom
Black slaveowners
Status: none – 3rd race, must carry papers
Some black slaveowners….
North
Victims of prejudice & segregation
Schools, voting, housing, conflicts with Irish
Anti-black feeling actually worse many times in N
Little contact with blacks
Friends of race, but don’t like individuals
Manumission| is the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves.

17. Slave Codes
Slave laws are state laws & most define them as property – can be bought, sold, mortgaged, etc.
Can’t testify, can’t own property, can’t have a family, etc.
Note though that slaves WERE seen as people & not property in the criminal system…so slave could be tried for crimes and it was also illegal to commit crimes against slaves – murder for ex.

18. Economic Weaknesses of Plantation System:
Land intensive; leads to soil depletion
Cotton production is monopolistic
Involves huge capital investments in land and labor
Discourages economic diversification
Reliance on cotton; no manufacturing
Discourages immigration
Slave labor, high cost of land, Europeans don’t know cotton farming

19. PLANTATION ORGANIZATION
Gang System was typical:
Owner—Planter (owns 20+ slaves)
Overseer—Day-to-day authority figure
Occasionally would be a trusted slave (Jeffferson Davis)
Driver—Slave Foreman
Field Hand—Men and women
Most slaves lived on plantations (about 48%) so typical slave experience would be that of a plantation slave BUT the typical slaveowner experience would be that of the owner of 1 slave (worked with him, lived in same house with him)

20. Slave Trade
Apprx. 900,000 sold in U.S. – sold “down river” – split many families
Apprx. 20% of wealth from slavery comes from the internal slave trade

21. Slave Prices Price of slaves quintuples from 1800-1860
$35,000 to $40,000 in
today’s prices
2 billion of southern investment in slaves by 1860
Price of slaves quintuples from
Cotton exports represent over half of ALL US exports every year from
SO…also have to classify South as commercial – involved in a major world trade
NOTE: IF South had been a separate nation in 1860, it would have been the 4th wealthiest “country” in the world (BR, N US, FR, S US)

22. Plantation Slavery Slave Quarters
EVERYBODY in S – whites & blacks eat corn & pork
Slaves ate an average & adequate southern diet
Food rationed to them for the week
BUT many allowed to augment their diet by gardening & hunting

23. Slave Weddings
Marriages not officially recognized

24. Plantation Slave Life Work from “kin to kin’t” (dawn to dusk)
Kept in ignorance (9/10 illiterate)
Whippings ……but why not beaten bloody on a regular basis?
Religion a big part of slave life – Sunday off
Forms of resistance:
Work slowdowns
Theft
Sabotage (arson, crop destruction, tool breaking)
Runaways & rebellions
Gabriel Prosser Conspiracy 1800 – “revolt” that never actually happened ….hanged anyway
Denmark Vessey Conspiracy 1822 – SC, over 30 hanged

25. Nat Turner’s Rebellion Virginia, 1831
Preacher / slave
40 slaves killed over 60 whites (in bed at night)
Turner eventually caught, hanged, skinned
Sets off mob & revenge lynchings of blacks
Effect: solidified the greatest fears in the South and caused the end of abolitionism in the South

26. Fugitive Slaves Running away was most common way of resisting slavery
Most ran away for a short time due to feeling they had received an unjust punishment or to look for a family member
Whipped 10 times for each day they were gone
Note: if they turned themselves in, they would only get whipped 5 times for each day they were gone.

27. Slave “Diseases” Drapetomia Dysaethesia Aethiopica
“Disease” that caused them to run away & the cure is to whip it out of them
Dysaethesia Aethiopica
Caused slaves to be “rascals”
To be insubordinate & commit minor sabotage
Cure was whipping or isolation
Dr. Samuel Cartwright
Leading internationally
recognized scientist from
MS that studied slaves

28. EARLY ABOLITIONISM Quakers were first
British Colonization Society symbol
Quakers were first
as early as Revolutionary War
1816 – American Colonization Society
Liberia, 1822 (capital – Monrovia)
15,000 transported
Most didn’t want to go – by 1860, most slaves were American born
Lincoln favored this early on
1830s influences: BR emancipation in 1833 & 2nd Great Awakening
Theodore Weld, Grimke Sisters

29. RADICAL ABOLITIONISM William Lloyd Garrison
Sees Constitution as an “agreement with hell”
The Liberator, 1831
Comes out same year as Turner’s rebellion – Garrison seen as a terrorist
American Anti-Slavery Society, 1833
Garrison
Wendell Phillips
Elijah Lovejoy

30. William Lloyd Garrison (1801-1879)
Slavery undermined republican values.
Slavery was a moral, not an economic issue.
Immediate emancipation with NO compensation to owners.
Full and complete equal rights for blacks.
Despised in S, but also seen as too radical in N
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31. The Tree of Slavery—Loaded with the Sum of All Villanies!

