African-American Studies

1. African-American Studies Slavery and Abolition in Post-Revolutionary and Antebellum America, 1790-1860 Mr. Campbell

2. Between 1790 and 1860, American slavery expanded on a grand scale: federal census records show the 1790 slave population of seven hundred thousand increased to nearly four million in 1860 • This growth was linked to the phenomenal increase in cotton cultivation in the South. • invention in 1793 of the cotton gin was one factor in the emergence of the Cotton Kingdom.

3. The end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade also gave rise to a domestic (interstate) slave trade that resulted in the forced migration or relocation of roughly one million slaves by 1860. • The rapid growth of slavery in the New South that resulted from the spread of cotton cultivation was accompanied by the rise of its own plantocracy or planter aristocracy • This elite group complemented that of the Old South, leading to unity among the South's ruling class against any threat to slavery.

4. In 1860 this combined elite constituted only 12 percent of the total 385,000 slave owners, who themselves were a decided minority of the 1.5 million white southern families • Owners in this elite, each possessing twenty slaves or more (ten thousand owned more than fifty slaves and three thousand owned more than one hundred), owned the majority of slaves and symbolized a lifestyle to which most white southerners aspired.

5. The size of this elite's slaveholdings meant that the typical slave owner had fewer than twenty slaves and the typical slave lived among more than twenty bondsmen.

6. The tremendous growth in the antebellum slave population was accompanied by the development among slaves of a sense of community • Through this they provided mutual moral and physical support and developed an ethos and value system that were expressed through their songs, folktales, religion, and extended family network. • For example, an ethical rule that pervaded the distinctive culture forged by slaves enjoined stealing from one another.

7. As a general rule, slave labor was both intensive and extensive. • Still, the conditions under which slaves worked and lived were determined by many variables including: • Time period (colonial or antebellum) • Size of the farm or plantation • Location (rural or urban area) • Slave owner's personality • The kind of staple crop produced

8. Although servitude was an ordeal, severe and inhumane, a slave culture and slave community with an interior life did develop and endure and prevented slaves from being entirely helpless. • A slave personality emerged that, far from being completely shattered or permanently scarred by the extraordinary stresses and strains of bondage • The slaves remained steadfast and unwavering in a deep-seated quest and yearning for freedom.

9. Slave resistance continued during the antebellum period; its expression ranged from work slowdowns, feigned illnesses, and flight, to insurrections. • The most notable insurrections of the period were: • Gabriel Prosser's in Richmond in 1800 • Denmark Vesey's in Charleston in 1822 • Nat Turner's in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831 • John Brown's 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia

10. Abolitionist Movement • Opposition to slavery, especially after 1830, was also manifested in the growth and increased militancy of abolitionist societies in the North. • White abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the antislavery newspaper The Liberator in 1831 and of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833

11. Black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, William Wells Brown, Henry Highland Carnet, and David Walker took a forceful stand against slavery. • In David Walker's "Appeal," which some white southerners believed gave impetus to Nat Turner's insurrection, was an 1829 essay that suggested that if the American colonists were justified in their revolt, then slaves were justified in using force to break the chains of their bondage • The 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, also helped generate opposition to slavery.

12. Among the activities that bound many abolitionists was the Underground Railroad, a secret network that helped slaves escape from the South • It is estimated that forty thousand fugitive slaves came North via this network between the early 1830s and the start of the Civil War • Many settled in Canada, where slavery had been abolished in 1833

13. While the slave population had grown considerably by 1860, so too had the free black population, increasing from roughly 59,000 in 1790 to 488,070, of whom 250,787 were in the South and 237,283 in the North • In1827, Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm founded in New York City Freedom's Journal, the first black newspaper. • 1816, Richard Allen had established in Philadelphia the first black religious denomination - the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church

14. The Colored Convention Movement is still another example of black antebellum organizational zeal. • Organized in 1830 in Philadelphia with Richard Allen as its first chairman, it consisted of black leaders-the black intelligentsia-mainly from northern cities meeting periodically to debate and formulate strategies and goals designed to better the condition of the race.

15. The conditions of free northern blacks worsened during the antebellum period • In many instances they experienced economic discrimination, often being displaced from their jobs by white immigrants who were arriving in increased numbers • Job competition was especially keen between the blacks and the Irish, since both groups were engaged mainly in unskilled work, in contrast to German workers, who were found in a number of skilled crafts. • Northern blacks also suffered discrimination in suffrage rights, education, and public accommodations and were often, in urban areas, the targets of white mob violence. • Philadelphia between 1830 and 1850 was particularly infamous for antiblack riotous behavior.