Antebellum Slavery

U.S. History to 1877

The Myth of Tara

Geography of slavery

¡ Climate and soil patterns

¡ Little immigration

¡ Comparison with the North

Economics of Slavery

¡ Cotton rush

¡ Monoculture in the Deep South

¡ Labor shortage: importation of slaves banned, 1808

Slave Ownership

¡ Fewer slaveowners

¡ Average price: 1850 $400; 1860 $800

¡ Prime hand $1200; skilled hand $2000

¡ More slaves per owner

¡ Popular support for slavery

¡ Control competition

¡ Race control

Slave Life

¡ Material conditions

Slave Quarters

Planting Cotton

Harvest

Harvest

Bringing Cotton to the Gin

Domestic Slaves

Recreation

Marriage

Family Life

Unprotected
Family

Religion

Punishment

Death

Slavery of the Mind

¡ Psychological conditions

¡ No rewards

¡ Motivation: punishment

¡ No hope: slave for life

¡ Powerless to affect one’s own life

¡ “Slave mentality” and its legacies

¡ Act dumb; work slow

¡ The system is stacked against you

¡ Few slave revolts

¡ None after Nat Turner Revolt, 1831

¡ Running away

Abolitionism

¡ Northern racism

¡ Colonization: Liberia

¡ From out of revivalism: abolitionism

¡ Slavery as a sinful institution

¡ Superiority of free labor

¡ Moderates: Theodore Dwight Weld

¡ Radicals: William Lloyd Garrison

¡ Blacks: Frederick Douglass

¡ Violent opposition

¡ Elijah Lovejoy, Alton, Illinois, 1837

“Necessary evil” to “positive good”

¡ Bible supports slavery

¡ The churches’ “cultural captivity”: staunch defenders of slavery

¡ Story of Ham

¡ “Slaves, obey your masters”

¡ Paternalism

¡ Anti-industrialism

¡ George Fitzhugh

¡ Sociology for the South, 1854; Cannibals All!, 1857

¡ “Superiority” of Southern culture

¡ Lessons of emancipation: Haiti, 1790s; British empire, 1833

The Woman’s Movement

¡ Abolitionist experience

¡ “Domestic slavery”

¡ Seneca Falls Convention, 1848

¡ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

¡ Lucretia Mott

¡ “Declaration of Sentiments”