The Old South or the Antebellum South

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The Old South or the Antebellum South

• Chapter 10

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HOME
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C H A P T E R
The Union in Peril
To understand the conflict over slavery and other
regional tensions that led to the Civil War
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King Cotton

• The spread of cotton stimulated the nations
  economic growth after the War of 1812.
• Cotton was king in the Old South.
• Economic Exploitation Cotton was the primary
  export and the major source of southern wealth.
• By 1860 the United States produced three-fourths
  of the worlds supply of cotton.
• The worlds dependence on cotton made slaves
  extremely profitable. Thus, slavery was the base
  on which the Souths economic growth rested.

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King Cotton

• Upper South vs. Deep South
• The upper South turned increasingly to wheat and
  corn, crops that required less labor.
• Increasingly, they began selling their excess
  slaves to cotton and sugar planters in the Deep
  South.
• The removal of the southern Indian tribes opened
  land for white settlement and allowed cotton to
  push westward.

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Characteristics of the South

• Low Population Density
• 12 million in 1860
• roughly 2/3rds white
• 1/3 black slaves
• 2 percent free blacks

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Characteristics of the South

• Overwhelmingly Rural
• Lack of manufacturing
• only 9 percent of nations manufactured goods
• Absence of cities
• New Orleans the only truly southern city of
  significant size
• Little Interest in Education
• Exception Wealthy planters
• By 1820, slavery was confined to the South. The
  peculiar institution

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Slavery

• Background
• 1808 end of international slave trade
• Made slaves more valuable
• Had the unexpected effect of tempering some of
  slaverys harsher features (Paternalism)
• Gave rise to a flourishing domestic trade
• 1860 4 million slaves

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Nature of Southern slavery

• Slavery as a Labor System
• First and foremost a system to manage and control
  labor
• Profitability of slavery
• The Plantation system
• Racial Control
• A caste system based on color
• Muted class conflict among whites
• Planters and aristocratic values
• Base on which the Souths way of life rested.

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The White South

• The Slaveowners
• Planters owned 20 or more slaves
• Only 1 out of 30 white southerners
• Wealthy Planters At least 50 slaves
• Only 1 of white population

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The White South

• Yeoman Farmers (about 50)
• Owned no slaves
• Farmed 80 to 160 acres of land
• Accepted slavery as a means to control an
  inferior social class

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The Peculiar Institution Labor

• Conditions varied widely
• Depending on size of farm or plantation, crop,
  master, absentee owner.
• Organization of slave labor
• Gang system
• Task system
• Slaves workday
• Rewards Punishment

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Material Existence

• Plantation 20-50 slaves 800-1000 acres
• Housing
• Clothes
• Food
• Health

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Slave Response

• Resistance
• Rebellion
• Running away
• Day-to-day resistance (most common)

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Slave Culture

• Strong sense of family
• Breakup of families
• Extended families
• Slave spirituals (protest and celebration)
• Folk Tales (Trickster stories)
• Conjurer (magic / spiritual powers)
• Religion (mixture of Christianity and African
  religion)

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Free People of Color

• About 300,000 in 1860
• 7 of black population
• 2 of total population
• Methods of obtaining freedom
• Occupations
• Restrictions
• Occupied an uncertain position is southern
  society.
• Above black slaves but distinctly beneath even
  poor white southerners.

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Southern Slavery and the Proslavery Argument

• Religious Arguments
• Law of Moses Jews were authorized to enslave
  heathens.
• The Bible does not condemn slavery.
• Slavery traced to curse on Canaan (allegedly
  black grandson of Noah).
• Defended slavery as a Christian institution.

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Southern Slavery and the Proslavery Argument

• Social and racial arguments (Paternalism)
• African Americans were an intellectually and
  emotionally inferior race and needed to be cared
  for by white masters.
• Slavery a more humane system of labor than what
  existed for northern workers.

