Apush chapters 10-11 Review Guide Table of Contents

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  Slavery in the Cities
  
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    Autonomy of Urban Slaves
    
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    While in the country, on isolated plantations, slaves maintained direct control, in the City, slaves were out and about in the city performing errands all day long, interacting with both free blacks and whites.
    
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  Jobs
  
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    While poor white laborers generally worked on farms, masters would hire out slaves to work in mining, lumbering, in docks and construction sites, driving wagons and performing other unskilled jobs
    
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    Cohabitation?
    
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    White southerners tended to dislike having slaves in cities, and as cities grew, many slaveholders would sell their slaves to the countryside. At the same time though, many mulattoes (mixed race people) were born. Also in this time period, the groundwork for segregation was laid.
    
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  Free African Americans
  
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    Gaining Freedom
    
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    There were about 250,000 free blacks in the south during this time period. They gained their freedom either by making money from a trade like sewing or smithing and buying their freedom, or by being set free by the will of their master after his death
    
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  Tightened Restrictions on free blacks
  
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    Nat Turner’s revolt (and northern abolitionist agitation) made southerners afraid that free blacks, if unsupervised, would become a threat. Because of that, most southern states passed laws forbidding the freeing of slaves.
    
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  Finding Success?
  
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    Some free blacks found success in plantations of their own, and black communities in New Orleans, Natchez and Charleston found stability. However, the vast majority of free blacks lived, unable to find work, and with few rights.
    
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  The Slave Trade
  
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    Slave Markets
    
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    For short journeys, slaves would walk, on longer, they’d be taken by steamboat. Central slave markets included Natchez, New Orleans, Charleston, and Mobile. In the slave trade, families were often split up. Although importation of slaves from other countries had been outlawed, slaves continued to be smuggled into the US.
    
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  The Amistad
  
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    The Amistad was a Cuban Slave ship, whose slaves mutinied and compelled the crew to sail them back to Africa. The ship was caught by the US government. Although many thought that the slaves should be returned to Cuba, John Quincy Adams argued that the foreign slave trade was legal and they all should be freed. After they were freed, abolitionists funded their return to Africa.
    
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  Slave Resistance
  
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    Slave attitudes toward slavery
    
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    Slave Owners argued that slaves were happy with their position, but this is of course ridiculous in the vast majority of cases.
    

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  Slave Resistance
  
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    Slave-owners, and many white Americans after emancipation, liked to argue that the slaves were generally content.
    
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    The vast majority of southern blacks were not content with being slaves, they yearned for freedom.
    
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    The response of blacks to slavery was a combination of adaptation and resistance.
    
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    At the extremes, slavery could produce two very different reactions.
    
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  The "Sambo"
  
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    Deferential slave who acted out the role that he recognized the white world expected of him. More often than not, this pattern of behavior was a charade.
    
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  The Slave Rebel
  
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    A slave who could not bring himself or herself to either acceptance or accommodation but remained forever rebellious.
    
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      Prosser and Turner rebellions
      
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      (1800) Gabriel Prosser gathered 1,000 rebellious slaves outside Richmond; but two Africans gave the plot away, and the Virginia militia stymied the uprising before it could begin. Prosser and thirty-five others were executed.
      
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      (1822) Charleston free black Denmark Vesey and his followers—rumored to total 9,000, made preparations for revolt; but was snitched on and was dealt with accordingly.
      
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      (1831) Nat Turner, a slave preacher, led a band of African Americans who armed themselves with guns and axes. They went from house to house in Southampton County, Virginia. They killed sixty white men, women, and children before being overpowered by state and federal troops.
      
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      Resistance to slavery took less drastic forms such as running away.
      
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      Sympathetic whites began organizing the Underground Railroad to assist them in flight.
      
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      Difficulties with escape
      
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    The hazards of distance and the slaves’ ignorance of geography were serious obstacles.
    
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    White “slave patrols,” stopped wandering blacks on sight throughout the South demanding to see travel permits.
    
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      Without a permit, slaves were presumed to be runaways and were taken captive.
      
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      Slave patrols employed bloodhounds to track African Americans who attempted to escape through the woods.
      
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      Blacks continued to run away from their masters in large numbers.
      
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    Slaves Resistance
    
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      The most important method of resistance was the refusal to work hard.
      
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      Subtle methods of resistance
      
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        Working ineptly
        
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        Stole from masters and neighboring whites
        
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        Lost and broke tools
        
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  The Culture of Slavery
  
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    There was a process of adaptation. The process did not imply contentment with bondage. No realistic alternative. Blacks adapted by developing a counterculture. It enabled them to sustain a sense of racial pride and unity.
    
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    Language and Music
    
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    Slaves had a lot of trouble with speaking with each other because of the multitudes of differing languages in Africa.
    
