Notes

Agricultural Diversity
-Preponderance of farming
-Emphasis on cash crops obscured the extent to which they fed themselves
-Cash crops leached fertility. Eastern land found it difficult to compete with new lands out West. AL, MS, LA also declining.
-All fed into a growing sense of economic crisis

Manufacturing and Trade
-After 1812--Largely dependent on northern economy and factory work.
2 Major explanations
=Blacks presumed unsuited to factory work
=Lordly disdain for industrial activity
The main reason == King Cotton = more $$$

Planters and Plantation Mistressess (Top Tier)
Had to hold at least 20 slaves (1/30 planters)
Planters - 4% adult white men; over 50% of the slaves
Most Southern Whtes --> Small farmers, deferred to elites
Mistress of the plantation - separate sphere of genteel domesticity
-- Confronted a double standard in terms of moral and sexual behavior, education and stuff
Honor and violence
Moral Code centered on a prickly sense of honor

Middle Class
-Overseers on large plantations, Yeoman farm families - some had slaves, most not.
Always looking for better land, against big gov. endorsed slavery

Poor Whites
Hunting fishing, hound dogs, and moon shine. Presumed to be descended from indentured servants or convicts, Lazy diseases - hookworm, malaria, and pellagra.

Free Blacks
Mulattoes, people of mixed racial ancestry. Urban areas kind of a third caste. Some owned slaves, but still faced discrimination (pass system) Often skilled artisans, farmers, or common laborers.

Plantation Slavery
Most slaves worked on plantations, most worked as field hands dawn-dusk
Slave revolts were rare, Nat Turners (aug 1831) ONLY one to get past planning, more often sabotage of malingering.

Slave Women
Incentives for reproduction - rewarding new mothers, still requiring field work, a few weeks after giving birth, past child-bearing years (abt 40) workload increased, always being abused.

Forging a slave community
-Diverse and varied - melting pot
Slave Religion
Mixture of African and Christian elements, identified with the Israelites in Egypt, belief in magic.
Slave Fam
Marriages = No legality, accepted by owners
Children working at 5, collecting trash and kindling as well as cotton picking, scared crows away, weeded and ran errands!
Age 10 = Full time field hands and sold to new masters.


Anti Slavery Movements
Early opp to slavery
Scattered opp after revolution, 1817 - American colonization society, not supported by free blacks
1822 - Liberia

From Gradualism to Abolition
*William Loyd Garrison - Boston 1831
---Published anti-slavery newspaper, outraged slaveholders partly blamed him for Nat Turner revolt.

Grimke Sisters 1840s Womens Rights
- Role of women in anti slavery, American anti slavery, garrison in favor of including women
-// New York Formed American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society

Frederick Douglas
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas (1845)
North Star - Abolitionist Newspaper for blacks in Rochester, NY
Harriet Tubman Ungrnd RR

Reactions to Abolition
Racial Discrimination and segregation, many opposed abolition
1830 - Petitions to Congress
1836 - House Adopted a rule to lay abolition petitions automatically on the table --#*#-- Adams fought to have it repealed, First Amendment, Repealed 1844

Defenses of Slavery
Religious
-Patriarchs held bondsmen, Paul told servants to obey masters, split Methodists and Baptists into northern and southern denominations
Racial Inferiority of Blacks
Practical
-Profitable and a social necessity
-Fears of a Race War (Jefferson, 1785)
George Fitzhugh of VA
-Security for Blacks in sickness or old age
-Organic hierarchichal society where people should know their place.