Slavery in The New Republic

Pro-Slavery Poetry

• The Hireling• Free but in name--the slaves of endless

toil...In squalid hut--a kennel for the poor,Or noisome cellar, stretched upon the floorHis clothing rags, of filthy straw his bed,With offal from the gutter daily fed...These are the miseries, such the wants, the cares, The bliss that freedom for the serf prepares...

Pro-Slavery Poetry

• The Slave• Taught by the master's efforts, by his careFed,

clothed, protected many a patient year,From trivial numbers now to millions grown,With all the white man's useful arts their own,Industrious, docile, skilled in wood and field,To guide the plow, the sturdy axe to wield....Guarded from want, from beggary secure,He feels what hireling crowds endure,Nor knows like them, in hopeless want to craveFor wife and child, the comforts of the slave,Or the sad thought that, when about to die,He leaves them to the cold world's charity.

Slavery and Religion

• During the colonial period, many planters resisted the idea of converting slaves to Christianity out of a fear that baptism would change a slave's legal status.

• By the early 19th century, slaveholders increasingly adopted the view that Christianity would make slaves more submissive, orderly, and conscientious.

• Slaves themselves found in Christianity a faith that could give them hope in an oppressive world. In general, slaves did not join their masters' churches. Most became Baptists or Methodists

The Revolution and Slavery• The Revolution had contradictory

consequences for slavery. – In the South, slavery became more

entrenched. – In the North, every state freed slaves as a

result of court decisions or the enactment of gradual emancipation schemes.

• Yet even in the North, there was strong resistance to emancipation and freeing of slaves was accompanied by the emergence of a virulent form of racial prejudice.

Planter Elite

– Measures of regional dominance• Scale of slave ownership• Size and quality of landholding• Income• Political power

– Economic engagement in world market– Paternalistic, non-competitive ethos

• Defining features• Contributing factors• Influence on southern values

– Intellectual life

Aristocratic Republicanism and Slavery

• Slave owners saw themselves as the embodiment of men who earned their wealth in the Republican system

• One British observer stated that “even the lowest person in New England is better educated than most people in the South”

• Marquis de Lafayette was appalled at the amount of poverty in Virginia

Aristocratic Republicanism and Slavery

• One South Carolinian said “Where there are Negroes, a White man despises to work, saying what, will you have me a slave and work like a Negro?”

• 25 cents spent to educate the populace while in New England $1.00

Slavery and the National Politics

• Slavery dominates the national debates as new states such as Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama , and Louisiana entered the Union

• Some Southerners thought that slavery had to go to increase the profitability of agriculture

• Many southerners had thought to give up on slavery until the invention of the Cotton Gin

Slavery Growth

• Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin gave slavery a new lease on life.

• Between 1792, when Whitney invented the cotton gin, and 1794, the price of slaves doubled.

• By 1825, field hands, who had brought $500 apiece in 1794, were worth $1,500.

• As the price of slaves grew, so, too, did their numbers

Free Black Population

– Size– Social and civil stature

• Blurry line between slavery and freedom• Broad denial of legal rights

– Growing reputation as threat to slave system– Regional variations

• Lower South– Small numbers– Concentration in cities– Free black elite

• Upper South– Concentration in farmlands– Ties to slave community

African Colonization Society

• Emancipate the slaves

• Send the freed slaves to Africa

• Most Freedmen refused the transportation. Only around 6,000 Africans moved back to Africa (Liberia)

• Bishop Richard Allen said “ this land which we have watered with our blood is now our mother country.”

A New Southern Order

• Between 1787 – 1808, more than 250,000 new slaves brought into the South, more that had been brought into the British Colonies

• Westward movement started the breakup of slave families

A New Southern Order

• In the 1770’s 60% of the whites in the Chesapeake area owned at least one slave

• By the 1820’s fewer than 30% of Southerners owned slaves. The majority of the slaves were held by large planters who dominated the state legislatures.

• Yeoman farmers started to lose their lands to the large landowners and started to become tenants

Slave Societies

• As slavery spread, English became the language of choice. Ironically, the Blacks chose the vocal styling of the Chesapeake area slaves.

• Culturally, African taboos remained, no matter the pressure to mate for master with cousins, they refused.

• Jump the broomstick became the African Americans way to celebrate marriage as White society continued to find ways to dehumanize African Americans

Slave Lives

• Slave masters extracted labor from virtually the entire slave community, young, old, healthy, and physically impaired.

• Children as young as three or four were put to work, usually in special "trash gangs" weeding fields, carrying drinking water, picking up trash, and helping in the kitchen.

• Young children also fed chickens and livestock, gathered wood chips for fuel, and drove cows to pasture.

• Between the ages of seven and twelve, boys and girls were put to work in intensive field work.

• Older or physically handicapped slaves were put to work in cloth houses, spinning cotton, weaving cloth, and making clothes.

Slave Lives

• Slaves had no direct incentive to work hard, slave owners combined harsh penalties with positive incentives.

• Some masters denied passes to disobedient slaves. Others confined recalcitrant slaves to private jails.

• Chains and shackles were widely used to control runaways.

• Whipping was a key part of plantation discipline.

Slave Atrocities Draw from Newspapers of the Time

• A Missouri woman gripped the throat of a young female runaway with red hot tongs when the girl wouldn’t answer her. – “This had the desired effect. The girl faintly

whispered, ‘Oh, Misse, don’t – I am almost gone,’ and expired”

Slave Atrocities Draw from Newspapers of the Time

• A “Mr. Brubaker” tied large cats to a slaves naked body and whipped them “to make them tear his back”

• A wealthy Richmond tobacconist flogged a 15 year old slave girl to death, pausing to permit his wife to sear the girl with a glowing iron; a jury acquitted them of murder

Slave Atrocities Draw from Newspapers of the Time

• A slave owner ordered a slave to be tied to a tree and flogged. In the end he put brush around the tree and ordered it lit. The slave owner was actually imprisoned

• In our nation’s capital, a Congressman observed a slave being beaten by a brickbat by his master and son. The slave was being kicked while down. The Congressman said “ You will kill him” to which the man replied “He is mine and I have the right to do what I please with him”

Slave Lives

• But physical pain was not enough to elicit hard work.

• Some masters gave slaves small garden plots and permitted them to sell their produce.

• Others distributed gifts of food or money at the end of the year.

• Still other planters awarded prizes, holidays, and yearend bonuses to particularly productive slaves.

Resistance to slavery

• “Day-to-day”; “silent sabotage”• Escape

– Obstacles– Destinations

• Southern cities• Remote areas within South• North

– Underground Railroad• Resourcefulness• Harriet Tubman

– Large-scale collective escape• Infrequency of• Amistad episode

Slave Rebellions

• Gabriel and Martin Prosser – plotted a slavery rebellion in Virginia in 1800. This led to Virginia to pass very strict slave codes.

• Denmark Vessey – plotted a very large rebellion in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822. reported the authorities before it took place. He was executed

Free Blacks

• By 1820 13% of all African Americans were “free”

• Treated as 2nd class citizens• Forbidden to vote, go to school or to testify in a

court of law.• In the South though some of the free slaves

became slave holders themselves• Generally Free Blacks and those enslaved

viewed themselves as one people and worked to end slavery

The Missouri Compromise

• In 1819 Missouri applied for admittance as a state.

• Some Northern Congressmen saw this as a chance to end slavery’s move west by banning the importation of slaves into Missouri and the gradual emancipation of the slaves already there.

• Missouri rejected this and the House blocked Missouri’s entrance

Jefferson Quote

• “The momentous question like a firebell in the night , awakened and filled me with terror”