This discussion addresses the following outcomes: Discuss the role of the “cotton revolution” and other factors in the expansion and transformation of slavery during the late eighteenth and early nin
1. Slavery and the Early Republic
The concept of liberty as espoused in the American Revolution had limits. For instance, women did not come to enjoy the liberty bestowed upon men, which is not surprising, given the history of gender roles in Europe and the American colonies. The Revolutionary War era entertained much discussion about slavery’s compatibility with the idea of liberty. As we’ve discussed, Northern states began the process of abolition or gradual emancipation. Even in the South, some slaveholders granted individual manumissions and pondered slavery’s future. The debate did not go much further than that in the South, however. The fear of slave revolts (as had happened in Haiti (Links to an external site.)) and the continued profitability of slavery blunted the revolutionary rhetoric.
Intellectuals concluded either that blacks and whites were separate species of humanity or that nature had molded the races differently and had consigned blacks to intellectual, if not physical, inferiority.
The Three-Fifths Compromise, the apprehension and return of escaped fugitives (i.e. slaves, for the most part) and the regulation of the slave trade (forbidden for a period of twenty years, at least) were all factored into the Constitution, as noted in Module 4. These elements dealt with legal obligations of the states toward each other in regards to slavery, though the moral aspect was present in the debates.
Slavery had existed in the Old Southwest from its earliest days, and slaveholders brought their slaves with them as Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida transitioned from unorganized territories into states. A similar process occurred in the Old Northwest, in which slavery by statute was forbidden.
The displacement of Native American tribes from the lower Mississippi after the War of 1812 opened the way for white settlers to come into these areas. A hardier, versatile strain of cotton entering widespread cultivation accelerated the forced migration of enslaved blacks as well. Combined with Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin for processing, as discussed in Module 5, slavery was now a very lucrative economic endeavor.
Any hesitation white Southerners may have had about slavery’s morality essentially dissipated by the early 1800s. The Southern economic system justified its social utility as well, because land-owning whites regarded slavery as a prevention of a feared race war or a way to maintain the racial status quo. Even discussing changes to slavery was frowned upon and punished. Southern states banned anti-slavery literature from the mail within their borders (even justifying the opening and reading of the US mail) and made speaking out against slavery in public an offense punishable by law. Encouraging slave revolts could lead to charges of treason and the death penalty.
Slavery assumed a central place in Southern internal politics. As the nation’s politics democratized in the 1830s and 1840s, the South lagged behind. Southern states retained property restrictions on suffrage longer than the North, and political office holding often mandated a certain amount of property (i.e. slave ownership). Also, typically, if a slave were accused of a crime the jury had to be composed of slaveholders, lest the “property” be “seized” by a conviction. In the cases where a slave was convicted of a crime and/or sentenced to death, his or her owner received compensation for the loss. To a degree much greater than the North, Southern politics was administered by elites, the overwhelming number of whom were slaveholders. Non-slaveholding whites may have nursed political grudges against slaveowners, but the political climate kept these well-hidden.
Before moving forward in the module notes, take a look at these visual maps and animations (Links to an external site.) showing the expansion of slavery across the Deep South and Southwest in this era.
2. Impact of Slavery on White Non-Slaveholding Southerners
The fact that the majority of Southern whites did not own slaves at any given time has often been misunderstood as a lack of support for slavery itself or as an indication of the inevitable death of the institution. Non-slaveholding white Southerners still overwhelmingly supported slavery as the only proper institution for controlling blacks and ensuring whites’ livelihoods. Slavery expanded the Southern economy, created a lucrative product that brought wealth and jobs to many, and created jobs in its wake for a burgeoning Southern middle class. Non-slaveholding whites and slaveholding whites often disagreed about politics, but the maintenance of slavery was a bedrock Southern principle.
3. Impact of Slavery on Black Southerners
Recent research has highlighted that despite the basic inhumanity of slavery, enslaved blacks found ways to cope and establish their own culture. They lived, loved, and created and maintained family and personal ties as best they could. At times, enslaved blacks engaged in more overt resistance, sometimes even rebellion (a constant fear of white Southerners). A vibrant African American culture developed in the older regions of the South, and spread westwards as enslaved blacks were forcibly migrated.
