The South and the Slavery Controversy, 1793-1860
Background of Slavery
In 1619, a Dutch trading ship brought 20 Africans to Jamestown, Virginia. However, slavery did not take hold in British America because indentured servants were readily available and less expensive. However, by the 1660’s the popularity of indentured servitude declined, in part due to decreasing amount of available land, smoldering unhappiness of the landless former servants, and increased wages in England limited the supply. By the 1680’s slaves began to be imported from West Africa by the tens of thousands across the “Middle Passage” and soon became essential to the southern economy. Slaves in the Deep South died rapidly of disease and overwork, but those in the Chesapeake tobacco region survived longer. Their numbers eventually increased by natural reproduction and they developed a distinctive African-American way of life that combined African elements with features developed in the New World.
Slavery continued to flourish through the colonial period and into the American Revolution where the British promised freedom. Despite efforts in the north to eradicate slavery with passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and agreeing to end the slave trade in 1808, slavery continued to grow in the south were three-fourths of the 400,000 slaves in the colonies were in the south. In addition, the development of the Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin in 1793 solidified the demand for slavery for future generations. In fact, with the Cotton Gin, slavery could now spread beyond the Mississippi into the lush cotton growing fields of Louisiana and Arkansas. When Missouri applied for statehood, slave proponents jumped at the opportunity. These southern slave states eyed the growing expansion during Manifest Destiny with anticipation as rich cotton lands became available in Texas and the southwest and possibly even Cuba.
People and Questions:
As you read chapter 16, identify the following people mentioned in the chapter and their significance to slavery.
1. Harriet Beecher Stowe
2. William Lloyd Garrison
3. Denmark Vesey
4. David Walker
5. Nat Turner
6. Sojourner Truth
7. Theodore Dwight Weld
8. Frederick Douglass
9. Arthur and Lewis Tappan
10. Elija P. Lovejoy
11. John Quincy Adams
Please answer the following questions based on your reading of Chapter 16
1. How did slavery affect whites, those who owned slaves and those who did not?
2. How did blacks respond to the condition of slavery?
3. Describe the characteristics of slave culture.
4. Why did the South move from viewing slavery as a “necessary evil” to proclaiming it a “positive good?”
5. How effective were the abolitionists in achieving their goals? Did they hasten or delay the end of slavery?