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Abolitionism and the Antislavery Argument

• Slavery was immoral because it was contrary to
  the teachings of Christianity.
• Violated the principle of the American Revolution
  that all human beings had natural rights
  (individual freedom and self-reliance).
• Opponents and Divisions
• Divisions among abolitionists gradual
  emancipation vs. immediatism.

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Slavery

• The system of slavery is like holding a wolf by
  its ears and we can neither hold him, nor safely
  let him go.
• -Thomas Jefferson

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National Unity

• Both North and South adhered to the teachings of
  evangelical Protestantism.
• Methodist and Baptist churches split into
  northern and southern branches in the 1840s.
• Shared a belief in democracy and white equality.
• Equality in the Declaration of Independence
  applied only to whites (white males).
• It was only in the mid-1840s that westward
  expansion would cause people to wonder if the
  nation could survive half slave and half free.

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Sectional Politics

• Chapter 10 continued

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The Rise of theSlavery Issue

• Should slavery be allowed in the Mexican Cession?
• David Wilmot (Penn.) had already suggested that
  slavery be outlawed in the Mexican cession.
• The Wilmot Proviso
• John C. Calhoun (S.C.) wanted to allow slavery.
• A more moderate proposal by Pres. Polk was to
  extend the Missouri Compromise
• Others such as Lewis Cass (Mich.) and Stephen
  Douglass (ILL.) wanted popular sovereignty
• Allow the people of each territory rather than
  Congress decide the status of slavery.

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Presidential election of 1848

• Both parties tried to avoid the issue of slavery
• Democrats nominate Lewis Cass (and deny power of
  Congress to interfere with slavery) popular
  sovereignty
• Whigs choose Zachary Taylor, a slaveholder from
  Louisiana who owned more than 100
  slaves(Political views unknown)
• Development of the Free Soil Party
• Rebellious northern Democrats
• Antislavery Whigs (Conscience vs. Cotton
  Whigs)
• Members of the antislavery Liberty party
• Nominate Martin Van Buren-Against the expansion
  of slavery into new territories
• Slogan free soil, free speech, free labor, free
  men
• Taylor won because the Free-soil Party took
  northern Democrat votes away from Cass

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California Statehood

• By 1849 California had enough residents to be
  admitted as a state (Gold Rush).
• The balance of power between the North and the
  South stood at 15 each.
• Taylor calls for admission of California as a
  free state and thought slavery should be banned
  in all of the Mexican cession. He was convinced
  that slavery would never flourish in the West.
• Taylors suggestion touched off the most serious
  sectional crisis the Union had yet confronted.

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The Great Debate

• Henry Clay decided that a grand compromise was
  needed to end all disputes between the North and
  the South and to save the Union.
• Already, Mississippi had summoned a southern
  convention to meet in Nashville to discuss the
  crisis and extremists were pushing for secession.
• The Senate debated the compromise for six months.
  Finally Stephen Douglass took over and passed
  each part of the compromise individually.
  President Taylors death in July 1850 helped push
  forward the compromise.

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The Compromise of 1850

• California admitted as free state
• Rest of Mex. Cession divided into two
  territories New Mexico Utah under
  popular sovereignty
• The slave trade, not slavery itself, would be
  abolished in the District of Columbia
• A new, more rigorous Fugitive Slave Law

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The Fugitive Slave Act

• Enabled southerners to reclaim runaway slaves in
  the North
• Denied an accused runaway a trial by jury and it
  required all citizens assist federal marshals in
  its enforcement
• Underground Railroad-Harriet Tubman

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Fugitive Slave Law

• Fugitive Slave Law
• Created an office of commissioners who decides if
  a slave was a runaway received 10 to return a
  runaway slave to the South/ 5 to free the
  runaway slave
• Denied accused runaway slaves trial by jury and
  the right to testify in their own defense
• Required citizens to assist in catching runaways
• Citizens helping a runaway slave faces a 1000
  fine and 6 months in jail
• The Fugitive Slave Law was very unpopular in the
  North because it forced northerners to accept
  slavery. However, it was tough to enforce

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Fugitive Slave Law

• Question How did northern state governments
  make the Fugitive Slave Act difficult to enforce?

