Video Analysis: "The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross”: The Black Atlantic (1500-1800)

profilesajhal-1
Week7.ppt
Home>Reading homework help>Video Analysis: "The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross”: The Black Atlantic (1500-1800)

African Americans:
A Concise History, Combined Volume, 5e
Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, Stanley C. Harrold

Chapter 6

Life in the
Cotton Kingdom
1793–1861

In this engraving, which dates to about 1858, slaves harvest cotton on a southern plantation. Note the division of labor with women picking and men packing and carrying

  • This drawing highlights the way that slavery was depicted in publications during the nineteenth century.
  • Most illustrations of slaves showed well-fed slaves working contentedly as a family in near-idyllic circumstances.

05/12/11

*

Learning Objectives

6-1 Why was cotton cultivation central to the expansion of slavery?

6-2 How did the cultivation of various crops shape the experience of slavery?

6-3 How did the duties of house slaves and skilled slaves differ from those of urban and agricultural slaves?

6-4 What was the role of punishment in slavery?

6-5 What were the characteristics of the domestic slave trade between 1820 and 1860?

05/12/11

*


Learning Objectives (cont’d)

6-6 What were the conditions that shaped family life and the health and welfare of slaves?

6-7 How did African Americans adapt to life under slavery, and what role did religion

play?

6-8 How have historians evaluated slavery and slaves?

The Expansion of Slavery

  • Increase in slavery from Atlantic coast to Texas

Invention of cotton gin makes cotton profitable

  • Slave population grew fast in newest cotton-producing states
  • Virginia had highest slave population throughout period

05/12/11

*

  • Enslaved black labor cleared forests and drained swamps to make land fit for cultivation
  • The expansion of the cotton culture led to the removal of the American Indians
  • Removal of Cherokee, Creek, Seminole and other tribes to land in Oklahoma by 1830s-1840s

  • This map illustrates the great expansion of plantation slavery, as well as cotton production in the deep South in the decades prior to the Civil War.

05/12/11

*

  • This table highlights the explosive growth in slave populations in Deep South states after 1820.
  • While Upper South states increased the number of slave by about 50 percent, the slave population of Lower South states increased by close to 500 percent.

05/12/11

*

  • This map tracks the increase in slave populations in the exact areas where cotton planting increased across the Lower South after 1820.

05/12/11

*

The Expansion of Slavery (cont’d)

  • Ownership of Slaves in the Old South

Half of slaveholders owned less than five slaves

Unlike slaves, slaveholder numbers declined

Some black slaveholders

Purchased relatives to protect from sale or expulsion

Some African Americans purchased slaves for financial reasons

05/12/11

*

  • Almost half of the South’s slaveholders owned fewer than five slaves, only 12 percent owned more than 20 slaves, and just 1 percent owned more than 50 slaves
  • Although the typical slaveholder owned few slaves, the typical slave lived on a sizable plantation

The Expansion of Slavery (cont’d)

f

LO 6-1. The rapid and extensive expansion of slavery from the Atlantic coast to Texas in the early 1800s was caused by

.

A: the end of the Revolutionary war

B: the invention of the cotton gin

C: the ratification of the Constitution

D: the spread of tobacco production

05/12/11

*

The Expansion of Slavery (cont’d)

f

LO 6-1. The rapid and extensive expansion of slavery from the Atlantic coast to Texas in the early 1800s was caused by

.

A: the end of the Revolutionary war

B: the invention of the cotton gin

C: the ratification of the Constitution

D: the spread of tobacco production

05/12/11

*

The Expansion of Slavery (cont’d)

LO 6-1. Almost half of the South’s slaveholders owned fewer than five slaves.

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

The Expansion of Slavery (cont’d)

LO 6-1. Almost half of the South’s slaveholders owned fewer than five slaves.

