Freedom on My Mind A History of African Americans with Documents 2nd Edition By White - Test Bank

The North and the South: The starkest regional difference between the North and the South was the commitment of the North to free labor and the South’s investment in slavery. The South’s population growth relied mostly on natural reproduction, while the North’s population expanded rapidly from the more than five million Europeans who immigrated to the United States between 1815 and 1860. Slavery discouraged immigration to southern states because these areas offered few jobs for whites, as large planters preferred slave to free labor. The South’s economy relied on the production of cash crops such as cotton and sugar, and by 1850 the region’s cotton plantations were producing 75 percent of the world’s cotton. Northern farmers, by contrast, adopted new machinery and transportation methods that expanded their markets internationally, increased wages, and attracted immigrants.

The Missouri Compromise: The “Missouri question” inspired the nation’s first extended debate over the expansion of slavery. Northern politicians embraced federal action against slavery, while white Southerners threatened to secede from the nation. Kentucky senator Henry Clay embraced a compromise in 1820 in which Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state and Maine entered as a free state. Congress agreed that slavery throughout the rest of the Louisiana Purchase would be prohibited north of the latitude 36°30′, but the deal was disappointing to African Americans. It allowed for the expansion of slavery south of Missouri’s southern border and protected slavery in the South. The debate over slavery’s expansion intensified in the decades to come and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War.

Restrictions: In 1820, Denmark Vesey and his supporters had hoped to free themselves through the use of force and sail off to Haiti. Their plot was foiled when two Charleston slaves revealed the plot to their owners, who then informed local authorities. The rebellion was swiftly crushed, and Denmark Vesey and most of his coconspirators were executed, but the fear that the plot created in white Carolinians caused state officials to restrict the lives of free blacks, whom they believed helped plan the uprising. Free blacks were forbidden to hire slaves, and new legislation was passed preventing free black education. In the fall of 1822, municipal authorities razed the AME church that Vesey had preached at, and Charleston levied a $50 annual tax on free black residents. Free black males above the age of fifteen had to find a white resident willing to vouch for their good behavior, and any free black who left the state was barred from returning.

The Amistad case: In 1839 slaves aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad seized control of the vessel in international waters near Cuba. The U.S. navy captured the ship and made the rebels prisoners of the U.S. government. Spain demanded their return, but their enslavement violated U.S. treaties prohibiting the international slave trade. The U.S. Supreme Court freed the rebels in 1841 on those grounds, and the widely publicized case bolstered the abolitionist cause and deepened the South’s fears about the security of their “slaveocracy.”

Opposition to slavery: African Americans opposed slavery through rebellion, advocacy, defiance, and escape. Rebellions led by Denmark Vesey in 1820 and Nat Turner in 1831, as well as insurrections at sea on the slave ships the Amistad and the Creole, demonstrated that African Americans were not willing participants in the practice of slavery. Abolitionists such as David Walker used the power of the pen to advocate for freedom in publications such as Walker’s Appeal . . . to the Coloured Citizens of the World in 1829 and through the nation’s first black-owned newspaper, Freedom’s Journal. African Americans resisted slavery on a daily basis by defying their owners, stealing food, sabotaging equipment, and feigning illness. Some slaves managed to escape bondage temporarily by lying out in nearby woods or swamps, though it was very difficult and dangerous to do so. Even though it meant separation from their families, some slaves were able to escape permanently with the help of other slaves and those connected to the underground railroad.

State v. Mann decision: Slaves had no right to self-defense under southern law, which gave white people uncontrolled authority over slaves’ bodies. North Carolina judge Thomas Ruffin ruled in the 1829 case known as State v. Mann that even whites who merely supervised slaves rather than owning them had this authority. Elizabeth Jones attempted to impose criminal sanctions on John Mann for shooting and injuring her slave Lydia, whom Jones had hired out to him. Judge Ruffin ruled in favor of Mann because he shot Lydia for disobeying him, and subsequent rulings across southern state courts reinforced these principles. Furthermore, a Georgia court determined that slaves who killed whites could not be charged with manslaughter.

