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Slavery, the Slave Trade, and the Civil War I
Image Courtesy Library of Congress
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
“There is not a nation on the earth guilty of
practices, more shocking and bloody, than are
the people of these United States. Go where you
may, search where you will, roam through all the
monarchies and despotism of the old world, travel
through South America, search out every abuse,
and when you found the last, lay your facts by the
side of the everyday practices of this nation, and
you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity
and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without
a rival.”
– Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (1852)
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Figures
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Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Dred Scott (1795-1858)
Nat Turner (1800-1831)
John Brown (1800-1859)
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Figures
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•
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William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897)
Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895)
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Dates
1619 ▪ First slaves, about twenty, arrive in the New
World
1700 ▪ Opposition to slavery in Samuel Sewall’s
The Selling of Joseph
1729 ▪ Quakers condemn slave trade
1739 ▪ Stono Rebellion–largest slave rebellion of
the colonial period saw nearly 100 rebels kill
several whites in Stono, South Carolina.
Slaveowners lived in constant fear of poisoning,
murder, and insurrection.
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Dates
1776 ▪ Jefferson introduces an anti-slave clause
into the Declaration of Independence; the clause
is rejected.
1783 ▪ Massachusetts frees its slaves.
1807 ▪ Slave trade abolished by Great Britain and
the United States. By this time between 600,000
and 650,000 slaves had arrived in America
against their will.
1820 ▪ Missouri Compromise. To keep free and
slave states equal in number, Missouri entered
as a slave state and Maine as a free state.
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Dates
1829 ▪ Mexico abolishes slavery, but rarely
enforces the law in Texas.
1831 ▪ William Lloyd Garrison publishes the first
issue of The Liberator, an abolitionist journal.
▪ Nat Turner leads a slave rebellion.
Turner, a literate slave preacher, had visions of angels
who convinced him to punish slave owners. Turner and
six followers killed his master (whom Turner described as
kind and caring) and his family. Recruiting slaves as he
moved on, Turner gained some 70 followers, who killed
57 white men, women, and children. The rebellion ended
in two days with Turner’s arrest. He was tried and
executed, but slaveowners were left uneasy.
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Dates
1850 ▪ Compromise of 1850, intended to settle the
slavery issue once and for all.
Among its terms:
• Slave-trading was prohibited in the District of Columbia.
• California became a free state and two territories were
organized as New Mexico and Utah, where slavery
would not be prohibited.
• A more severe Fugitive Slave Law to enable southerners
to reclaim slaves replaced the one of 1793.
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Education. All rights reserved.
Key Dates
1852 ▪ Uncle Tom’s Cabin published.
• Influential anti-slave novel, sells millions of copies and is
adapted for the stage where it is seen by some 300,000
nineteenth-century audiences.
• When Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, he is said to have
joked, “So this is the little lady who made this big war.”
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Education. All rights reserved.
Key Dates
1855-56 ▪ “Bleeding Kansas”
• Kansas became an early battleground over slavery.
• Missourians crossed the border to vote for pro-slavery
candidates in Kansas, giving pro-slavery politicians an
overwhelming majority in the Kansas legislature.
• Kansas legislature passed laws intimidating antislavery
settlers.
• Antislavery supporters and politicians organized their
own state government and declared Kansas a free state.
• Violence between the two factions broke out frequently.
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Education. All rights reserved.
Key Dates
1856 ▪ Violence in the Senate
• On the Senate floor, Representative Preston S. Brooks
of South Carolina beats Senator Charles Sumner of
Massachusetts unconscious a few days after Sumner’s
passionate condemnation of slavery.
• Both are celebrated in their states.
• Sumner was unable to return to the Senate until 1860,
his chair left vacant as a symbol of Southern brutality.
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Dates
1857 ▪ Dred Scott vs. Sanford
• The case was staged by abolitionists so the U.S.
Supreme Court would decide the status of slavery in the
territories. J. F. A. Sanford was Scott’s owner and
determined to free him anyway.
• The case backfired when Chief Judge Taney declared
that Scott could not bring a case since he wasn’t a
citizen.
• Since slaves were property, the Court could not deprive
people of their property in the territories.
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Dates
1859 ▪ John Brown’s Raid of Harpers Ferry
• Brown, an anti-slavery zealot, led a raid on a United
States arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
• He had hoped to use the arms to start a slave
insurrection.
• After ten of his men were killed, Brown surrendered and
was tried for treason, convicted, and hanged. (See
Melville’s “The Portent.”)
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Dates
1860 ▪ Lincoln elected president.
• Lincoln with approximately 40% of the popular vote defeated three
other candidates.
1860 ▪ South Carolina secedes.
1861 ▪ Civil War begins
1863 ▪ Emancipation Proclamation
• At the time of the proclamation, slaves numbered approximately 4
million.
• It freed slaves only inside the Confederacy, not in the border states,
which had not seceded.
• As Union forces began to occupy southern states, slaves were
freed. Almost 200,000 former slaves served the Union cause.
• This symbolic document signaled that slavery would no longer exist
in a post-war United States.
