Agriculture in Antebellum SC

8-4

Agriculture and the South

• Agriculture the basis of society in SC.• Large plantations• Most SC had subsitence farms and did not

own slaves.• Majority of slave owners in SC owned only

one or two slaves. • Few slave owners had LARGE

plantations.

Cotton Gin

• 1793 Eli Whitney• SC farmers had new cash crop.• Became more dependent on slave labor.• International slave trade outlawed in 1808.• Textile mills of the North and in England

bought the cotton.• Cotton wore out the soil quickly.

Political Cartoon-Attack on Slave issues promoted by invention of

cotton Gin.

Plantation Life

• Self sustaining communities dependent on slave labor.

• Slaves worked in the fields and in the plantation houses.

• Women and children worked in the fields alongside the men under the supervision of a driver or an overseer.

• Some slaves because of their skills were “hired” out and master collected their wages.

www.boonehallplantation.com.

Let’s take a quick tour.

Treatment of Slaves• Slave owners had a large financial investment in slaves.

Concern over their property, made some treat their slaves comparatively well.

• Some owners were brutal. • Little time to tend to their own families or plots that

owners might allow them to cultivate for their own food. • Provided a minimum of food, clothing, and shelter. • Law did not recognize slave marriages, families often

separated through sale. • We not allowed to learn to read and write.

Plantation Society. • Master and mistress had responsibilites for

making the plantation work. • All business decisions including the marketing of

the crops and managing of the slave population ws responsibility of the master.

• Mistress oversaw the running of the house and sometimes cared for slaves when they were sick.

• Slave owners lived in constant fear that their slave would rise up against them.

8-3.2 Road to War

Compromise of 1850• In 1848 California applied for statehood as a non-

slave state. This went against the Missouri Compromise & would upset the slave/non-slave balance in the Senate.

• Henry Clay came up with a compromise to settle this issue – The Compromise of 1850:– 1. CA would enter the Union as a non-slave state– 2. The Mexican Cession territory would use popular

sovereignty to determine the slave/non-slave issue– 3. TX would give up all lands east of the Rio Grande to NM &

the US government would pay off Texas’s war debt.– 4. There would be an end to the slave trade in Washington,

DC.– 5. Stronger enforcement of the Fugitive Salve Laws

• John C. Calhoun strongly opposed this compromise but it was passed by congress anyway.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1793• Because of the Compromise of

1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was reinstated.– Any information leading to the

recapture of a runaway slave got $5

– Anyone who turned in a runaway slave got $10

– Anyone who aided a runaway slave was fined $1,000

• Thousands of fugitive slaves fled to Canada.

Anti-Slavery

Literature

• Fredrick Douglass – an escaped slave who became a public speaker for the abolitionist movement. He also wrote several essays.

• Harriet Beecher Stowe – wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin which sold over 2 million copies. This story discussed the life of Uncle Tom, a mistreated and abused slave.

Trouble in Kansas• In the election of 1852, Democrat, Franklin Pierce won promising to honor

the Compromise of 1850 & the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act.• In January 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed to encourage

settlement so that a transcontinental railroad could be built through these territories.– Popular sovereignty would determine the slave issue rather than the Missouri

Compromise line.• Thousands of abolitionists & pro-slavery supporters flocked to KA to vote to

make this territory slave or non-slave.• Both sided claimed victory saying the other side cheated. • KA ended up with 2 separate state governments – one supporting slavery &

the other not.

Bleeding Kansas – the pre-Civil War• Violence broke out between the 2 groups.• In May 1856, 800 pro-slavery men attacked and burned the anti-slavery

town of Lawrence.• In retaliation for the “Sack of Lawrence”, abolitionist John Brown led the

Pottawatomie Massacre on May 24, 1856, killing 200 people.• Congress also witnessed violence when MA Senator Charles Sumner

criticized SC Senator Andrew Pickens Butler for his practice of slavery.• Preston Brooks, Andrew’s brother, attacked Sumner on the senate floor

beating him unconscious.

The Dred Scott

Decision

• In 1856 James Buchanan, Democrat, won the presidential election.

• In 1857 The Dred Scott Decision ripped the nation apart.

• When Dr. John Emerson died his slave, Scott, sued for his freedom because he temporarily lived in a free state.

• Chief Justice Roger B. Taney state that Scott’s case shouldn’t even have come to court because African Americans aren’t citizens & don’t have the right to bring a case to court.

• But Further, he stated that slaves were property and therefore can be taken anywhere in the US regardless of free or slave state.

• This was a huge victory for southern slave state & a defeat for the abolitionist movement.

The Republican

Party

• In 1854 the Republican Party was formed opposing the spread of slavery westward.

• In the 1858 election for the IL senate seat, Stephen Douglass (Democrat) debate Abraham Lincoln (Republican) throughout the state known as the Lincoln Douglass Debates.

• Douglass introduced the Freeport Doctrine which stated that the issue of slavery was in the hands of the people through popular sovereignty.

• Douglass won the senate seat but this allowed Lincoln to run for the Presidency in 1860.

Raid on Harper’s Ferry

• On October 16, 1859, John Brown & his followers raided the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, VA to arm local slaves to revolt against their owners.

• On the 17th, Robert E. Lee put down the revolt & 2 weeks later Brown was sentenced to death.

• Sectionalism increased:– Northerners thought all southerners were cruel slave owners

like in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.– Southerners thought all northerners were extreme

abolitionists like John Brown

The Election of 1860• Abraham Lincoln = Republican• John Bell = Constitutional Union Party• Stephen Douglass = Northern Democrat• John C. Breckinridge = Southern Democrat• Lincoln won with 40% because the others split

and didn’t have enough to get the majority of electoral votes.

Secession(8-4)• On December 17, 1860, South Carolina

became the 1st state to secede from the Union (they dissolved their membership in the USA).

• By February 1, 1861, MS, FL, AL, GA, LA, TX all seceded from the Union forming the Confederate States of America.

• They elected Jefferson Davis as President.

• Their constitution resembled the US Constitution with the exception of guaranteeing the right to own slaves.

Sectionalism

• Loyalty to a particular region or section of a country instead of to the nation as a whole.

• Developed because: different regions, ratification of the Constitution, cultures, political interests of the North and South became more and more different.

Two Party System

• Different interests of the regions helped to create the two-party system.

• Southerners tended to be Democratic-Republican followers of Thomas Jefferson who called themselves Republicans.

• New Englanders tended to be Federalists (later Whigs).

Abolitionist Movement

• Southerners feared the impact of abolitionist thought on the slave system.

• Tried to stifle propaganda against slavery.• Larger Northern audience received

propaganda and were convinced of the evils of the ‘peculiar institution.’

Economy

• North-industry attracted European immigrants to jobs and allowed the North to have a larger representation in the House of Representatives.

• South-Population grew because of the natural increase of the slave population.

• Internation Slave trade outlawed in 1808. Numbers of slaves grew due to higher birth rates and smuggling.

Denmark Vesey Plot• http://www.bookrags.com/biography/denm

ark-vesey/“We are free but the white people here won't let us be so, and the only way is to rise up and fight the

whites.” Plot never materialized but like the Stono Rebellion, it also led to

stricter control over slaves and free blacks.

General Assembly passed laws that prohibited slaves from meeting, learning to read and write and regulated all aspects of slaves’ lives. Southerners feared that if slavery could not expand into the territories eventually the national government would be in the hands of the North. Slavery would be outlawed and Southerners would have among them a large African American population that they could not control.