Crosscurrents: Slavery, Abolition, and the Civil WarI Image Courtesy Library of Congress

1
Crosscurrents Slavery, Abolition, and the Civil
War IImage Courtesy Library of Congress
2

• There is not a nation on the earth guilty of
• practices, more shocking and bloody, than are
• the people of these United States. Go where you
• may, search where you will, roam through all the
• monarchies and despotism of the old world, travel
  
• through South America, search out every abuse,
• and when you found the last, lay your facts by
  the
• side of the everyday practices of this nation,
  and
• you will say with me, that, for revolting
  barbarity
• and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without
• a rival.
• Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave Is the
  Fourth of July? (1852)

3
Key Figures

• Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
• Dred Scott (1795-1858)
• Nat Turner (1800-1831)
• John Brown (1800-1859)

4
Key Figures

• William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)
• Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
• Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
• Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897)
• Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895)

5
Key Dates

• 1619 ? First slaves, about twenty, arrive in the
  New World
• 1700 ? Opposition to slavery in Samuel Sewalls
  The Selling of Joseph
• 1729 ? Quakers condemn slave trade
• 1739 ? Stono Rebellionlargest slave rebellion of
  the colonial period saw nearly 100 rebels kill
  several whites in Stono, South Carolina.
  Slaveowners lived in constant fear of poisoning,
  murder, and insurrection.

6
Key Dates

• 1776 ? Jefferson introduces an anti-slave clause
  into the Declaration of Independence the clause
  is rejected.
• 1783 ? Massachusetts frees its slaves.
• 1807 ? Slave trade abolished by Great Britain and
  the United States. By this time between 600,000
  and 650,000 slaves had arrived in America against
  their will.
• 1820 ? Missouri Compromise. To keep free and
  slave states equal in number, Missouri entered as
  a slave state and Maine as a free state.

7
Key Dates

• 1829 ? Mexico abolishes slavery, but rarely
  enforces the law in Texas.
• 1831 ? William Lloyd Garrison publishes the
  first issue of The Liberator, an abolitionist
  journal.
• ? Nat Turner leads a slave rebellion.
• Turner, a literate slave preacher, had visions
  of angels who convinced him to punish slave
  owners. Turner and six followers killed his
  master (whom Turner described as kind and caring)
  and his family. Recruiting slaves as he moved on,
  Turner gained some 70 followers, who killed 57
  white men, women, and children. The rebellion
  ended in two days with Turners arrest. He was
  tried and executed, but slaveowners were left
  uneasy.

8
Key Dates

• 1850 ? Compromise of 1850, intended to settle the
  slavery issue once and for all.
• Among its terms
• Slave-trading was prohibited in the District of
  Columbia.
• California became a free state and two
  territories were organized as New Mexico and
  Utah, where slavery would not be prohibited.
• A more severe Fugitive Slave Law to enable
  southerners to reclaim slaves replaced the one of
  1793.

9
Key Dates

• 1852 ? Uncle Toms Cabin published.
• Influential anti-slave novel (see pp. 851-60),
  sells millions of copies and is adapted for the
  stage where it is seen by some 300,000
  nineteenth-century audiences.
• When Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, he is said to
  have joked, So this is the little lady who made
  this big war.

10
Key Dates

• 1855-56 ? Bleeding Kansas
• Kansas became an early battleground over slavery.
• Missourians crossed the border to vote for
  pro-slavery candidates in Kansas, giving
  pro-slavery politicians an overwhelming majority
  in the Kansas legislature.
• Kansas legislature passed laws intimidating
  antislavery settlers.
• Antislavery supporters and politicians organized
  their own state government and declared Kansas a
  free state.
• Violence between the two factions broke out
  frequently.

11
Key Dates

• 1856 ? Violence in the Senate
• On the Senate floor, Representative Preston S.
  Brooks of South Carolina beats Senator Charles
  Sumner of Massachusetts unconscious a few days
  after Sumners passionate condemnation of
  slavery.
• Both are celebrated in their states.
• Sumner was unable to return to the Senate until
  1860, his chair left vacant as a symbol of
  Southern brutality.