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

Slave Labor in Agriculture

  • 75 percent of South’s slave population were agricultural laborers

05/12/11

*

  • 55 percent of slaves cultivated cotton, 10 percent grew tobacco, and 10 percent produced sugar, rice, or hemp
  • 15 percent domestic servants; 10 percent worked in trades and industries

Slave Labor in Agriculture (cont’d)

  • Tobacco

Tobacco remained important in south

Difficult crop to produce

Slaves handpicked worms off plants

05/12/11

*

  • Tobacco remained important in Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and parts of North Carolina and Missouri

Slave Labor in Agriculture (cont’d)

  • Rice

Rice production confined to South Carolina, Georgia

Rice requires intensive labor, needs large labor force

Masters carefully monitored slaves’ productivity

05/12/11

*

  • By 1860, 20 rice plantations had 300 to 500 slaves each, and eight others had between 500 and 1,000 each
  • Vast plantations represented sizable capital investments

Slave Labor in Agriculture (cont’d)

  • Sugar

Sugar cultivated along Mississippi River, southern Louisiana

Slave life on sugar plantations harsh

Hot, humid conditions strain on slaves’ health

Raising sugarcane, refining sugar require constant labor

05/12/11

*

  • Slaves cultivated sugar on plantations along the Mississippi River in southern Louisiana
  • Commercial production of sugarcane did not begin in Louisiana until the 1790s
  • This map depicts the different mix of slave occupations throughout the Old South a decade before the Civil War started.
  • Many state economies incorporated a variety of crops and extractive industries like lumber and turpentine production.

05/12/11

*

Slave Labor in Agriculture (cont’d)

  • Cotton

Cotton planters employed most slaves

By 1860, cotton exports were more than 50 percent of the value of all U.S. exports

By 1860, Mississippi and Alabama were the leading cotton producers

As plantations grew, price of slaves increased

Slaves performed backbreaking labor in anxiety, fear

05/12/11

*

  • Cotton was by far the South’s and the country’s most important staple crop
  • Cotton as a crop did not require cultivation as intensive as that needed for tobacco, rice, or sugar
  • By 1860, out of the 2,500,000 slaves employed in agriculture in the United States, 1,815,000 of them produced cotton
  • Enslaved men and women who worked in the cotton fields rose before dawn, ate breakfast, and then worked under the control of black slave drivers
  • This chart highlights the importance of cotton in the American economy prior to the Civil War.
  • Southern leaders emphasized the value of cotton and other commodities produced in the South in the debates over the continuation of slavery.

05/12/11

*

Slave Labor in Agriculture (cont’d)

  • Cotton and Technology

Nineteenth century technology impacted slaves’ lives

Steamboats in the Mississippi, railroads open old Southwest to cotton

In some instances, technology improved plantation conditions

Technology available to slave women less sophisticated

05/12/11

*

  • Agricultural technology in the Cotton Kingdom was primitive compared to that in the Old Northwest
  • Free northwestern farmers by the 1840s used a variety of machines, drawn by teams of horses and constructed of wood and iron
  • In contrast, southern slave workers relied on simple plows and harrows, drawn by a single mule
  • Cotton gins became much larger and more efficient than the ones Eli Whitney designed during the 1790s; slaves use them

Slave Labor in Agriculture (cont’d)

  • Other Crops

Kentucky center of hemp industry

Hemp required much less labor, fewer slaves

Wheat replaced tobacco as the main cash crop in much of Maryland and Virginia

Hogs and corn are used on plantations

Hemp, livestock, and wheat are sent to market

05/12/11

*

  • Slaves in the Old South produced hemp, corn, wheat, oats, rye, white potatoes, and sweet potatoes
  • Transition to wheat encouraged many planters to substitute free labor for slave labor

Slave Labor in Agriculture (cont’d)

f

LO 6-2. As they had since colonial times, slaves in South Carolina and Georgia low country worked according to task systems in cultivating , which required intensive labor.

A: rice

B: tobacco

C: indigo

D: sugar

05/12/11

*

Slave Labor in Agriculture (cont’d)

f

LO 6-2. As they had since colonial times, slaves in South Carolina and Georgia low country worked according to task systems in cultivating , which required intensive labor.

A: rice

B: tobacco

C: indigo

D: sugar

05/12/11

*

Slave Labor in Agriculture (cont’d)

LO 6-2. Agricultural laborers constituted 75 percent of the South’s slave population.

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

Slave Labor in Agriculture (cont’d)

LO 6-2. Agricultural laborers constituted 75 percent of the South’s slave population.

