THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 1492-1877

Slavery and the South

REVIEW QUESTIONS

• What is sectionalism, how does it differ from nationalism in the American context?

• What were the main aspects of the states rights movement?

• What was the central issue in the Nullification Crisis?

• What other issue caused a major controversy in the 1830s?

WHO AM I?

• My nickname was the Great Compromiser, I helped to solve the Nullification Crisis

• I sent Indians accross the Mississippi River• I developed the idea of Nullification• I was the last president of the revolutionary

generation, I developed a doctrine as well• I called the election of 1824, which I lost, a

corrupt bargain

ORIGINS OF SLAVERY

• Terms of domination• Biblical origins Hamian curse: descendants of

Ham will suffer in slavery• Jews enslaved the Canaanites• Egyptian slavery• Slavery in Africa• Not race based, slaves were close to family,

sometimes treated as family members • Caliban, Tempest

THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY

• Started by the Portuguese, Spanish• Large scale: British• Triangular trade, involving the New England

colonies• Slave coast, West Africa• New England transports rum, exchange for

slaves, return slaves via Middle Passage• Cargo

• Amistad Middle Passage• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMliaXlKx

ow

TRIANGULAR TRADE

SLAVE NARRATIVES

• SLAVE NARRATIVE• OLAUDAH EQUIANO• AUTOBIOGRAPHY –Life writing• Captivity narrative, spiritual narrative• Journey from sinner to saint• Heuristic value• Robert Southey coins the term

• Give us free• http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=Ee8NvgURCZs

AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Slave narratives)

• Cause of its popularity-Individualism-people have stories worth telling, audience is

interestedAutobiography: a mirror, revealing the depth of

one’s soulAutobiographical I, Autobiographical eyeAutobiographical Pact: narrator, subject, writer:

IDENTICAL (Philip Lejeune)

THE NARRATIVE

• THE NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERIC DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE (1845)

• Race, individualism, and healing as main motives connected to religion

• Separation, Ordeal, Return (Freedom)-Indian captivity narrative

• Separation, Ordeal, Escape• Typology:parallels with the Old Testament• Self-creation• You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see

how a slave was made a man • Conativity, conation: belief in the power of the written

word to change reality• An individual declaration of independence

CHAPTER TEN

• I lived with Mr. Covey one year. During the first six months of that year, scarce a week passed without his whipping me

• You are loosed from your moorings and are free, I am fast in my chains and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift winged angels, that fly round the world, I am confined in bands of iron!

• You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man

• This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. My long crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place and I now, resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact

• ERRORS, MISREPRESENTATIONS• Selective memory• Recreated self • Coded language

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN

• Harriet Beecher Stowe• Lyman Beecher, Unitarianism• Sentimental novel, domestic fiction• Extreme character description: Simon Legree-

brutal, immoral, cruel, a rake (villain)• Uncle Tom: slave as Christ• Uncle Tom: accommodationist

SLAVERY IN AMERICA

• Not simultaneous with the presence of blacks• First blacks 1619—indentured workers• Slavery institutionalized: by the end of the

seventeenth century• Potential cause: fear of poor whites and blacks

forming alliances, i.e. Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)

• Fear of miscegenation, mixing of the races

SLAVERY IN AMERICA

• Until 1783 both North and South had slavery• 1787: Three fifth compromise, slaves are

counted as three fifth, slave trade compromise-importation of slaves is prohibited after 1808

• Missouri Compromise, 1820 Congress establishes an imaginary line at 36.30 parallel

• Slavery in the South-plantation economy

PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENTS• Biblical arguments: Christ did not prohibit it,• St. Paul to Corinthians: slave should return home

to master (to tell him that he should be freed)• Positive good, both for the slave and the owner• Slave is in better condition than the wage slave in

the North • Paternalistic argument: plantation is the family

plantation owner: Father, wife: Mother, slave: Child

• Peculiar institution (southern term for slavery)

BLACK REVOLUTION VIEW• Enslavement: emphasizing the human aspects,

slavery refers more to the institution• Slavery is a genocide or holocaust• Slaves died a social death: chattel, or property• Cultural death: elimination of African culture• But: culture preservation• Syncretization: fusion of African and Western

elements: vodoo, hoodoo, trickster figures, African-American folk tales Bre’r Rabbitt,

• Malitis (Mallet)

SLAVE REBELLIONS

• Several rebellions in the late 18th, early 19th century

• 1831: Nat Turner rebellion, Southampton, Virginia –the most significant slave rebellion

• Struck fear in the heart of slave holders• Nat Turner claimed to have been led by a

vision• Some viewed him as the equivalent of

Washington