The difficulties of escape: Whites patrolled plantations on a nightly basis and meted out severe punishment to any slave who was not in his or her quarters. Runaways could not use the roads to travel because slaves were required to carry a pass from their owners. Few slaves knew how to read, so forging the passes was difficult and rare. Geographic distance was another obstacle. Those slaves who escaped from the Lower South faced hundreds of miles of unfamiliar territory and a hostile white population, but some runaways managed to escape by navigating at night by the North Star. Even if the runaways managed to escape to the North, they were often identified as fugitive slaves and returned to their owners in the South to face punitive measures. Slaves who lived in border states had the best opportunity for escape and were often aided by a network of black and white antislavery activists known as the underground railroad. Family ties kept many slaves from attempting escape because running away often meant they might never see their spouses, children, or parents again.

Living in slavery: Permanent escape was not an option for most slaves, so they had to adapt strategies to survive the brutal realities of enslavement. By the early 1800s, many slaves had adopted evangelical Christianity as a way to cope with slavery. Although slaves often were not permitted to attend church, they worshipped privately in ceremonies known as ring shouts that incorporated West African–based music and dance traditions. African American religious services stressed the Christian doctrine of the equality of men under God. Enslaved African Americans also found solace in their families and communities. Slaves often had to create new families and kinship ties as a result of the sale or death of family members.

Enslaved women in the South: African American women faced other indignities in addition to long hours of strenuous work. Violence was common and included sexual abuse such as rape and forced marriage. Women also had to manage the daily activities of raising a family in addition to often working from sunrise to sunset. They tended gardens, cared for children, prepared food, kept domestic animals, and performed domestic tasks. Gender norms, however, tended to view men and women equally in the slave quarters because men were not breadwinners and shared most of the same duties as women.

Community and culture: In spite of terrible abuses and brutal work regimes, marriage and family remained the primary way communities survived the rigors of slavery. African Americans sustained kinship ties through marriage, although these were not legal unions recognized by whites. They created new families, or fictive kin, when separated from blood relatives by death, sale, or migration. Slaves usually could not read or write because slave literacy was discouraged or outlawed in the southern states, so knowledge was passed from parents to children through stories, songs, and biblical tales. Elders were treated respectfully as carriers of African traditions and taught youngsters lessons of survival, such as how to resolve disputes and negotiate with whites.

How does James Curry’s recollection of the institution of slavery portray the interaction between the slave family and the master’s family?

“How many holidays in a year do the slaves in Kentucky have? — They usually have six days at Christmas, and two or three others in the course of the year. Public opinion generally seems to require this much of slaveholders; a few give more, some less; some none, not a day nor an hour.

“How do slaves spend the Sabbath? — Every way the master pleases. There are certain kinds of work which are respectable for Sabbath day. Slaves are often sent out to salt the cattle, collect and count the pigs and sheep, mend fences, drive the stock from one pasture to another. Breaking young horses and mules, to send them to market, yoking young oxen, and training them, is proper Sabbath work; piling and burning brush, on the back part of the lot, grubbing brier patches that are out of the way, and where they will not be seen. Sometimes corn must be shelled in the corn-crib; hemp is baled in the hemp-house. The still-house must be attended on the Sabbath. In these, and various other such like employments, the more avaricious slaveholders keep their slaves busy a good part of every Sabbath. It is a great day for visiting and eating, and the house servants often have more to do on that than on any other day.

“. . . What proportion of slaves attend church on the Sabbath? — In the country, not more than one in ten on an average.

“How many slaves have you ever known that could read? — I never saw more than three or four that could properly read at all.”

Based on this excerpt, what is the overall sentiment of Lewis Clarke’s description of his experience as a slave?

How does Mary Reynolds describe her slave owner, “Massa Kilpatrick”?

“Once in a while they’d give us a li’l piece of Sat’day evenin’ to wash out clothes. . . . When they’d git through with the clothes . . . the niggers which sold they goobers and ‘taters brung fiddles and guitars and come out and play. The others clap they hands and stomp they feet. . . .

