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

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	Yes	No
Climate and geography	Cold in winter – requires preparation to survive	Mild
Economy, commerce (carrying trade)	Yes	No – They are still more dependent on British or Northern merchants
Economy, finance (banks)	Yes	No
Economy, industry (production)	Yes	No, with Kentucky as an exception (but it does not join the Confederacy).
Economy, exports	Yes--mixed	“Cotton is King.”
Labor and farmer owners and craftsmen, immigrants	Yes	No
Labor and some craftsmen, slavery – and for what crop by 1860?	No	Yes, African American slaves as craftsmen
Technology, agriculture	Yes	Cotton gin
Technology, transportation	Yes	No
Trade relationships	Yes	No

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 good – Bible - 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 had any 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). You do not have to memorize these names but do notice:

o That rebellion occurred with people with greater freedoms (as you would expect)

o That rebellion met great violence.

o 1800 - Gabriel Prosser, blacksmith, VA –- Poor whites did not join as he expected.
Quantity and method: 26, hanging

o 1811 - C. Deslondes, an overseer (a high position for a slave) on a sugarcane plantation, LA Territory
Quantity and method: 100, some tortured, some beheaded (heads placed on poles along roadways).

o 1822 - D. Vesey, free black, SC – plan for escape of many blacks to Haiti
Quantity and method: 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”
Method: Assassinated

o 1831- Nat Turner, black overseer (a high position for a slave), preacher, VA -
Quantity and method: 100s killed and 17 hanged plus beheaded (heads placed on poles along roadways).
Change: Whites patrolled their region as part of their nightly duties.

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?
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

o 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

WCJC Department:	History – Dr. Bibus
Contact Information:	281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu
Last Updated:	2018
WCJC Home:	http://www.wcjc.edu/