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Fugitive Slave Law

• Answer Personal liberty laws were passed making
  it possible for slaves to get lawyers. Anti-
  kidnapping and no cooperation laws were also
  passed. However, the Supreme Court declared
  these laws unconstitutional in Prigg vs.
  Pennsylvania, ruling that state governments could
  not pass laws obstructing the right of slave
  owners to reclaim slaves.

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Uncle Toms Cabin (1852)

• By Harriet Beecher Stowe
• A tremendous commercial success, it was perhaps
  the most effective piece of antislavery
  propaganda.
• Presented a powerful moral indictment of the law
  and of slavery as an institution.
• Dramatized the plight of runaway slaves
• Degraded slave master
• Exposed the break-up of black families
• Made a mockery of Christian morality of the South
• The South fired back, criticizing the cruelties
  of northern factory owners
• 5years sold 500,000 copies in US and was
  translated into 20 languages
• Stowe had never been to the South
• Rumor has it she was invited to the Whitehouse
  and greeted by Lincoln who said you are the
  little women who started this great war

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The Election of 1852

• Both the Whigs and the Democrats endorsed the
  Compromise
• Democrats turn to Franklin Pierce who defeated
  Whig candidate Winfield Scott
• Even more significantly, the antislavery Free
  Soil Party did not receive many votes.
• With the slavery issue seemingly losing political
  force, it appeared that the Union had weathered
  the storm unleashed by the Wilmot Proviso.

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Sectional Changesin American Society

• The Growth of a Railroad Economy
• In the 1850s, railroad construction took cottons
  place as the driving force behind the economy.
• Reorientation of western trade
• Urbanization in the North reached over 50 for
  first time in 1860
• Rising Industrialization in the North
• Influx of immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s
  threatened the sectional balance of power.

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Sectional Changes in American Society

• Southern economic dependence

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The Gadsden Purchase, 1853

• Ideas for a transcontinental railroad
• President Pierce wanted to build a southern route
  for a railroad
• With the Gadsden Purchase, the U.S. gained 45,000
  square miles of Mexican desert, which contained
  the most practical southern route for a
  transcontinental railroad.

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The Railroad Affects Politics

• Sen. Stephen Douglas (Ill.) wanted to build a
  transcontinental railroad from Chicago.
• This could not be done until the rest of the
  Louisiana Purchase was organized.

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Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

• Repealed the Missouri Compromise
• Created two territories based on popular
  sovereignty,
• Most northern opponents of the bill focused on
  the expansion of slavery and the Slave Power
  rather than the moral evil of slavery.
• Once President Pierce endorsed the bill, it
  passed and the Missouri Compromise was repealed

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The Political Realignment of the 1850s

• Collapse of the Second American Party System
• The fight over the bill divided the political
  parties along sectional lines and effectively
  destroyed the Whig party and the Republican Party
  emerged to take its place, uniting around the
  ideal of free labor.
• The Republican Party
• No base in the South.
• Intended to elect a president by sweeping the
  free states, which now controlled a majority of
  the electoral votes.

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Election of 1856

• Republicans
• John C. Fremont
• Free-soil in Kansas
• Federal prohibition of slavery
• Free labor society with expanded opportunities
  for white workers
• 114 electoral/ 1,335,264 popular
• support from the North
• Democrat
• James Buchanan
• Popular sovereignty
• 174 electoral votes/ 1,838,169 popular
• support from the North and South
• American Party
• Millard Fillmore
• Compromise 8 electoral/ 874,534 popular
• Nativism
• Anti- Catholic
• Democrats worried even though they won because
  the divided opposition gained more popular votes.
  The election of 1856 spelled trouble for the
  Union because the make-up of the political
  parties was beginning to go back to regional
  rather than political.
• Election of 1856

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The Worsening Crisis

• Bleeding Kansas
• Violence broke out between two rival governments
  one free one slave
• Bleeding Sumner
• The violence spread when Congressman Preston
  Brooks (S.C.) attacked Sen. Charles Sumner
  (Mass.) with his cane.
• The Dred Scott Decision
• Chief Justice Taney says that African-Americans
  could not be citizens and that Congress could not
  ban slavery.
• Encouraged political extremism.