“We was scart of Solomon and his whip, though, and he didn’t like frolickin’. He didn’t like for us niggers to pray, either. We never heared of no church, but us have prayin’ in the cabins. We’d set on the floor and pray with our heads down low and sing low, but if Solomon heared he’d come and beat on the wall with the stock of his whip. He’d say, “I’ll come in there and tear the hide off you backs.” But some [of] the old niggers tell us we got to pray to Gawd that he don’t think different of the blacks and the whites. I know that Solomon is burnin’ in hell today, and it pleasures me to know it.”

How does Mary Reynolds describe her life as a slave on the Kilpatrick plantation?

The origins of the Missouri Compromise: After the admission of Alabama as a slave state in 1819, the ratio of slave states to free states was balanced. Northern legislators feared that if Missouri entered the United States as a slave state, this would increase the South’s power in Congress and make it easier to expand the institution of slavery. In 1820, Kentucky senator Henry Clay proposed what became known as the Missouri Compromise to try to resolve the growing sectional conflict over the expansion of slavery. Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, and Maine would join as a free state, keeping the balance of power in Congress equal. The southern border of Missouri, latitude 36°30′, would act as a boundary between slave and free states, and when the nation expanded, slavery would be outlawed in territories north of the line, while those that were south of the line would permit slavery.

Long-term consequences: The Missouri Compromise ensured that slavery would not expand north but provided a way for it to expand south and west. After the Indian Removal Act in 1830, which forcibly removed Native Americans east of the Mississippi River to Indian Territory, the institution of slavery expanded into the traditional homelands of the Five Civilized Tribes in the Southeast, which included states in the deep South, such as Mississippi and Louisiana, and western states, such as Texas and Arkansas. Between 1820 and 1860, the internal slave trade and migrating slave owners moved 1.2 million African Americans from the Upper South to large plantations in the Lower South, where they were forced to grow cash crops such as cotton, hemp, rice, and sugar.

The domestic slave trade: Between 1820 and 1860, 1.2 million African Americans moved from the Upper South to the Lower South in a new Middle Passage that relocated almost half of the region’s slave population. About one-third of these involuntary migrants were taken west and south by Upper South slaveholders as they established new plantations in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas, and Texas. The remaining two-thirds were transported and resold in the Lower South by slave traders. Most slaves made the grueling journey on foot in coffles of up to three hundred men, women, and children. Armed traders on horseback forced slaves to march twenty to twenty-five miles a day and often made the slaves sleep outdoors. Some slaves were transported by steamship down the Mississippi River or via ocean vessels that docked in New Orleans. The domestic slave trade included the railroads by the 1850s, and most trains headed south contained what was referred to as a “nigger car” bringing slaves from the North.

The Lower South: Slaves dreaded being “sold down the river” to the Lower South because it often meant permanent separation from family. Most slaves sold to the Lower South were under the age of thirty and were usually separated from their parents. Slave couples were split up, and one in five marriages ended in the sale of one of the partners. Siblings and extended families were also broken apart, and slaveholders used the threat of sale to coerce slaves to work harder. Once in the Lower South, slaves were appraised and then sold in auction houses to the highest bidder before being sent to a plantation. Auctions were particularly humiliating and heartrending. Prospective buyers inspected slaves’ bodies for illness or for scars from whippings, which would indicate a rebellious slave. Women were groped to determine if they were fertile; if they became pregnant, the slaveholder would own their children.

Nat Turner’s rebellion: In August 1831, after receiving powerful religious visions for years, Nat Turner led one of the bloodiest slave rebellions in American history. Turner and his supporters moved from plantation to plantation on the night of August 21, 1831, killing whites and freeing slaves; Turner’s force grew to more than fifty slaves and free blacks and killed sixty whites before the rebellion was crushed by armed whites, who over the next two weeks killed more than one hundred blacks without trial. Turner evaded capture for months until he was captured, tried, and executed. Turner’s rebellion terrified whites across the South, who feared that further rebellions were eminent. There were rumors that the revolt involved 1,200 coconspirators as far away as North Carolina. In the aftermath of the actions of Denmark Vesey and David Walker, white Virginians feared that slavery itself was under threat, and some considered gradually abolishing slavery rather than continuing to contemplate the possibility of a successful slave uprising.

