Slavery

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Slavery American History Diversity Debate
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Four Regions of Slavery in North America
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The North

• small numbers of slaves
• New York, Pennsylvania
• House servants, slavery not essential to the
  economy
• Social mobility possible for slaves (i.e. ability
  to buy freedom)

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The Chesapeake

• tobacco cultivation in Maryland and Virginia
• Staple crops the world market
• From white indentured labor to plantation slavery
  of African Americans
• Disease on the Chesapeake
• Soil erosion

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The Carolinas

• rice indigo cultivation in South Carolina
• The Caribbean connection
• Disease and rice plantation
• Absentee landowners a thriving African American
  culture

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The Lower Mississippi

• cotton cultivation after 1793 Eli Whitneys
  cotton gin
• Geography and contingency
• From mobility to rigid racial caste system
• The popular image of the slave South in
  antebellum America (King Cotton)

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Experiences of Slaves

• Slave Societies slavery is central to the
  economy. The master-slave relationship defines
  society
• Societies with Slaves- slavery is not central to
  the economy, mobility is possible

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Evolution of Slavery

• Slavery differs according to time place
• The experience of slavery in the 17th (1600-1699)
  century is different from the 18th 19th
  centuries.
• How have historians dealt with measuring changes
  over time regarding slavery?

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Charter Generation

• 1607-1776
• Founding of Jamestown to the formal break of the
  American colonies from Great Britain
• What is a charter?
• Social mobility, diverse forms of labor, Native
  Americans

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Plantation Generation

• 1630s- early 19th century (1830s)
• Large scale importations of African slaves into
  specific regions
• Chesapeake example
• Rice in the Carolinas
• Northern exceptionalism

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Revolutionary Generations

• 1776 to the Civil War
• The institution of slavery was challenged by the
  rhetoric and language of the American Revolution
• The peculiar institution of slavery
• The rise of abolitionism anti-slavery
• Olaudah Equiano slave narrative

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The politics of slavery in antebellum America

• Slave rebellion
• Slave codes
• The Missouri Compromise of 1820
• The Mexican American War, the West the
  expansion of slavery
• Free labor ideology vs. proslavery ideology

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Debates in the historiography of American slavery

• Regarding slavery in the Americas, did racism
  precede the institution, or develop later? In
  other words, did racism make slavery or did
  slavery make racism?
• Why is it important to consider the master-slave
  relationship as a negotiated relationship? Or
  does the idea of negotiation overestimate the
  powers of slaves themselves in determining their
  own destinies?
• In the effort to understand the history of
  American slavery, how important is it to look at
  slavery in other parts of the world, i.e.
  African, South America, Europe?