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Dred Scott Continued

• Chief Justice Roger B Taney was from Maryland (a
  slave state)
• No black-slave or free could be a citizen of the
  United States
• Court defined slaves as property protected by due
  process of law. Thus, slave holders could take
  their property anywhere in the nation without
  restriction.
• Ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional
  because it deprived the right of slaveholders to
  own property.
• Congress did not have the constitutional right to
  prohibit slavery
• Congress did have the constitutional duty to
  protect the property of the citizens it governs

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The WorseningCrisis

• The Panic of 1857
• Economic issues increase sectional tensions
• The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858)
• Douglas and Lincoln on the slavery issue.
• Lincoln lost the senatorial contest in Illinois.
• Lincolns performance marked him as a possible
  presidential contender for 1860
• Attempting to lure Douglas into a trap, Lincoln
  asked him how popular sovereignty could work
  under the Dred Scott decision

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Questions

• How did popular sovereignty and the Dred Scott
  decision contradict each other?
• How might Douglas answer determine the outcome
  of the Illinois senatorial race of 1858?
• What was Douglas response? The effect of his
  response?

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John Browns raid on Harpers Ferry (1859)

• An abolitionist seized the unguarded federal
  armory at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in hopes of
  starting a slave insurrection.
• He was captured and executed.
• Another blow weakening the forces of compromise
  and moderation.

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A Sectional Election (1860)

• Actually two contests
• North Abraham Lincoln (Rep.) vs. Stephan
  Douglass (N. Dem.)
• South John Breckinridge (S. Dem.) vs. John Bell
  (Constitutional Union)

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Candidates and Parties

• The parties and candidates
• Constitutional Union Party
• Southern moderates (Know Nothings and Whigs)
• Nominated John Bell
• Ignored sectional differences
• Wanted to save the Union
• stressed no political principle other than the
  Constitution, the Union, and law enforcement
• gentlemans party
• this party did not have much of a shot because
  passions had been too much aroused for a
  gentlemans party to win
• Democratic Party
• The democratic nominating convention at
  Charleston split on the issue of popular
  sovereignty in the territories.
• Southern Democrats felt like they had been
  duped by Stephen Douglas with the Freeport
  Doctrine.
• Insisted on an extreme pro-slavery platform/
  Northern Democrats disagreed
• 8 cotton states withdrew
• party split/ Stephen Douglas for Northern
  Democrats and John Breckinridge for Southern
  Democrats

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Candidates

• Republicans
• Abraham Lincoln
• Had a good chance of winning because it no longer
  was a one issue party/ developed into more of a
  Northern Party.
• Platform
• Stop the expansion of slavery/ leave it alone
  where it already exists
• Liberal immigration policy
• Lincoln wins less than 40 of popular vote with
  virtually no support in the South.
• For the first time, the nation had elected a
  president who headed a completely sectional party
  and who was committed to stopping the expansion
  of slavery.

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Major Political Parties 1850-1860
Party Established Major Platform
Free- Soil 1848 _ Anti extension of Slavery _ pro-labor
Know-Nothing 1854 ( As American Party) _ Anti immigration _ Anti-Catholic
Whig Organized 1834 _ Pro business _ Divided on Slavery
Republican 1854 _ Opposed expansion of slavery into territories
Democratic 1840 (Democratic-Republican adopted the Democratic Party as official name) _ States rights _ Limited govt _ Divided on Slavery
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The Road to War

• Secession seemed the only alternative left to
  protect southern equality and liberty.
• South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860.
• The rest of the Deep South followed and formed
  the Confederate States of America on February 7,
  1861.
• The Upper South and border states declined to
  secede, hoping that once again Congress could
  patch together a settlement.
• Crittenden Compromise fails
• introduced a bill to extend the Missouri
  Compromise line to the Pacific.

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