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

House Servants and Skilled Slaves

  • House servants under close white supervision
  • Cut off from slave communities
  • House slaves worked as cooks, maids, butlers, nurses, gardeners
  • Skilled slaves more elite, more freedom
  • Some skilled slaves hired out to work for money
  • Slave carpenters, blacksmiths, and millwrights built and maintained plantation houses, slave quarters, and machinery

05/12/11

*

  • About 75 percent of the slave workforce in the nineteenth century consisted of field hands
  • Slaves who performed domestic duties, drove carriages, or learned a craft considered themselves privileged
  • Black men had a decided advantage over black women—apart from those who were seamstresses—in becoming skilled

House Servants and Skilled Slaves (cont’d)

  • Urban and Industrial Slavery

Slave populations in southern cities were large

1840--slaves are majority of Charleston’s 29,000 population

They tended to decline between 1800--1860

Urban slaves could earn money; masters had less control

Urban slaves purchased freedom over term of years

Industrial slavery overlapped with urban slavery

Industrial slaves not purchased but hired from masters

05/12/11

*

  • Most skilled slaves who hired their time lived in the South’s towns and cities
  • Many of them resided in Baltimore and New Orleans-- major ports and the Old South’s largest cities
  • Slaves who contracted with masters paid a certain amount of money per year and could live on their own, buying their food and clothing
  • Urban slaves served as domestics, washwomen, waiters, artisans, stevedores, drayers, hack drivers, and general laborers

House Servants and Skilled Slaves (cont’d)

  • Urban and Industrial Slavery (cont'd)

Industrial slaves had more autonomy, opportunity for advancement

Term slavery

A type of slavery prevalent in the Chesapeake from the late 1700s to the Civil War in which slaves were able to purchase their freedom from their masters by earning money over a number of years

05/12/11

*

  • Although dangerous and tiring work, slaves came to prefer industrial jobs to plantation labor
  • Industrial labor, like urban labor, was a path to freedom for some
  • As urbanization and industrialization increased in the North and the Upper South, the need for slave labor decreased as did the percentage of slaves in the overall population.

05/12/11

*

House Servants and Skilled Slaves (cont’d)

f

LO 6-3. were under more stress than field hands because they were under closer white supervision.

A: Skilled workers such as carpenters

B: Industrial slaves

C: House servants

D: Slave drivers

05/12/11

*

House Servants and Skilled Slaves (cont’d)

f

LO 6-3. were under more stress than field hands because they were under closer white supervision.

A: Skilled workers such as carpenters

B: Industrial slaves

C: House servants

D: Slave drivers

05/12/11

*

House Servants and Skilled Slaves (cont’d)

LO 6-3. As plantation slavery declined in the Chesapeake, skilled slaves could leave their master’s estate to “hire their time.”

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

House Servants and Skilled Slaves (cont’d)

LO 6-3. As plantation slavery declined in the Chesapeake, skilled slaves could leave their master’s estate to “hire their time.”

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

Punishment

  • White southerners believed slaves needed threat of beatings
  • Fear of whippings drove slaves to mutual protection
  • Slave children taught to avoid punishment, resist overseers
  • Few slaves escaped whippings

05/12/11

*

  • Although slave owners used incentives, slave labor by definition is forced labor based on the threat of physical punishment
  • Masters denied that brutality of beatings detracted from the essentially benign and paternalistic character of the South’s “peculiar institution”
  • Slaves worked slowly—but not too slowly—and feigned illness to maintain their strength
  • Slaves broke tools and injured mules, oxen, and horses to tacitly protest their condition

In this 1863 photograph, a former Louisiana slave displays the scars that resulted from repeated whippings. Although this degree of scarring is exceptional, few slaves were able to avoid being whipped at least once in their lives.

By the 1850s, photographs offered new perspectives on the brutality of slavery, reinforcing the abolitionist position in the North and border states.

05/12/11

*

Punishment (cont’d)

f

LO 6-4. Slave masters offered a mix of to induce slaves to perform well.

A: bonuses and promises of manumission

B: incentives and threats of beatings

C: bribes

D: punishments

05/12/11

*

Punishment (cont’d)

f

LO 6-4. Slave masters offered a mix of to induce slaves to perform well.

A: bonuses and promises of manumission

B: incentives and threats of beatings

C: bribes

D: punishments

05/12/11

*

Punishment (cont’d)

LO 6-4. Fear of the lash drove slaves to work and to avoid cooperating with each other in resisting their masters.

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

Punishment (cont’d)

LO 6-4. Fear of the lash drove slaves to work and to avoid cooperating with each other in resisting their masters.

