Slavery in the United Statesand the Road to theAmerican Civil War

Slavery in the United Statesand the Road to theAmerican Civil War

When did slavery begin?

Slavery existed in the Americas long before the arrival of Europeans.

Later, Europeans brought the first African slaves to the Americas.

Slavery of Africans existed in colonial British America just as in the rest of the Americas.

It started the same way, too:the colonists had a lot of work to do, but not enough people to do it all.

Why slavery of Africans?

Slowly but steadily, slavery became an important part of life in the colonies and later in the independent United States.

In 1793 Eli Whitney went to the south to teach, but he ended up inventing for the farmers of the region. He found that it took a slave a whole day to separate one pound of cotton from its seeds.

Whitney studied how slaves moved their hands as they cleaned the cotton. In 1793 he built a machine that made the same motions as the slaves’ hands 50 times faster.

The Cotton Gin

Now that it was easier to use cotton to make cloth, the price of the cotton dropped* and the demand for it skyrocketed**. More and more farms started planting cotton, and more and more slaves were bought to do the work. Within ten years, the price of a slave doubled.

*to drop – to go down very quickly**to skyrocket – to go up very quickly

What was life like as a slave?

Treatment of slaves ranged from mild to cruel. Slaves could not marry without their owner’s permission, they couldn’t learn to write or read. They couldn’t even name their own children. Slaves could be sold away whenever the owner wished, and families of slaves were sometimes separated forever.

Punishment by whipping was normal. Slaves had no legal way to protest the way they were treated. Sometimes slaves would fake illness, organize slowdowns or sabotage farm machinery. Only rarely did they commit arson or murder. Running away, usually for short periods of time, was common.

Even before independence from England, the North was becoming a place of growing cities, businesses and factories. Immigrants started coming to the North looking for work. Northerners didn't need slaves. Shortly after independence, all the northern states passed anti-slavery laws.

Can you tell which picture is of the North, and which of the South?

The South, however, remained a place of small towns and extensive farmland.

The southern economy became dependent on “King Cotton,” and producing cotton depended on the work of slaves.

Not everybody agreed with slavery. Many people were against slavery, especially in the North. Among them were the *abolitionists. They hated slavery with a passion, and organized protests and made speeches. Sometimes they used violence.

*to abolish – to prohibit something

Some abolitionists and other people helped runaway slaves escape to freedom in the north. They organized something called the Underground Railroad. This was a secret network of routes and safe houses to help escaped slaves reach freedom.

Harriet Tubman was a slave who escaped from Maryland to Canada using the Underground Railroad. Later, she returned to the South and helped her family and other slaves reach freedom, again using the Underground Railroad. She did this 19 times, despite having a bounty* on her head.

*bounty – a price paid for the capture of a person, sometimes dead or alive.

In 1859 he attacked a Federal *armory in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. He wanted to give weapons to slaves and start a slave rebellion. Many people were killed, and Brown was stopped and arrested. After a trial, he was found guilty and hanged.

John Brown was a famous abolitionist. He believed the only way to end slavery was with “armed insurrection.” He organized attacks on pro-slavery whites in Kansas, and helped slaves escape to Canada.

*armory – the place where the army keeps its weapons.

At that time, there was already much tension between the North and the South.

John Brown’s actions helped push a divided country towards Civil War.

Describe what you see in the painting. What does it say about the situation in the United States?

How did the United States get to this point?

After independence, the men writing the Constitution of the United States were divided on the issue of slavery. In the end they decided to agree on two compromises...

(what’s a compromise?)

It goes back to the beginning…

The first was the Three-Fifths Compromise, proposed by James Madison (remember him?).

The southern states wanted to include slaves when they counted their population. Counting all the slaves would give them more population, and more representation in Congress. They would have more control of the United States government.

Many of the delegates from the northern states were against slavery. They thought it was unfair that people in the South would get more power by using people with no rights.

If they had counted all the slaves, how much would it have changed the South’s

population?

In the end, they agreed on Madison’s compromise: after counting all white male citizens, three-fifths (3/5) of “all other persons” would be counted as part of a state’s population.

The other compromise was to postpone* the issue of slavery.

The Constitution was ratified in 1788. The new United States had 20 years to resolve the issue

of slavery.

They decided it was more important to finish the Constitution first, and worry about slavery later.

So, some parts of the Constitution protected slavery, but only until the year 1808.

*postpone – you can get this one from the context.

What happened in 1808?In 1808, it became illegal to import slaves.

No new slaves from Africa could come into the United States.

Do you think this was going to help end slavery?

Just the opposite…. Cotton and slavery were already very important in the South. As slavery grew more important, the slave trade also grew.

The slave trade became the second-biggest business in the South, after cotton.

As the United States grew and people moved west, slavery moved with them. New states would become either "slave states" or "free states."

People in the South started to talk about separating from the Union.

In 1820, the Missouri compromise prohibited slavery in new northern states, and drew a line on the map to divide slave and free.

The exception was the new state of Missouri. It was the only new slave state allowed north of the line.

Watch as the country expanded West. Was it going to be a slave country or a free country?

As time passed, the United States became more divided:

In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe (from New England, if anyone remembers), published Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was a book about the evil slave owner Simon Legree, and the hero was a slave, Uncle Tom.

Almost a million copies were sold in the U.S., and even more in Britain. Millions of people went to see the theatre version.

In the South, people tried to prohibit the book.

In 1854 a new law was passed. It said new *territories could vote to decide whether they were slave or free.

In the Kansas Territory, vi0lence erupted between pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups. People from both sides came from other parts of the U.S. to fight. The violence continued for seven years, and 200 people were killed. The territory became known as "Bleeding Kansas."

*an area was called a territory until it was officially admitted as a state

John Brown was there, too.

Not long after, in 1859, he attacked Harper’s Ferry and tried to start a slave rebellion.

What do you think was the South’s reaction?

On November 6, 1960, Abraham Lincoln was elected president.

Lincoln was against slavery, and had once said “Government cannot endure permanently half-slave, and half-free.” 

In December, South Carolina *seceded from the Union.

Two months after, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas also had left the United States.*to separate and become independent

In February, 1961 they formed a new country, the Confederate States of America, with Jefferson Davis as their president.

In March, Lincoln officially became President of the United States. He said he would not stop slavery in the South, but he promised to preserve the Union.

He refused to recognize the CSA as a real country.

In April, the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, a U.S. Army fort in South Carolina.

The United States was in a civil war.

Bibliography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_events_leading_to_the_American_Civil_War

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/timeline/index.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_Stateshttp://www.civilwar.org/education/history/civil-war-overview/slavery.htmlhttp://www.history.com/topics/black-history/harriet-tubmanhttp://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/exhibits/aztec/aztec_social.htmlhttp://www.historyplace.com/civilwar/