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      Pidgin
      
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      They created a common language to communicate with each other.
      
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      Drew heavily from English and less so from African languages
      
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  Importance of Slave Spirituals
  
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    Songs were sung in the field with white plantation owners around.
    
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    Songs were also important to their religion.
    
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  African American Religion
  
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    By the early 19th century, almost all blacks were Christian.
    
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    Autonomous black churches were banned by law.
    
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    Many slaves became members of the same denominations as their owners.
    
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    Slave prayer meetings routinely involved fervent chanting, spontaneous exclamations from the congregation, and ecstatic conversion experiences.
    
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    African American religion emphasized the dream of freedom and deliverance.
    
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    Christian images, and biblical injunctions, were central to Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, and others who planned or engaged in open resistance to slavery.
    
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  Slave Religion
  
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    In cities and towns in the South, some African Americans had their own churches.
    
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    Seating in such churches was usually segregated.
    
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  The Slave Family
  
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    The “nuclear family” emerged as the dominant kinship model among African Americans.
    
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    Black women generally began bearing children at younger ages than most white women.
    
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    Slave communities did not condemn premarital pregnancy in the way white society did.
    
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    Black couples would often begin living together before marrying.
    
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    Slave Marriages
    
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      It was customary for couples to marry after conceiving a child.
      
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      Marriages often occurred between slaves living on neighboring plantations.
      
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      Many slave marriages lasted throughout the course of long lifetimes.
      
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      Up to a third of all black families were broken apart by the slave trade.
      
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  Importance of Kinship Networks
  
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    One of the most frequent causes of flight from the plantation was a slave’s desire to find a husband, wife, or child who had been sent elsewhere.
    
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    Black women, usually powerless to resist the sexual advances of their masters, often bore the children of whites. They were consigned to slavery from birth.
    
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    Paternal Nature of Slavery
    
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      Paternalism became one of the most important instruments for white control.
      
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      By creating a sense of mutual dependence, whites helped reduce resistance to an institution that, in essence, served only the interests of the ruling race.
      

The most important economic development in the mid-nineteenth-century South was the shift of economic power from the upper south, the original southern states along the coast, to the lower south, the expanding agricultural regions in the new states of the Southwest. This happened due to the growing dominance of cotton. All other crops required to strenuous labor, too much time to grow, or needed a particular soil to grow. The southern economy profited greatly as a result of this.

The business class served the needs of the plantation economy. The most important were brokers who put plantation owners’ crops out into the market. Professionals, Merchants, and manufacturers were important to southern society, however they were still relatively unimportant when compared with the same groups in the North.

The necessary element for development was an extensive transportations system. The south did not have this. During the antebellum period, the North put hugs sums of money into roads, canals and most importantly railroads with tightly connected the region. During the same time the South did nothing.

He means that the South did not have a fully developed economy, linking it back to colonial times when the advances in technology and transportation were not present.

The planter aristocracy consisted of the cotton magnates, the sugar, rice, and tobacco nabobs, and the white plantation owners who owned over 40 or 50 slaves and owned 800 or more acres of land. They influenced far beyond their numbers as they commonly held social gatherings at their large plantations in which they influenced the people who came to their points of view and opinions and gained their support.

This image represented the desire of Southern planters to live a live based on traditional chivalry, leisure, and elegance. They tried to do this by maintaining a long-standing aristocracy, however this was rarely true as most planters were new to their wealth and influence.

Southern women occupied roles similar to their counterparts in the North. They generally stayed at home, serving subordinately to their husbands and taking care of children. Women in the South were also commonly more subordinate to men as the cult of honor meant that southern white men gave importance to “defending” women. The majority of Southern women lived on farms, and rarely left, isolating them from the public world.

The typical southerner was a modest yeoman farmer. They were plain folk because they owned few if any saves and were not wealthy, as well as devoted themselves to farming. For these people it was very difficult to get an education, making it even more difficult for social advancement.

They did not oppose the system because they were commonly tied to it in important ways. Small farmers depended on the large plantations for access to cotton gins, markets, and credits or financial assistance. There was also many kinship networks that linked lower and upper class whites. These mutual ties eliminated tensions between classes.

Slave codes forbade slaves to own property, leave their masters’ premises without permission, be out after dark, congregate with one another except at church, to carry firearms, or to strike a white person under any circumstance. Some states even denied the rights to read or write and to testify against white people. Slave marriages were also not legal. Slaves faced the death penalty or were subject to any punishment by their masters for breaking the codes.

The nature of the relationship between masters and their slaves depended on the kind of plantations they were on. Most masters with few slaves worked with their slaves and developed positive, paternal relationships with them. On larger plantations however, relationships were and masters were less intimately related with their slaves and hired overseers to supervise them, and commonly they were cruel.

