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Slave Christianity
in the 1760's the first great awakening reached the upper south and introduced christianity to many slaves. -
The Constitution and Slavery
Although never specifically mentioned in the final document, slavery had been a major issue between North and South at the constitutional convention. The constitution was the strongest defense for proslavery arguement in that it clearly allowed it. -
Southern Domination
The overwhelming economic sucess of cotton and the slave system on which it depended created a distinctive culture. -
American Music
First singing contest held in the United States between the choir of the First Parish Church in Dorchester and the male singers of the Stoughton Musical Society. -
The Cotton Gin
The Cotton Gin, invented by Eli Whitney and Catherine Greene is the invention that made cotton growing profitable. It consisted of a hand cranked cylindar with teeth that tore the lint away from the seeds. It simplified this revolutionary buisness. -
Industrial Revolution
This was a series of inventions that resulted in the mechanized spinning and weaving of cloth in the worlds first factories in North England; thus cotton production soared. -
First African American Church
The first African American Baptist and Methodist churches were founded in Philidelphia in 1794 by reverend Absolom Jones and the reverend Richard Allen. -
House Servants
Almost all African slaves worked as field hands, but as profits from slavery grew, slave owners diverted an increasing proportion of slave labor to the house service. By one calculation, in 1800 fully one third of the femae slaves in Virginia worked as house servants. -
Hotel Saratoga
The first hotel in the U.S. opens in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. -
Importation of Slaves is abolished
On this day, the earliest date permitted by the constituion, a bill to abolish the importation of slaves became law. -
Cotton; Georgia and South Carolina
By 1811, this area was producing 60 million pounds of cotton a year and exporting most of it to britain. -
Alabama Fever
White Southerners and their slaves flooded into western Georgia and the areas that would become alabama and Mississippi. -
African Methodist Episcopal denomination
Reverend Richard Allen joined with African American ministers from other cities to form the African Methodis Episcopal denomination. -
Suffrage
In 1820 a universal manhood suffrage spread among all white men. -
Denmark Veseyi Conspiracy
Slave rebels planned to seize control of Charleston and escape to freedom in Haiti, a free black republic, but they were betrayed by other slaves and 75 conspirators were executed. -
Jailed Seamen
The South Carolina legislature passed a bill requiring all black seamen be jailed while their ships were in Charleston harbor, initially because southern plantation owners found out about the free black seamen spreding antislavery ideas among their slaves. -
Popular Vote
In 1828 and 1832 Southern yeomen and poor white men voted overwhelmingly for Andrew Jackson. -
Nullification Crisis
Provoked by South Carolina in 1830, in fear of becoming a permanent outvoted minority due to the fact the South couldn't match Northern population rates. -
Slave Owners
In 1830 only 365 of southern white people owned slaves, and only 25% owned 50 or more. -
The Liberator
William Lyoyd Garrison began publishing 'the Liberator', the newspasper that was to become the leading anti-slavery organ. -
Flush Times
1832-38
This was the heated rush in which cotton was carried over the Mississippi river into Louisiana and into texas. -
Gradual Abolition; denied
in 1832, in the Virginia state legislature, nonslave holding delegates, alarmned by the Nat Turner rebellion forced a tweo week debate on the merits of gradual abolition. In the final vote, abolition was defeated 73 to 58. -
Slaves as Skilled Workers
Most of the slaves we hear about worked on plantations, in the feilds or maybe in the house of the plantation owner. -
Begining of the Barracade
In the 1830's, southern states began to barracade themselves against "outside", antislavery propagandas. In 1835 a crowd broke intoa Charleston post office, made off with bundles of antislavery literature and set an enormous bonfire. to fervent state and regional claim. -
Gag Rule
This rule was introduced, in Washington, by Southerners to prevent Congressional consideration of abolitionist petitions. -
Proslavery Propaganda
In 1836 james Henry Hammond delivered a major address to Congress in which he denied that slavery was evil. Rather, he claimed, it had produced, "the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever exsisted on the face of the earth." -
Pregnant Slave Population
African birth rate was extremely high after the slave trade was shut down in 1808. Many slave woman would have 6 to 8 kids and become pregnant at 18 month intervals. Pregnant slave women were often over worked, and malnurished as seen by actress Fanny Kemble when she returned to her husbands plantation in Georgia. -
Tredegar Iron Works
Joseph Anderson, owner of Tredegar Iron Works, put slaves to work in his factory proving their capability to work in other environments, despite the Southern dispute that they weren't able. His factory, by 1837, was the third largest foundry in the nation. -
Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears was the large forced migration of the five civilized tribes from their homelands to indian Territory. -
Internal Slave Trade
Due to expansion in the Southwest, there was a new demand for slaves, therefore fueling the internal slave trade. An estimated 1 million slaves migrated involuntarily to the Lower South between 1820 and 1860. -
Southern Textile Mill
William Greg requested to the planted-dominated, South Carolina legislature for a charter of incorporation for a textile mill. When granted, he built a model mill in Graniteville, South Carolina that attracted poor white families, incapable of finding work in the planting economy of the South. -
Slave Roles in 1850
55% of all slaves were engaged in cotton growing. 20% in other crops such as tobacco, rice, sugar, and hemp. 15% of slaves were domestic servants and the remaining 10% worked in mining, lumbering, industry, and construction. -
Life Expectancy
Maleria and infectious diseases such as yellow fever and Cholrea were endemic in the South. These kind of health risks lowered the life expectancy rate which in 1850 was 40-43 years for white Americans, and 30-33 years for an average slave. On most plantations at any one time, 20% of the slave labor force was sick. -
Natchez
In 1850 Natchez was the richest county in the nation, completely centered around wealth. Many of the wealthy elite here derived not from long tradition but from suddenly acquired riches. -
Threat to Secede
William Henry Trescot announced "Slavery informs all our modes of life, all our habits of thought, lies at the basis of our social exsistence, and of our political faith." He made this statement to explain why the South would secede from the Union before giving up slavery. -
Chesapeake Slavery
Although Chesapeake was the orgin of America, Slavery, it's percentage of slave owners had dropped to 28% by 1850. -
Slave Gang System
The slave gang system was evident on cotton plantanions, they consisted of 20 - 25 slaves and were supervised by overseers with whips. The hours durning harvest were alot of times 18 hours. "sunup ta sundown" -
Happy Slaves
In 1854, George Fitzhugh asserted that, "negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and in some sense, the freest people in the world, because all the responsibility for their care is borne by concerned white masters." -
The Inpending Crisis
Hinton Helper published an attack on slavery in a book titled The Inpending Crisis. It magnified the tension between "haves and nothaves" in the South. He was forced to move to New York when his views became known. -
A Right of Women
In 1857, women could divorce husbands who were cruel to them or husbands who had left them. -
"King Cotton"
Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina boasts "Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us, we could brig the whole world to our feet. . . . What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? . . . England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her save the South. No, you dare not make war on cotto. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is King." -
Lacking in the South
In 1860. only 15% of the nations factories were located in the South, and only 35% of the nations railroads. -
Slave Population skyrockets
The Slave population in 1790 was estimated at 700,000 but grew to more than 4 million in 1860 due to a grand increase of births, do to the end of the slave trade in 1808. -
Slave Literacy
Begininng in 1835 slave literacy began to be illegal in all southern states except Kentucky, Tennessee, and Maryland. -
Gap in classes
In 1860 the average slaveholder was 10 times wealthier than an average non slave holder. -
Africans Outnumber
In 1868 of the 12 million people who lived in the south, 4 million of them were slaves, and in the richest regions, black slaves often outnumbered whites.