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

The Domestic Slave Trade

  • Cotton expansion, slavery decline stimulates domestic slave trade
  • Slaves sold south to prevent escape
  • Slaves escaped to avoid being sold south
  • Traders operated slave prisons
  • Driven by economic necessity or profit, masters irrevocably separated families

05/12/11

*

  • As masters in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky trimmed excess slaves from their workforces, they sold men, women, and children to slave traders
  • The traders in turn shipped these unfortunate people to the slave markets of New Orleans and other cities for resale
  • Traders operated compounds called slave prisons or slave pens in Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; Alexandria and Richmond, Virginia; Lexington, Kentucky; and Charleston, South Carolina
  • Traders sometimes tore babies from their mothers’ arms

The Domestic Slave Trade (cont'd)

  • Coffles
  • Files of slaves chained together that was typical of the domestic slave trade

05/12/11

*

  • Most of the victims of slave trade moved on foot in groups called coffles, chained or roped together

A slave-coffle passing the Capitol

  • As the reality of slavery was publicized to a increasingly literate American population through newspapers and magazines, support for the institution declined dramatically in the states outside the South.

05/12/11

*


The Domestic Slave Trade (cont'd)

LO 6-5. Most of the domestic slaves traded to cotton-growing states between 1820 and 1860 came from:

A. the states of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky

B. Texas and Louisiana

C. Africa

D. the Caribbean


The Domestic Slave Trade (cont'd)

LO 6-5 Most of the domestic slaves traded to cotton-growing states between 1820 and 1860 came from:

A. the states of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky

B. Texas and Louisiana

C. Africa

D. the Caribbean


The Domestic Slave Trade (cont'd)

LO 6-5. The number of slaves traded domestically between 1820 and 1860 was relatively small, numbering no more than 10,000 a decade.

A: True

B: False


The Domestic Slave Trade (cont'd)

LO 6-5. The number of slaves traded domestically between 1820 and 1860 was relatively small, numbering no more than 10,000 a decade.

A: True

B: False

Slave Families

  • Masters benefitted from slave pairings, slave children

Most enslaved men and women could choose mates

  • Families core of African American slave communities

Couples usually lived together unless owned by different masters

  • More equality in slave marriages than masters

05/12/11

*

  • Slave families had no legal standing
  • Even though no legal sanctions supported slave marriages and the domestic slave trade could sunder them, many such marriages endured
  • Enslaved couples usually lived together in cabins on their master’s property, with little privacy

This woodcut of a black father being sold away from his family appeared in The Child’s Anti-Slavery Book in 1860. Family ruptures, like the one shown, were among the more common and tragic aspects to slavery, especially in the Upper South, where masters claimed slavery was “mild.”

  • Resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act and to slavery in general increased as graphic descriptions of the cruelty of slavery became a staple of American popular literature.

05/12/11

*

  • This chart indicates the declining number of slaves entering the North versus the South in the three decades after the American War for Independence.

05/12/11

*

Slave Families (cont’d)

  • Children

Extended black families provided support against masters

Infant mortality rates higher for blacks than whites

Slave children worked early, childhood short

05/12/11

*

  • Enslaved parents instructed their children in family history, religion, and the skills required to survive in slavery
  • Ability to rely on grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and honorary relatives served as a hedge against the family disruption
  • Black women working in the fields had insufficient diets, gave birth to babies with lower weight than normal, susceptible to higher infant mortality

Slave Families (cont’d)

  • Children (cont'd)

Care of slave children varied with estate size

House servants carried their babies with them while they worked

On farms, enslaved women strapped their babies to their backs or left them at the edge of fields

On plantations, mothers left children with elderly or infirm adult

05/12/11

*

  • As children grew older, they spent much time in unsupervised play, often with white children
  • Early on, parents and others taught youngsters about the realities of plantation life
  • Children started working at age six for light chores, ages eight to twelve for adult fieldwork

Black children began doing “light chores” in cotton fields at an early age. These girls are collecting cotton bolls that older workers missed.

  • Mortality rates for black children were much higher than for white children
  • By their adolescent years, they were working in the fields along with adults all day

05/12/11

*

Slave Families (cont’d)

  • Sexual Exploitation
  • Long-term relationships between masters, enslaved women common
  • Relationship between Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemmings most infamous
  • Routine rape more common than long-term relationships

Slave women forced to have sex against will

Sexual abuse highlighted black men’s inability to protect women

05/12/11

*

  • Masters’ sexual exploitation of black women disrupted enslaved families
  • Hemmings/Jefferson relationship began in 1787 when Hemings served as caretaker to one of Jefferson’s daughters at his household in Paris—she was 14, he was 44
  • White southerners justified sexual abuse of black women in several ways: claim black women were promiscuous, and that it reduced prostitution, promoted purity among white women

Lecture Starter: access via the Internet Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home (at www.monticello.org) and take a virtual tour through the buildings and slave quarters.

