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: North and South’s Shared Vision of Ending Slavery and the Shift in the South

Post-1820s: Shift in the South to Maintaining the Past

Post 1820s: Maintaining the Power in the South – Plus Reminders from Unit 1 and 2

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

 

Lesson 1 –Use its Learning Quiz on Essential Terms 1st

1.      North and South compared – past traits still apply

2.      Development of South’s characteristics from the 1830s

·         “peculiar institution”

·         Slavery from “necessary evil” to a “positive good”

·         Slavery, international markets (Britain, France) in cotton, cotton gin as only technology

3.      North’s characteristics from the 1830s

·         Varied reform movements (examples in #5.)

·         Against slavery: American Anti-Slavery Society, small, for immediate abolition of slavery, and:

                    i.            William Lloyd Garrison - The Liberator

                  ii.            Frederick Douglass - The North Star (African American, former slave)

·         Against slavery: Underground railroad, small

4.      North’s varied general reform movements

·         Insane asylums and prisons and Dorothea Dix

·         Suffrage and Susan B. Anthony

·         Temperance

·         Utopian communes (such as Shakers)

 

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: North and South’s Shared Vision of Ending Slavery and the Shift in the South

American Colonization Society – Liberia – Monrovia – What it advocated? How it worked?

If you want to know more, click here for the Library of Congress webpage on the American Colonization Society (URL: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam002.html)

Post-1820s: Shift in the South to Maintaining the Past

·         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 1860

§  South    5,500,000

§  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

o   in 1790-700,000

o   in 1830-2,000,000

o   in 1860-4,000,000

Post 1820s: Maintaining the Power in the South – Plus Reminders from Unit 1 and 2

·         Reminder: In the 1st half of the 1600s, there was Anthony Johnson, an black indentured servant who served out his indenture, married, and had land and free children

·         “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

Shift:  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).
Shift: 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 insaneDorothea Dix

·         Temperance

·         Transcendentalism

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, and 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
If you want to know more, click on the primaries in this Lesson.

 

Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2019

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

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Last Updated:

2019

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