12
Key Dates

• 1857 ? Dred Scott vs. Sanford
• The case was staged by abolitionists so the U.S.
  Supreme Court would decide the status of slavery
  in the territories. J. F. A. Sanford was Scotts
  owner and determined to free him anyway.
• The case backfired when Chief Judge Taney
  declared that Scott could not bring a case since
  he wasnt a citizen.
• Since slaves were property, the Court could not
  deprive people of their property in the
  territories.

13
Key Dates

• 1859 ? John Browns Raid of Harpers Ferry
• Brown, an anti-slavery zealot, led a raid on a
  United States arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
• He had hoped to use the arms to start a slave
  insurrection.
• After ten of his men were killed, Brown
  surrendered and was tried for treason, convicted,
  and hanged. (See Melvilles The Portent, p.
  724.)

14
Key Dates

• 1860 ? Lincoln elected president.
• Lincoln with approximately 40 of the popular
  vote defeated three other candidates.
• 1860 ? South Carolina secedes.
• 1861 ? Civil War begins
• 1863 ? Emancipation Proclamation
• At the time of the proclamation, slaves numbered
  approximately 4 million.
• It freed slaves only inside the Confederacy, not
  in the border states, which had not seceded.
• As Union forces began to occupy southern states,
  slaves were freed. Almost 200,000 former slaves
  served the Union cause.
• This symbolic document signaled that slavery
  would no longer exist in a post-war United States.

15
Key Dates

• 1864 ? Lincoln reelected with 55 of the popular
  vote.
• 1865 ? The House passed the Thirteenth Amendment,
  which freed all slaves without compensation to
  their owners.
• ? Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox.
• ? Lincoln assassinated.
• ? Reconstruction begins.

16
Key Facts about the Period Justifications for
Slavery

• Slavery was established by decree of Almighty
  God. it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both
  Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation. it has
  existed in all ages, has been found among the
  people of the highest civilization, and in
  nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.
• Jefferson Davis, President, Confederate States
  of America

17
Key Facts about the Period Justifications for
Slavery

• There is not a respectable system of
  civilization known to history whose foundations
  were not laid in the institutions of domestic
  slavery.
• Robert M.T. Hunter (1809-1887), Senator,
  Virginia
• The right of holding slaves is clearly
  established in the Holy Scriptures, both by
  precept and example.
• Rev. Richard Furman, D.D., Baptist Pastor,
  South Carolina, 1838

18
Key Facts about the Period Justifications for
Slavery

• See excerpts from The Journal of John Woolman
  (pp. 140-41), in which he relates his encounter
  with slave supporters who allude to the curse of
  Ham in Genesis 9 25-27.
• See excerpts from The Civil War Diary of Sarah
  Morgan, in which Morgan discusses how she works
  and sings with slaves in an atmosphere of mutual
  respect and appreciation (pp. 795-98).

19
Key Facts about the Period The Experience of
Slavery

• I was soon put down under the slave decks.
  with the loathsomeness of the stench and crying
  together, I became so sick and low that I was not
  able to eat I now wished for the last friend,
  death, to relieve me but soon, to my grief, two
  of the white men offered me eatables, and, on my
  refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the
  hands, and laid me across, I think, the windlass,
  and tied my feet, while the other flogged me
  severely.
• Olaudah Equiano (p. 273)

20
Key Facts about the Period The Experience of
Slavery

• By far the larger part of the slaves know as
  little of their ages as horses know of theirs,
  and it is the wish of most masters within my
  knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant I
  had been at my new home but one week before Mr.
  Covey gave me a severe whipping, cutting my back,
  causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on
  my flesh as large as my little finger.
• Frederick Douglas (pp. 875, 881)