Southern legislators’ reaction to Nat Turner’s rebellion: Talk of emancipation faded quickly as Virginia acted immediately to protect slavery by preventing slaves and free blacks from attending religious services. Legislators targeted free blacks with a colonization bill, and they passed a police bill that denied free blacks trial by jury and made free blacks convicted of a crime subject to sale and relocation. Southern lawmakers silenced congressional debates over slavery for almost a decade by introducing a gag rule in 1835 that prohibited the reading of antislavery petitions in Congress.

The Amistad case and the Creole insurrection: Whites’ fears were intensified after two slave insurrections at sea called into question the legality of the whole slave system. In 1839, Africans who had just been enslaved seized control of the Spanish slave vessel Amistad in international waters near Cuba. The U.S. navy captured the ship, the rebels became prisoners of the U.S. government, and Spain demanded their return. However, their enslavement violated treaties prohibiting the international slave trade, and the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the rebels to be freed in 1841. A similar revolt occurred on an American slave ship, the Creole, in 1843. Slaves on board seized the vessel, sailed it to the British-controlled Bahamas, and declared themselves free. The United States accepted their claims to freedom and petitioned, unsuccessfully, that the British government compensate the slaves’ owners for the loss of their property. The two revolts demonstrated to slaveholders that black dissent could not be quelled and that the institution of slavery had little support outside the South.

Risks faced by runaways: It was very difficult for slaves to escape slavery in the South. Whites patrolled plantations on a nightly basis and meted out severe punishment to slaves who were not in their quarters. Runaways could not use the roads to travel because slaves were required to carry a pass from their owners. Few slaves knew how to read, so forging a pass was difficult and rare. Geographic distance was another obstacle. Those slaves who left from the Lower South faced hundreds of miles of unfamiliar territory and a hostile white population. Even those who managed to escape to the North were often identified as fugitive slaves and returned to their owners in the South to face punitive measures. Family ties kept many slaves from attempting escape because escaping meant they might never see their spouses, children, or parents again.

Escaping slavery: Slaves who lived in border states had the best opportunity for escape and were often aided by a network of black and white antislavery activists known as the underground railroad. Those who left from the Upper South traveled by foot and managed to escape by navigating at night by the North Star. A few slaves manage to smuggle themselves aboard steamships and in railroad cars heading north. Henry “Box” Brown made a daring escape by shipping himself to Philadelphia in a large wooden crate that traveled by steamboat, rail, ferry, and delivery wagon. Ellen and William Craft escaped from a plantation in Macon, Georgia, in 1848 by passing the light-skinned Ellen off as a young slave master traveling north to seek medical attention. While most runaways were caught before making their way out of the South, even unsuccessful escape attempts weakened the slave system by forcing slave owners to spend time and money patrolling for runaways and reminding whites that African Americans were held in bondage against their will.

Religion in the lives of slaves: By the early 1800s, many enslaved communities had adopted evangelical Christianity, drawn to the emotional forms of worship common in Baptist and Methodist revivals and churches. African Americans tended to favor these denominations over Presbyterian and Episcopal churches, whose Sunday services tended to be more restrained. Religious services and teachings allowed some relief from the rigors of life as a slave. Whether with white congregants or in secret services among other slaves, worship provided slaves an opportunity to express the pain of enslavement but also their hope for a better life.

Origins of religious ceremonies: When slaves were permitted in white churches, they were often made to feel unwelcome, and white ministers typically stressed obedience and humility in their teachings. Rather than accepting this version of Christianity and abuse from white congregants, enslaved blacks across the South formed what historians have termed the invisible church. Slave owners did not usually allow slaves to attend church, and many congregants received their religious education in their quarters away from hostile whites.

Focus of slaves’ religious expression: Slave Christianity focused on biblical teachings stressing the equality of men under God and drew inspiration for spirituals that expressed slaves’ humanity and desire for freedom and justice. Enslaved African Americans held religious ceremonies in their quarters or assembled in the woods in secret “hush harbors.” The most common religious ceremony was the ring shout, in which congregants formed a circle while clapping, singing, and praying aloud. These practices were derived from West African music and dance traditions, as well as the passionate Protestantism of the Second Great Awakening. The expressive music produced during the shouts can be found today in musical genres such as the blues and gospel.