Slave Families (cont’d)

  • Diet

Slave diet lacked nutrients, diversity

Slaves subject to chronic illness

Based on corn, bacon, supplemented by slave-raised vegetables, eggs, poultry

African-American cooks developed African-based cuisine

Compared people in other parts of the Atlantic world, slaves in America were not undernourished

Seasoned foods with salt, onions, pepper, and other spices and herbs, fried meat and poultry

Cooking gave black women control, creativity

05/12/11

*

  • Typical plantation’s weekly ration of one peck of cornmeal (about 14 pounds) and three to four pounds of salt pork or bacon
  • Masters and white southerners generally consumed the same sort of food that slaves ate
  • Availability in the South of such African foods as okra, yams, collard greens, benne seeds, and peanuts strengthened their culinary ties to Africa

Slave Families (cont’d)

  • Clothing

Clothing made by slaves, female slaveholders

Black women individualized their standard-issue clothing

Slaves usually received clothing twice a year

Clothing was usually made of homespun cotton or wool

Children often went naked in warm months

05/12/11

*

  • Enslaved men and women had less control over what they and their children wore than how they cooked
  • Skilled slaves often produced the shoes and clothing worn by plantation workers
  • Went barefoot during the warm months and wore cheap shoes in the winter
  • Black women particularly sought to individualize clothing--changed the colors with dyes they extracted from roots, berries, walnut shells, oak leaves

Slave Families (cont’d)

  • Health

South’s warm climate encouraged mosquito- borne diseases

African Americans more susceptible to often fatal diseases

Used traditional African remedies to treat sick

Black southern U.S. slave population grew by natural reproduction

05/12/11

*

  • Low birth weight, diet, and clothing all affected the health of slaves
  • Much ill health resulted from overwork in the South’s hot, humid summers, exposure to cold during the winter, and poor hygiene
  • Black southerners constituted the only New World slave population that grew by natural reproduction
  • Enslaved African Americans also used traditional African remedies to treat the sick

Slave Families (cont’d)

f

LO 6-6. Between 1820 and 1860, an estimated of the slaves of the Upper South moved involuntarily into the Southwest.

A: 10 percent

B: 75 percent

C: 2 percent

D: 50 percent

05/12/11

*

Slave Families (cont’d)

f

LO 6-6. Between 1820 and 1860, an estimated of the slaves of the Upper South moved involuntarily into the Southwest.

A: 10 percent

B: 75 percent

C: 2 percent

D: 50 percent

05/12/11

*

Slave Families (cont’d)

LO 6-6. As masters in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky switched entirely from slave to wage labor, they sold men, women, and children to slave traders.

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

Slave Families (cont’d)

LO 6-6. As masters in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky switched entirely from slave to wage labor, they sold men, women, and children to slave traders.

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

The Socialization of Slaves

  • Folktales taught slave children survival, mental agility, self-confidence
  • Children learned to camouflage awareness of master’s treatment
  • Masters missed slaves’ divided consciousness

05/12/11

*

  • Parents, other relatives, and elderly slaves generally told folktales to teach survival, mental agility, and self-confidence
  • When slaves refused to do simple tasks correctly, masters saw it as black stupidity rather than resistance

The Socialization of Slaves (cont’d)

  • Religion

Services sponsored by masters preached slave obedience

Some masters denied slaves access to Christianity

Some slaves ignored the religion

Slaves preferred semi-secret black church

Led by self-called, semi-illiterate black preachers

Singing, dancing, conjuring rituals to ward off evil

05/12/11

*

  • In New Orleans, Baltimore, and a few other locations, there were Roman Catholic slaves
  • In Maryland during the 1830s, the Jesuits, an order of Roman Catholic priests and brothers, collectively owned approximately 300 slaves
  • Biracial Baptist and Methodist congregations persisted in the South longer than they did in northern cities
  • Biracial congregations usually had segregated seating
  • Black churches emphasized Moses and deliverance from bondage rather than a consistent theology or Christian meekness

British artist John Antrobus completed this painting in about 1860. It is named Plantation Burial and suggests the importance of religion among enslaved African Americans. John Antrobus, “Negro Burial.” Oil painting. The Historic New Orleans Collection. #1960.46

  • Many African Americans sought refuge in religion as slaves
  • Black churches often became important social institutions in southern communities in the decades leading up to the Civil War

05/12/11

*

The Socialization of Slaves (cont’d)

f

LO 6-7. When slaves refused to do simple tasks correctly, masters saw it as black stupidity rather than .