House slaves had a much easier life then the field slaves. Slaves were much less healthy than whites. Slaves generally received at least enough necessities to enable them to live and work. Their masters usually furnished them with an adequate diet. Many slaves had gardens for their own use. They received cheap clothing and shoes. They lived in cabins called slave quarters.

Yes, there were field hands, and house servants. Field workers included men, women, and children. The field workers had the most difficult jobs, and the most working hours of the day. House servants had it easier because they only engaged in household activities.

In the cities, a master could not supervise his slaves as closely as a slave owner in the South could. In a rural plantation, masters could keep an effective watch over his slaves because they had no contact with any free Blacks or people other than the ones in their plantation. In the North, Blacks could run errands in the city, and their owners did not care to supervise them. Urban slavery had an effect on the “peculiar institution” because black laborers were hired to work at docks, construction sites, drive carriages, and perform other jobs in the cities. After their work was done, they had time to mingle with free blacks and whites, which caused the line between slavery and freedom to become indistinct.

Life was very difficult because blacks had very few rights. They couldn't find jobs because they often had few skills so no one wanted to hire them.

Almost all slaves hated their conditions. Slaves responded to slavery with resistance and adaptation. Some blacks resisted by becoming stereotypes like the slave rebel, which was the slave who could not bring himself to accept slavery and remained rebellious.

One slave revolt occurred in 1800, when Gabriel Prosser gathered 1,000 slaves outside Richmond. Another occurred when Denmark Vesey gathered 9,000 slaves to revolt. Unfortunately, the plans for these two revolts were given away, and both were stopped before they were started. The revolt of Nat Turner in 1831 led slaves armed with guns and axes from house to house in Southampton, Virginia. They killed 60 before they were stopped.

They were forced to attend the same church as their owners, but Blacks were still able to form their own type of Christianity. They practiced voodoo, and other religious traditions. In addition, black preachers emerged. African American religion reflected the influence of African customs and practices. It also emphasized their dreams of freedom.

Slave families were an important thing of black culture in the South. It suffered because slaves did not have a right to legal marriage, and slaves gave birth to children at a younger age than whites. Family ties were strong as well. However, some marriages did not last because of the slave trade industry. Family ties were so strong, that slaves escaped plantations to find their relatives.

Slaves were forbidden to own property or leave the plantation without permission. They were also prohibited from reading. Anyone with any African ancestry was considered a "black." The slave laws were often spotty and uneven and not rigidly enforced.

North was creating a complex commercial-industrial economy. The South was expanding its agrarian economy. The differences between the North and the South were a result of differences in natural resources, social structure, climate, and culture. Above all, they were the result of the existence within the South of an unfree labor system that prevented the kind of social fluidity that an industrializing society usually requires.

This was the male southern code of chivalry. It included dueling and protecting the women, and southerner men fiercely protected it. The traditional culture of the Southern United States has been called a "culture of honor", that is, a culture where people avoid intentionally offending others, and maintain a reputation for not accepting improper conduct by others. A prevalent theory as to why the American South had or may have this culture is an assumed regional belief in retribution to enforce one's rights and deter predation against one’s family, home and possessions. The concept was tested by social scientists Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen in their book Culture of Honor, popularized by a discussion in Chapter Six of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and touched upon in.

De Bow’s Review, which survived from its founding in 1846 until 1880. De Bow made his journal into a tireless advocate of southern economic independence from the North, warning constantly of the dangers of the “colonial” relationship between the sections. One writer noted in the pages of his magazine: “I think it would be safe to estimate the amount which is lost to us annually by our vassalage to the North at $100,000,000. Great God!” Yet De Bow’s Review was itself evidence of the dependency of the South on the North. It was printed in New York, because no New Orleans printer had facilities adequate for the task; it was filled with advertisements from northern manufacturing firms; and its circulation was always modest in comparison with those of northern publications

In 1822, the Charleston free black Denmark Vesey and his followers—rumored to total 9,000— made preparations for revolt; but again word leaked out, and suppression and retribution followed. In 1831, Nat Turner, a slave preacher, led a band of African Americans who armed themselves with guns and axes and, on a summer night, went from house to house in Southampton County, Virginia. They killed sixty white men, women, and children before being overpowered by state and federal troops.

(1776 – October 10, 1800) was a literate enslaved blacksmith who planned a large slave rebellion in the Richmond area in the summer of 1800. Information regarding the revolt was leaked prior to its execution, and he and twenty-five followers were taken captive and hanged in punishment. In reaction, Virginia and other state legislatures passed restrictions on free blacks, as well as prohibiting the education, assembly, and hiring out of slaves, to restrict their chances to learn and to plan similar rebellions.

