Slavery and Civil War Northern States gradually abolished
Slavery and Civil War
§ Northern States gradually abolished slavery after independence. § British and New England textile mills demanded cotton. § Cotton plantations stretched from South Carolina to Texas. § In 1860, cotton accounted for 60% of U. S. exports by value. § As cotton plantations spread, so did slavery. § In the South, only a portion of white males owned slaves. § Prosperity depended on enslaved workers.
§ The system denied enslaved persons’ basic humanity. § Owners denied education, fearing it would foment unrest. § Some worked as household servants, but the majority were field hands. § Owners viewed them as a labor source and trading commodity, so they encouraged reproduction with little regard for marriage bonds or family ties. § Mixed raced births: plantation owners and slave women. (The offspring were slaves). § Subtle forms of resistance included breaking tools and slowing the work pace. § These actions brought whippings. § Daring slaves ran away. Those who reached the North found a network of safe houses called the “Underground Railroad” to speed them to Canada and freedom. § Frederick Douglass, escaping from Baltimore in 1838 joined the antislavery cause and wrote a popular autobiography.
§ Frederick Douglass
§ The British antislavery movement that culminated with the abolition of slavery throughout the Empire in 1833 resonated in America as well. § In 1833, the journalist William Lloyd Garrison from Boston helped found the American Antislavery Society. § Along with Frederick Douglass, other African Americans emerged as leaders. § Women also figured prominently in the movement, combining antislavery with feminism as well.
Southern writers answered with novels portraying happy slaves such as Mary Eastman’s Aunt Phillis’ Cabin (1852). And in Types of Mankind (1854), the Alabama physician Josiah Nott proclaimed blacks’ innate inferiority. In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe, daughter of an evangelical minister published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an antislavery novel appealing to middle-class moral sentiments. An instant best-seller, the book’s impact was compared to 1776’s Common Sense by Paine.
§ In 1858, Illinois Republicans nominated the lawyer Abraham Lincoln to challenge Stephen Douglas for his U. S. Senate seat. § Speaking in New York City in 1860, Lincoln condemned abolitionist extremism but insisted that slavery expansion must stop. § In May, the Republican convention in Chicago nominated Lincoln for President. He won with a 40% plurality. § The South quickly reacted. § In December, a convention in Charleston, South Carolina proclaimed: § “The Union subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved. ” § 1861, 11 Southern states had seceded and formed the Confederate States of America under President Jefferson Davis. § In his March, 4, 1861 inaugural address, Lincoln offered conciliatory words, pledged not to disturb slavery where it existed but vowed to resist secession. § On April 12, when Fort Sumter’s commander refused to surrender, shore batteries opened fire. § Declaring a national Insurrection, Lincoln called for 75, 000 volunteers.
The Confederacy
The Union
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