Term
| What factors made living conditions for souther blacks more or less difficult? |
|
Definition
Living conditions were difficult because slaves performed many types of labor. On large plantations in the Cotton Belt, slaves worked from sunup to sundown in gangs; others stationed in Georgia or South Carolina, maintained more work control through the "task system"; urban salves and free blacks had more autonomy. Family and community helped ease slave life, while some slaves resisted oppression by running away, sabotage, and even armed rebellion. The kinship network also helped transmit African American folk traditions from one generation to the next.
- On large plantations families were further established due to the isolation of slaves, but in the upper south, where slave trading separated many family, a fragile system was established. |
|
|
Term
| What were the divisions and unities in white southern society? |
|
Definition
| While great planters were a tiny minority of the population, they set the tone for white southern society, propagating the ideology of "paternalism," that slaves were children who required a stern but loving parent. Most whites owned few or no slaves, but a political system of "white man's democracy" and the ideology of white supremacy united them with large slaveholders. White farmers often viewed black servitude as providing a guarantee of their own liberty and independence. Planters encouraged this ideal by creating the notion that all white males could one day be masters. Non-slaveholders discouraged abolition because they would have to compete with free slaves for jobs and because the accepted inferiority of blacks made all whites feel they were free and equal members of a master race. |
|
|
Term
| How was slavery related to economic success in the South? |
|
Definition
| Slavery dominated the economy of the South: Tobacco gave way to internal slave trade as the biggest business in the upper South, while the cotton gin made large-scale staple agriculture a booming economic machine in the Deep South, fueling the growth of a world textile industry and enriching the planter class. Cotton production represented the Old South’s best chance for profitable investment. → hence planters had little incentive to seek alternatives to slavery. |
|
|
Term
| What kind of mood did proslavery southerners attempt to establish? |
|
Definition
| Proslavery agitators sought to create a mood of crisis and danger requiring absolute unity and single-mindedness among the white population. |
|
|
Term
| Many slaves realized that outward rebellion led to execution, what were some underhanded tactics slaves used to make a stand? |
|
Definition
1. Run away --> Underground Railroad was an informal network that aided slaves in escaping to the North.
2. Work slowly and inefficiently.
3. Pretend to be sick.
4. Steal provisions.
5. Poison the master's food. |
|
|
Term
| What role did religion play in the African American community? |
|
Definition
| Slave religion gave African Americans a chance to create their own world → it encouraged community, solidarity, and self-esteem by giving them something infinitely precious of their own. |
|
|
Term
| How did slave owners alter the perception of slavery? |
|
Definition
| They deemed it a positive good rather than a necessary evil through the establishment of the "paternalistic" idea. Slaves are children that need to be guided, they even went as far as to denouncing the free slave systems as improper and an unfair treatment of inferior human beings. The supposed mental and moral inferiority of Africans justified slavery and this radical ideology helped slaveholders believe that a benevolent Christian could justly enslave another human being. |
|
|
Term
| Why did non-slaveholders defend slavery, though they did not directly benefit from it? |
|
Definition
| Those who owned no slaves depended on slavery, whether economically, because they hired slaves, or psychologically because having a degraded class of blacks below them made them feel better about their own place in society. |
|
|
Term
| How did slave-owner relations differ from large to small plantations? |
|
Definition
| In large plantations, planters generally did not have close contact with field workers. While on small farms, the owners could not afford a vast amount of slaves and were often seen working on fields along with the slaves. |
|
|
Term
| What was the ultimate authority over slaves? |
|
Definition
| Fear, which was established by the threat of separating families or whipping. |
|
|
Term
| What was the greatest fear for the Deep South planters? |
|
Definition
• Fears that non-slaveholding whites and slaves would get subversive ideas about slavery partly explain such flagrant denials of free speech and civil liberties.
o The deepest fear was that abolitionist talk or antislavery literature would incite slaves to rebel. |
|
|
Term
| How was the upper South tied to slavery, even though they did not benefit from the direct results of plantation work? |
|
Definition
| As slave prices rose and demand for slaves in the upper South fell, the “internal” slave trade took off. The slave trade provided crucial capital in a period of transition and innovation in the upper South |
|
|