The gang system is a system of division of labor within slavery on a plantation (also read Task System). It is the more brutal of two main types of labor systems. The other form, known as the task system, was less harsh and allowed the slaves more self-governance than did the gang system. The gang system allowed continuous work at the same pace throughout the day, never letting up or slowing down. There were three gangs. The first gang (or "great gang") was given the hardest work, for the fittest slaves. The second gang was for less able slaves (teenagers, or old people, or the unwell slaves) and this gang was given lighter work. The third gang was given the easiest work.

(October 2, 1800 – November 11, 1831) was an African-American slave who led a slave rebellion of slaves and free blacks in Southampton County, Virginia on August 21, 1831 that resulted in 60 white deaths. He led a group of other slave followers carrying farm implements on a killing spree. As they went from plantation to plantation they gathered horses, guns, freed other slaves along the way, and recruited other blacks that wanted to join their revolt. At the end of their rebellion they were accused of the deaths of fifty white people. Virginia legislators also targeted free blacks with a colonization bill, which allocated new funding to remove them, and a police bill that denied free blacks trials by jury and made any free blacks convicted of a crime subject to sale and relocation. Whites organized militias and called out regular troops to suppress the rising. In addition, mobs attacked blacks in the area killing an estimated total of 100-200, many not involved at all with the revolt.

To overcome these barriers, they learned a simple, common language (known to linguists as “pidgin”). It retained some African words, but it drew primarily, if selectively, from English. And while slave language grew more sophisticated as blacks spent more time in America—and as new generations grew up never having known African tongues—some features of this early pidgin survived in black speech for many generations.

One extreme was what became known as the “Sambo”—the shuffling, grinning, head-scratching, deferential slave who acted out the role that he recognized the white world expected of him. More often than not, the “Sambo” pattern of behavior was a charade, a façade assumed in the presence of whites. The other extreme was the slave rebel—the African American who could not bring himself or herself to either acceptance or accommodation but remained forever rebellious.

Slavery was an institution established and regulated in detail by law. The slave codes of the southern states forbade slaves to hold property, to leave their masters’ premises without permission, to be out after dark, to congregate with other slaves except at church, to carry firearms, or to strike a white person, even in self-defense. The codes of some states prohibited whites from teaching slaves to read or write and denied slaves the right to testify in court against white people. The laws contained no provisions to legalize slave marriages or divorces. If an owner killed a slave while punishing him, the act was generally not considered a crime. Slaves, however, faced the death penalty for killing or even resisting a white person and for inciting revolt. The codes also contained extraordinarily rigid provisions for defining a person’s race. Anyone with even a trace of African ancestry was defined as black. And anyone even rumored to possess any such trace was presumed to be black unless he or she could prove otherwise—which was, of course, almost impossible to do.

Larger planters generally used one of two methods of as- signing slave labor. One was the task system (most common in rice culture), under which slaves were as- signed a particular task in the morning, for example, hoeing one acre; after completing the job, they were free for the rest of the day.

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  The Character of Slavery (pg. 306-307)
  
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    slavery was the most intense debate in American history
    
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    Before the war...
    
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      abolitionists depicting slavery as brutal and dehumanizing
      
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      southern defenders claim that they are actually caring for and protecting the slaves
      
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      both sides did not want to be separated (late 19th century)
      
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      beginning to romanticize the Old South and its "peculiar institution"
      
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      making it seem unthreatening
      
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  Ulrich B. Philips' American Negro Slavery (1918)
  
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    slavery was benign
    
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      kind masters looked over submissive, childlike slaves
      
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    challenges to Philips emerged in the 1940s
    
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  Melville J. Herskovits (1941)
  
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    African Americans retained their African heritage
    
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  Herbert Aptheker (1943)
  
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    published a chronicle of slave revolts to prove that blacks were not submissive and content
    
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  1950s opposition to Philips
  
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    Kenneth Stampp's The Peculiar Institution (1956) and Stanley Elkins' Slavery (1959)
    
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    labor system did physical and psychological damage to its victims
    
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    slavery was like a prison
    
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  1970s opposition to Philips
  
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    focused on development of black culture in spite of slavery
    
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  John Blassingame (1973)
  
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    slaves retained their African culture
    
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  Herbert Gutman's The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom (1976)
  
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    The hardships of slavery had strengthened, not destroyed, the African American family
    
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  Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll (1974)
  
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    African Americans had developed their own culture within our own
    
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  Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's Time on the Cross
  
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    portrayed slavery as a successful and humane institution, if ultimately immoral
    
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    most northern industrialists faced greater hardship
    
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  The women
  
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    Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s Within the Plantation Household (1988)
    
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    denied the supposed "closeness" of black and white women from their common oppression by men
    
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    slave women were members of the workforce and anchors of the black family
    
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    recent publications show slaves as signs of political status, not economic practicality