The South, Slavery, and Abolition. Southern Agriculture At first tobacco, rice, indigo Cotton booms and need for slaves rises Cotton gin removes seeds.

The South, Slavery, and Abolition

Southern Agriculture

• At first tobacco, rice, indigo

• Cotton booms and need for slaves rises

• Cotton gin removes seeds faster and easier, south becomes almost all agricultural

Southern Society

• 1/3 of southerners owned slaves, half of them were plantation owners (more than 20 slaves)

• Most were yeomen –small farmers with a few acres and 1-2 slaves

• Tenant farmers –don’t own the land, pay % of crops to land owners

• Poor white –lived in shacks, hunt/fish

Slave Life and Culture• Work sunup to sundown• Age 10 until physically unable• Fieldwork, house slaves• Considered property, families

sold and broken apart• Whippings, beating, poor living

conditions, set examples, broken feet/toes for runaways caught

• Spirituals– mix of African folktales and Christianity

• Slave codes– laws that restricted slaves freedom, can’t travel, learn to read, carry a gun

Challenging Slavery• Small ways to fight back: fake sick, work

slowly, break/hide tools

• Attempts to escape, underground railroad- secret routes to north, safehouses, signals

• Nat Turner’s Rebellion– led slaves in VA, killed over 50 whites, rebellion put down and slaves executed

AbolitionMovement

• Abolition– movement to end slavery, abolitionists

• Emancipation– freeing of the slaves• Northerners who were educated,

Quakers, upper class women, ministers• William Lloyd Garrison-- started anti-

slavery newspaper– Liberator• Grimke sisters– from SC slave holding

family, move north and speak out against it

African Americans Challenge Slavery

• Frederick Douglass– taught himself to read as a slave, escaped, gave speeches all over, AA newspaper (North Star), wrote books

• Harriet Tubman– famous conductor on Underground RR, “Grandma Moses”, never lost a person on escapes