21
Key Facts about the Period The Experience of
Slavery

• Reader, I draw no imaginary pictures of southern
  homes. Yet when victims make their escape from
  this wild beast of Slavery, northerners consent
  to act the part of bloodhounds, and hunt the poor
  fugitive back into his den. Nay, more, they are
  not only willing but proud, to give their
  daughters in marriage to slave-holders. The poor
  girls have romantic notions of a sunny clime, and
  of the flowering vines that all the year round
  shade a happy home. To what disappointments are
  they destined! The young wife soon learns that
  the husband in whose hands she has placed her
  happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows.
  Children of every shade of complexion play with
  her own fair babies, and too well she knows that
  they are born unto him of his own household.
  Jealousy and hatred enter the flowery home, and
  it is ravaged of its loveliness.
• -- Harriet Jacobs (p. 865)

22
Key Facts about the PeriodEscapesFollow the
Drinking Gourd

• The song (the lyrics for which appear on pp.
  792-93) contains a coded route to Ohio, where
  slavery was outlawed.
• The drinking gourd is the Big Dipper.
• The song directs slaves to leave during the
  winter. The quail is a migratory bird that
  winters in the South.
• One of the problems for the Underground Railroad
  was how to cross the Ohio River. In the winter
  the river would freeze, making the crossing
  possible.
• As indicated in the second verse, slaves were to
  walk along the Tombigbee River and look for
  directions in the drawings in dead trees.
• In verse three, the escaping slave follows the
  path along the Tennessee River until it meets the
  Ohio River, where a guide (the ole man) waits
  on the other side.

23
Key Issues Jefferson Controversy

• Throughout his life, Thomas Jefferson
  consistently opposed slavery. Yet he held slaves
  himself, a point raised during his lifetime to
  discredit his anti-slavery arguments.
• As world trends and opinions indicated, he
  realized that sooner or later slavery would be
  abolished, so he thought it best to remove it at
  the outset and avoid future conflicts. However,
  the anti-slavery clause he wrote for the
  Declaration of Independence was rejected by the
  delegates to the convention.

24
Key Issues Jefferson Controversy (contd.)

• In a letter to Edward Coles (Aug. 25, 1814),
  Thomas Jefferson, over age seventy, explains his
  frustration at his lack of success in abolishing
  slavery and his reasons for holding slaves This
  enterprise of abolishing slaves is for the
  young for those who can follow it up, and bear
  it through to its consummation. It shall have
  all my prayers, these are the only weapons of
  an old man until more can be done for slaves.
  We should endeavor to feed and clothe them
  well, protect them from all ill usage, require
  such reasonable labor only as is performed
  voluntarily by freemen.

25
Key Issues Lincoln and Slavery

• Abraham Lincoln was opposed to slavery
  personally, but he did not believe that, as
  president, he could impose his belief on the
  southern states.
• Lincoln first and foremost was concerned with
  preserving the union. He clearly explained his
  position on slavery in a letter to Horace
  Greeley
• What I do about slavery and the colored race, I
  do because I believe it helps to save the Union
  and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not
  believe it would help to save the Union. (ATIL,
  pp.1766-67)
• Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on
  September 23, 1863.

26
Key Issues Lincolns Hopeful Vision

• that from these honored dead we take increased
  devotion to that cause for which they gave the
  last full measure of devotion that we here
  highly resolve that these dead shall not have
  died in vain that this nation, under God, shall
  have a new birth of freedom, and that government
  of the people, by the people, for the people,
  shall not parish from the earth.
• Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863 (ATIL,
  pp. 1767-68)

27
ReadingCrosscurrents Slavery, Abolition, and
the Civil War (pp. 78598)

• Briton Hammon
• William Cushing
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Lydia Maria Child

• Songs of Slavery and the Civil War (Follow the
  Drinking Gourd, Dixie, Battle Hymn of the
  Republic)
• Sarah Morgan

• Additional Reading
• John Woolman Olaudah Equiano
• Phillis Wheatley Abraham Lincoln
• John Greenleaf Whittier Harriet
  Beecher Stowe
• Harriet Jacobs Frederick Douglass