32. Other White Abolitionists
Elijah Lovejoy
Wendell Phillips
James Birney
Liberty Party.
Ran for President,
1840 & 1844.
Theodore Weld

33. Northern Reaction to Abolitionists
Most treat abolitionists as radicals
The North has a significant economic interest in Dixie!
Violence:
Lewis Tappan’s house ransacked in 1834
Broadcloth Mob drags Garrison through Boston streets in 1835
Rev. Elijah Lovejoy killed in IL in 1837

34. Black Abolitionists David Walker (1785-1830) 1829 
Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World
David Walker advocated violence as a way to freedom. He denigrated the submissive attitude of blacks towards white men. He was against the lack of support from northern churches and groups that would free slaves only to force them out of the country. He thought of black men as avenging animals, powerful. The South did not want his message of forceful emancipation to reach southern blacks for fear of an uprising.
Fight for freedom rather than wait to be set free by whites;
violence is only way to freedom

35. Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
1845  The Narrative of the Life Of Frederick Douglass
1847  “The North Star”
Believes in power of education
Clip on 4th of July speech – click on flag
Believes in power of education
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845
Life as son of slave mother & white father
Teaches himself to read/write, escapes to N
Differs from Garrison in that he does NOT want to do away with Constitution….
Differs from Garrison in that he does NOT want to do away with Constitution

36. Sojourner Truth (1787-1883) or Isabella Baumfree
Sojourner Truth (originally named Isabella Baumfree), was born a slave in Ulster County, New York State, in about At the age of nine she was auctioned off to an Englishman named John Nealey. Over the next few years she was owned by a fisherman in Kingston and then by John Dumont, a plantation owner from New York County. Between 1810 and 1827 she had five children with a fellow slave. She was dismayed when one of her sons was sold to a plantation owner in Alabama. After New York State abolished slavery in 1827, Quaker friends helped her win back her son through the courts. She moved to New York City and obtained work as a servant. She became friends with Elijah Pierson, a religious missionary, and eventually moved into his home. In 1843 Isabella took the name Sojourner Truth. With the help of a white friend, Olive Gilbert, she published her book, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. In an introduction to the book, William Lloyd Garrison wrote that he believed it would "stimulate renewed efforts to liberate all those still in slavery in America". Over the next few years Truth toured the country making speeches on slavery. After meeting Lucretia Mott, she also spoke at meetings in favour of woman's suffrage. When a white man told her that her speeches were no more important than a fleabite, she replied, "Maybe not, but the Lord willing, I'll keep you scratching." At the beginning of the American Civil War, she helped recruit black men to help the war effort. In 1864 she moved to Washington where she organized a campaign against the policy of not allowing blacks to sit with whites on trains. As a result of this, she was received in the White House by President Abraham Lincoln. Sojourner Truth died at Battle Creek, Michigan, on 26th November, 1883.
Ain’t I a woman?
1850  The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
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37. Harriet Tubman (1820-1913) “Moses” Helped over 300 slaves to freedom.
Known as the “Black Moses”
$40,000 bounty on her head.
Served as a Union spy during the Civil War.
“Moses”

38. Leading Escaping Slaves Along the Underground Railroad

39. The Underground Railroad

40. Events securing Southern support of slavery:
Defeat of VA’s emancipation proposals (1831)
Nat Turner’s Rebellion (1831)
Nullification Crisis (1832)
Proslavery efforts to defend the “peculiar institution”
Christianity arguments
Defense of master-slave relationship as father-child relationship
Myth of happy slave vs. the oppressed N industrial worker
Government crackdown on free speech (Jackson)
1835 Postmasters restrict transmission of abolitionist literature through the mails – in response to rioting in SC where mob burned abolitionist propaganda
1836 Gag Rule in House – all anti-slavery appeals tabled

41. SLAVE CONCENTRATION BY 1860

42. What is the Mason-Dixon Line?
The Mason–Dixon Line (or Mason and Dixon's Line) was surveyed between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in the resolution of a border dispute between British colonies in Colonial America. It forms a demarcation line among four U.S. states, forming part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (then part of Virginia). In popular usage, especially since the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (apparently the first official use of the term "Mason's and Dixon's Line"), the Mason–Dixon Line symbolizes a cultural boundary between the Northeastern United States and the Southern United States (Dixie).