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Dates
1864 ▪ Lincoln reelected with 55% of the popular
vote.
1865 ▪ The House passed the Thirteenth
Amendment, which freed all slaves without
compensation to their owners.
▪ Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox.
▪ Lincoln assassinated.
▪ Reconstruction begins.
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Facts about the Period:
Justifications for Slavery
[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty
God. … it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both
Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation. … it
has existed in all ages, has been found among
the people of the highest civilization, and in
nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.
– Jefferson Davis, President, Confederate States of America
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Facts about the Period:
Justifications for Slavery
There is not a respectable system of civilization
known to history whose foundations were not
laid in the institutions of domestic slavery.
– Robert M.T. Hunter (1809-1887), Senator, Virginia
The right of holding slaves is clearly established
in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and
example.
– Rev. Richard Furman, D.D., Baptist Pastor, South Carolina, 1838
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Facts about the Period:
Justifications for Slavery
• See excerpts from The Journal of John
Woolman, in which he relates his encounter with
slave supporters who allude to the curse of Ham
in Genesis 9: 25-27.
• See excerpts from The Civil War Diary of Sarah
Morgan, in which Morgan discusses how she
works and sings with slaves in an atmosphere of
mutual respect and appreciation.
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Facts about the Period:
The Experience of Slavery
I was soon put down under the slave decks. …
with the loathsomeness of the stench and crying
together, I became so sick and low that I was not
able to eat … I now wished for the last friend,
death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of
the white men offered me eatables, and, on my
refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the
hands, and laid me across, I think, the windlass,
and tied my feet, while the other flogged me
severely.
– Olaudah Equiano
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Facts about the Period:
The Experience of Slavery
By far the larger part of the slaves know as little
of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is
the wish of most masters within my knowledge
to keep their slaves thus ignorant … I had been
at my new home but one week before Mr. Covey
gave me a severe whipping, cutting my back,
causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on
my flesh as large as my little finger.
– Frederick Douglass
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Facts about the Period:
The Experience of Slavery
Reader, I draw no imaginary pictures of southern homes. … Yet
when victims make their escape from this wild beast of Slavery,
northerners consent to act the part of bloodhounds, and hunt the
poor fugitive back into his den. … Nay, more, they are not only
willing but proud, to give their daughters in marriage to slaveholders. The poor girls have romantic notions of a sunny clime,
and of the flowering vines that all the year round shade a happy
home. To what disappointments are they destined! The young
wife soon learns that the husband in whose hands she has
placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows.
Children of every shade of complexion play with her own fair
babies, and too well she knows that they are born unto him of
his own household. Jealousy and hatred enter the flowery
home, and it is ravaged of its loveliness.
-- Harriet Jacobs
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Facts about the Period:
Escapes–“Follow the Drinking Gourd”
The song contains a coded route to Ohio, where
slavery was outlawed.
• The “drinking gourd” is the Big Dipper.
• The song directs slaves to leave during the winter. The quail
is a migratory bird that winters in the South.
• One of the problems for the Underground Railroad was how
to cross the Ohio River. In the winter the river would freeze,
making the crossing possible.
• As indicated in the second verse, slaves were to walk along
the Tombigbee River and look for directions in the drawings in
dead trees.
• In verse three, the escaping slave follows the path along the
Tennessee River until it meets the Ohio River, where a guide
(“the ole man”) waits on the other side.
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Issues: Jefferson Controversy
• Throughout his life, Thomas Jefferson consistently
opposed slavery. Yet he held slaves himself, a point
raised during his lifetime to discredit his anti-slavery
arguments.
• As world trends and opinions indicated, he realized that
sooner or later slavery would be abolished, so he
thought it best to remove it at the outset and avoid future
conflicts. However, the anti-slavery clause he wrote for
the Declaration of Independence was rejected by the
delegates to the convention.
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Issues: Jefferson
Controversy (cont’d.)
• In a letter to Edward Coles (Aug. 25, 1814), Thomas
Jefferson, over age seventy, explains his frustration at
his lack of success in abolishing slavery and his reasons
for holding slaves: “This enterprise [of abolishing slaves]
is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear
it through to its consummation. It shall have all my
prayers, & these are the only weapons of an old man …
until more can be done for [slaves]. We should endeavor
… to feed and clothe them well, protect them from all ill
usage, require such reasonable labor only as is
performed voluntarily by freemen.”
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Issues: Lincoln and Slavery
• Abraham Lincoln was opposed to slavery personally,
but he did not believe that, as president, he could
impose his belief on the southern states.
• Lincoln first and foremost was concerned with
preserving the union. He clearly explained his
position on slavery in a letter to Horace Greeley:
“What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I
believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear
because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on September
23, 1863.
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.
Key Issues: Lincoln’s Hopeful Vision
… that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave the last full measure of devotion;
that we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain; that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom, and that government of the people,
by the people, for the people, shall not parish
from the earth.
– Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863
© 2009 McGraw-Hill Higher
Education. All rights reserved.