Lesson 1: Reform and Change—Comparing the Sections  

Comparing the North (old NE and new NW) and South (old Southeast and new Southwest)

Pre-1820s and the North and South’s Shared Vision of the End of Slavery

Maintaining the Past in the South 

Maintaining the Power in the South

Post-1820s, Shifting to Reform in the North about Ending Slavery

Post-1820s, Shifting to Varied Reforms in the North in Addition to Ending Slavery

Comparing the North (old NE and new NW) and South (old Southeast and new Southwest)

The past from before 1830 continues and becomes the new reality. The border states—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri—vary from the old Southeast and the new Southwest, including in the trend to end slavery.

Trait

North

South

Education and literacy

Public funding for public schools – North and Midwest 

1850, ½ white children 5-19 in school, mainly in the North

Public schools - few

500,000 illiterate whites – ½ U.S. total

Cities, large

 

 

Climate and geography

 

 

Economy, commerce (carrying trade)

 

 

Economy, finance (banks)

 

 

Economy, industry (production)

 

 

Economy, exports

 

 

Labor and farmer owners and craftsmen, immigrants

 

 

Labor and some craftsmen, slavery – and for what crop by 1860?

 

 

Technology, agriculture

 

 

Technology, transportation

 

 

Trade relationships

 

 

Pre-1820s and the North and South’s Shared Vision of the End of Slavery

American Colonization Society – Liberia – Monrovia – What it advocated? How it worked? Maintaining the Past in the South 

·         Beliefs in virtue of rural life (not cities), agrarian economy (not industry) and white supremacy

·         The language of slaveholders and Southern

o   Peculiar institution – as in unique

o   Justification of slavery
- from a necessary evil
- to a positive goodBible - John C. Calhoun - Senator Hammond on Northern workers as “mudsills” who should be slaves for their own sake and for the North’s sake  (If you would like this added as a primary, just ask.)

·         Classes in the South – Whites and Quantities

o   White planters, great influence but only 4% in the South and owned more than 50% of the slaves (Note: only 1/4 of whites “direct interest in slavery.”)

o   Overseers, employees (rarely black)

o   Senator Hammond – “in a slave country, every freeman is an aristocrat”

§  “Plain white folk,” yeoman farmers

§  “Poor whites,” day labor or squatters (no land, no slaves)

o   Quantity of white people in the South in 1860    5,500,000 (in North  – 22,000,000)

·         Classes in the South – Blacks

o   “free persons of color” – free blacks

o   Drivers of a “gang” of slaves

o   Slaves – rural and urban slavery

o   Quantity of slaves in 1790-700,000; in 1830-2,000,000; in 1860-4,000,000

Maintaining the Power in the South – Reminders from Unit 2

·         “slave codes” – What are they? What are some examples?

·         Slave rebellions (or advocacy of), background to Nat Turner

o   1800 - Gabriel Prosser, blacksmith, VA – 26 hanged - Poor whites did not join as he expected

o   1811 - C. Deslondes, “trusted slave overseer” on a sugarcane plantation, LA Territory – “as many as 100 slaves tortured, killed, and beheaded” with heads “placed on poles”

o   1822 - D. Vesey, free black, SC – plan for escape of many blacks to Haiti – 35 executed, about 36 sold to Spanish Cuba
Additional consequences: on John C. Calhoun’s nationalism and South Carolina’s “slave code”

o   1829 - David Walker, free black in the North, wrote and published Walker’s Appeal – advocated slaves use the “crushing arm of power”

o   1831- Nat Turner, “trusted black overseer,” preacher, VA  - 100s of slaves “indiscriminately killed” – 17 hanged plus again “heads placed on poles”
Note:  “vigilante groups of whites, slave owners as well as non-owners, who would patrol their communities looking for runaways”

Post-1820s, Shifting to Reform in the North about Ending Slavery

·         2 movements

o   Abolition – what it advocates, how it worked, and the major individuals in this movement, including African Americans?

§  William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator

§  Frederick Douglass, The North Star

Reminder: the North does not favor the abolitionists. Example: Elijah P. Lovejoy.

o   Free Soil – what it advocates, how it worked, and where it appealed?

·         Underground Railroad
Note: only 1000 escaped per year

Post-1820s, Shifting to Varied Reforms in the North in Addition to Ending Slavery

·         Education – Horace Mann and the public school movement

·         Literature with American themes:

o   Emily Dickinson

o   Walt Whitman

·         Religion:

o   Unitarianism and Universalism

o   Second Great Awakening –a  democratic salvation compared to the Puritans

o   Revivalism and camp meetings

o   Mormons

·         Prison reform and treatment of the insane – Dorothea Dix

·         Temperance

·         Transcendentalism (romanticism)

o   Ralph Waldo Emerson – “self-reliance”

o   Henry David Thoreau - Civil Disobedience (1849), Walden Pond (1854)

·         Utopian communes –one religious example are the Shakers

·         Women’s rights and women’s suffrage

o   Reminder on lack of rights: not on juries, not vote, not professions (other than teaching or nursing), not own property or their children, not sue.

o   1848 - Seneca Falls Convention – rewrites the Declaration of Independence

o   Susan B. Anthony – like others in the women’s rights movement, started in anti-slavery and temperance movements

o   Sojourner Truth – slave freed in New York in 1827 by law –  representative of both abolition and women’s rights – famous for the speech "Ar'n't I a Woman?" Delivered 1851, Women's Convention, Akron, Ohio  (Not a requirement, but available as a primary)

 

Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2017

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

Contact Information:

281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu

Last Updated:

2017

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