A: resistance

B: inability to understand master’s language

C: extreme exhaustion

D: lack of familiarity with the culture

05/12/11

*

The Socialization of Slaves (cont’d)

f

LO 6-7. When slaves refused to do simple tasks correctly, masters saw it as black stupidity rather than .

A: resistance

B: inability to understand master’s language

C: extreme exhaustion

D: lack of familiarity with the culture

05/12/11

*

The Socialization of Slaves (cont’d)

LO 6-7. Biracial Baptist and Methodist congregations persisted in the South longer than they did in northern cities.

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

The Socialization of Slaves (cont’d)

LO 6-7. Biracial Baptist and Methodist congregations persisted in the South longer than they did in northern cities.

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

The Character of Slavery and Slaves

  • Historians debate character of Old South slave system
  • Some see system as paternalistic
  • Others deny paternalism, see system based on force
  • Theories of genetic predisposition, dependence on masters

05/12/11

*

  • During 1910s, southern historian Ulrich B. Phillips portrayed slavery as a benign, paternalistic institution in which Christian slaveholders cared for largely content slaves
  • More brutal realities prevail in the twenty-first century interpretation: most masters never met slaves face to face, most slaves were whipped, and over half of slaves were separated from families
  • Slaves in Latin American countries influenced by Roman law and the Roman Catholic Church enjoyed more protection from abusive masters than did slaves in the United States

The Character of Slavery and Slaves (cont'd)

  • Current understanding of character of African American slaves
  • Built families, churches, communities within brutal plantation context

05/12/11

*

  • Since the 1960s, historians have argued that rather than dehumanizing black people, slavery led them to create institutions that allowed them some control over their lives

The Character of Slavery and Slaves (cont'd)

f

LO 6-8. During the 1910s, southern historian Ulrich B. Phillips portrayed slavery as a .

A: brutal form of genocide

B: misguided yet forgivable practice

C: benign, paternalistic institution

D: successful economic model

05/12/11

*

The Character of Slavery and Slaves (cont'd)

f

LO 6-8. During the 1910s, southern historian Ulrich B. Phillips portrayed slavery as a .

A: brutal form of genocide

B: misguided yet forgivable practice

C: benign, paternalistic institution

D: successful economic model

05/12/11

*

The Character of Slavery and Slaves (cont'd)

LO 6-8. Historians note that slaves in Latin American countries influenced by Roman law and the Roman Catholic Church had less protection from abusive masters than did slaves in the United States.

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

The Character of Slavery and Slaves (cont'd)

LO 6-8. Historians note that slaves in Latin American countries influenced by Roman law and the Roman Catholic Church had less protection from abusive masters than did slaves in the United States.

A: True

B: False

05/12/11

*

Conclusion

  • Black labor responsible for southern economic growth
  • Black men, women persevered, expanded African-American heritage
  • Resisted determined efforts to dehumanize them
  • Slave couples lived together on master’s property

05/12/11

*

  • The timeline for Chapter 6 highlights the events in the South’s Cotton Kingdom related to African American life next to a timeline of broader national events.

05/12/11

*

Chapter Discussion Question

How did the domestic slave trade and the exploitation of black women by white males affect American history after slavery ended?

05/12/11

*

Resources

  • 1. Slavery and the Making of America
  • http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/
  • The accompanying website for the 2005 PBS series provides a wealth of primary source material on many aspects of southern slavery and African-American culture.
  • 2. National Archives: Eli Whitney’s Patent for the Cotton Gin
  • http://blogs.archives.gov/todaysdocument/2011/03/14/march-14-eli-whitneys-patent-for-the-cotton-gin/
  • This federal website provides the schematic of Whitney’s new invention that revolutionized cotton production in the South to detrimental effects on African American people after 1793.
  • 3. This Far by Faith: African-American Spiritual Journeys
  • http ://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/timeline/p_1.html
  • The companion website to a PBS documentary of the same title, the website provides information on African-American religion since the days of slavery.
  • 4. Hampton Plantation State Historic Site
  • http ://southcarolinaparks.com/hampton/introduction.aspx
  • Located in the rice growing delta region of South Carolina, the Hampton Plantation was prominent and worked African American slaves in the rice industry. The website provides an in-depth examination of the buildings, objects, and letters of the master class that shed light on plantation slavery.
  •