In particular, enslaved blacks developed a unique form of Christianity that preserved their hopes for a better life and helped maintain group cohesion. Slaveowners and white Southern ministers may have worked to instruct slaves on proper beliefs in regard to earthly submission, but behind the scenes black preachers brought the message of salvation and liberation in subtle ways that white observers often missed.
4. The North and Slavery
White Northern attitudes toward slavery were complex. Slavery had been abolished in the Northern states (though some had small numbers of enslaved blacks due to the long phasing-in of emancipation) and moral reasons were used as justification. However, the abolition of slavery did not necessarily presume a belief in racial equality. Life for Northern free blacks certainly was vastly more free than for their Southern counterparts. Northern free blacks faced entrenched legal and social discrimination.
The advent of pseudo-scientific racialist thought in the nineteenth century convinced many whites that African Americans were literally an inferior breed of people, if not an entirely separate human species. This racism blunted support of expanding liberty for African Americans—who could not, due to their innate nature, enjoy those blessings, according to scientific racist thinking.
As far as limiting slavery’s advance, the issue was not so much the welfare of black Americans but the welfare of whites. The emergence of a “free labor (Links to an external site.)” ideology argued that slave labor in a region degraded free labor in that same region by forcing whites to compete against blacks. But few Northern whites pressed for abolition where slavery currently existed because that might entice blacks to move north and to compete with whites for jobs and land.
Vocal critics of slavery—i.e. abolitionists—often faced hostility in the Free states. For instance, in 1837 a mob in Illinois murdered the white abolitionist and Minister Elijah Lovejoy (Links to an external site.) after he attempted to restart his destroyed printing presses. Northern states often had laws limiting free blacks, including outright bans on their residence in free states or territories.
5. The Missouri Compromise and Continued Sectional Tensions
The crisis over Missouri’s admission to the Union in 1820 was a harbinger of the troubles to come. Even Thomas Jefferson in retirement lamented, “A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated, and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. And every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper…as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”
The Missouri Compromise soothed the excited tensions, but the larger issue of slavery’s expansion westward was not resolved, as Jefferson had feared. South Carolina’s particular concerns about slavery’s future contributed significantly to the Nullification Crisis (Links to an external site.) of the 1830s, a topic explored in Module 5. The state’s leaders feared that the national tariff policy could be used to attack slavery in the individual states. John C. Calhoun articulated political resistance to Jackson and the federal government, a line of reasoning that would be used by secessionists in the coming decades.
Slavery irritated national politics and became a bone of contention in the halls of Congress, too. In early 1836, the US House of Representatives initiated a Southern measure, the so-called Gag Rule (Links to an external site.), which forbade the House from considering any petition, memorial, or resolution dealing with slavery. Slavery, as a legislative matter, was off limits. Former President turned Representative John Quincy Adams led Northern opposition to the Gag Rule, which lasted for eight years until it was finally overturned.
6. Slavery as the "Positive Good"
Southerners (and many others) expanded their moral and practical defense of slavery as a response to Northern criticisms and in particular to abolitionists’ pointed attacks. By the early 1800s the defense of slavery was in full swing.
This new phase touted slavery’s positive effects. These propagandists argued that a slave system recognized the reality of social relations and ultimately provided the best lifestyle for everyone. For instance, that having a “mudsill (Links to an external site.)” race elevated all whites, eliminated class conflict, and kept blacks from reverting to their own base natures. Southern propagandists accused Northern society of pitting capital versus labor, impoverishing its own workforce, and then leaving that workforce without support in old age. Religious arguments were raised, too, by asserting that slavery had biblical sanction and to believe otherwise was to deny God’s Word and will.
Politicians and political thinkers brought their arguments to the political controversies. John C. Calhoun (Links to an external site.) of South Carolina articulated an interpretation of the Constitution that enshrined a “states’ rights” argument. To Calhoun, the United States was a covenant among sovereignties. A sovereign state did not extinguish any of its rights by joining the Union. South Carolina’s actions in the Nullification Crisis were merely a defense of its sovereignty notwithstanding any legislation that the federal Congress may have approved. Calhoun and others tied the defense of slavery, i.e. property rights, to the Republican defense against Federalist overreach at the end of the 1700s. Although South Carolina had voluntarily joined the Union, as a sovereign power it had the right to nullify and interpose its judgment on a decision it deemed unconstitutional. The resolution of the Nullification Crisis and the ability of the two major parties to reconcile their Northern and Southern wings kept a sectional crisis at bay, for the time being.
