Two Americans

(Reah Abogadil)

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

I believe this government cannot endure
permanently half-slave and half-free.
-- Abraham Lincoln, 1858

By the mid-19th century, the United States began to attract a steady stream of foreign visitors.
As one historian has noted:

Alexis de Tocqueville
 French Writer and Political Theorist
 Democracy in America- 1935
 Remains one of the most trenchant and insightful analyses of American social and
political practices.

"The government of democracy brings the notion of political rights to the level of the humblest
citizens," he wrote, "just as the dissemination of wealth brings the notion of property within
the reach of all the members of the community."

 Whether such rough equality could survive in the face of a growing factory system that
threatened to create divisions between industrial workers and a new business elite.

“Everywhere the most unequivocal proofs of prosperity and rapid progress in agriculture,
commerce and great public works."

Charles Dickens

 "This is not the Republic I came to see,"

 "This is not the Republic of my imagination.... The more I think of its youth and strength,
the poorer and more trifling in a thousand respects, it appears in my eyes. In everything
of which it has made a boast -- excepting its education of the people, and its care for
poor children -- it sinks immeasurably below the level I had placed it upon."
Already, its size and diversity defied easy generalization and invited contradiction:
America was both a freedom-loving and slave-holding society, a nation of expansive and
primitive frontiers as well as cities of growing commerce and industrialization.
 Land of Promise
(Reah Abogadil & Chad Ocbena)

• In the East, industry boomed.

• In the Midwest and the South, agriculture flourished.
• After 1849 the gold mines of California poured a golden stream into the channels of
trade.
• New England and the Middle Atlantic states were the main centers of manufacturing,
commerce and finance.
•
Principal products of these areas were:
1. Textiles
2. Lumber,
3. Clothing,
4. Machinery,
5. Leather
6. Woolen goods

• At the same time, shipping had reached the height of its prosperity, and vessels flying
the American flag plied the oceans, distributing wares of all nations.
• The South, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River and beyond, was a relatively
compact political unit featuring an economy centered on agriculture.
• Tobacco was important to the economies of Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina.
• In South Carolina, rice was an abundant crop, and the climate and soil of Louisiana
encouraged the cultivation of sugar.
• Cotton eventually became the dominant crop and the one with which the South was
identified.
• By 1850 the American South grew more than 80 percent of the world's cotton. Slaves
were used to cultivate all these crops, though cotton most of all.
• Europe and the older settled parts of America demanded its wheat and meat products.
• The introduction of labor-saving implements -- notably the McCormick reaper -- made
possible an unparalleled increase in farm production.
• From 1850 to 1857 the Appalachian Mountain barrier was pierced by five railway trunk
lines linking the Midwest and the East.
• It was not until the late 1850s that a continuous line ran through the mountains
connecting the lower Mississippi River with the southern Atlantic seaboard.
 Slavery & Sectionalism
(Chad Ocbena)

Slavery
• Northerners were becoming more opposed to slavery, whether for moral or economic
reasons.
- declared that slavery -- the "peculiar institution,"
• Southerners were becoming more united in their defense of slavery as an institution.
- essential to its economy

"King Cotton"
• Cotton became the principal cash crop in the South.
• The British textile industry created a huge demand for cotton, and the invention of the
cotton gin made it practical to grow cotton throughout the South.
• It was so profitable that the vast majority of southern farms and plantations grew
cotton, and the "Cotton Kingdom" spread west into Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee,
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. Essentially, the entire Southern economy became
dependent on the success of cotton as a crop.

In the North
abolitionist feeling grew more and more powerful, abetted by a free-soil movement vigorously
opposed to the extension of slavery into the Western regions not yet organized as states.

Southerners of 1850
slavery was a condition for which they felt no more responsible than for their English heir
representative institutions.

In some seaboard areas

Slavery by 1850 was well over 200 years old; it was an integral part of the basic economy of the
region.

• 46,274 planters throughout the slave-holding states, with a planter defined as someone
who owned at least 20 slaves.
• Half of all slaves worked on plantations.

Yeoman farmers
• 70 percent of whom held less than 40 hectares, had a handful of slaves, but most had
none.
"Poor Whites"
• Lived on the lowest rung of Southern society and held no slaves.

Yeomen and Poor Whites

 Supported the institution of slavery
 They feared that if freed, blacks would compete with them for land.

Slavery was inherently a system of brutality and coercion in which beatings and the breakup of
families through the sale of individuals were commonplace. In the end, however, the most
trenchant criticism of slavery was not the behavior of individual masters and overseers toward
the slaves, but slavery's fundamental violation of every human being's inalienable right to be
free.
 Abolitionist Movement
(Jushua Carman)

The daily life of Slaves:

 Living Conditions- large families in one-room cabins; unbalanced diets, no running water
or poor sanitation.
 Some slaves became artisans.
 Allowed to marry and have a children.
 Many subjected to Cruel Punishments and denied basic Human Rights.
 Could be sold separated from family anytime.

Nat Tuner’s Rebellion

 August 1831 in Southampton Country, Virginia.
 Nat Tuner, a black religious leader led 70-75 slaves on attack.
 The killed 60 whites, including men, women and children.
 Spread fear among slave owners

- States passed stricter laws controlling activities of free and enslaved blacks.

Abolition
- When a law or a system is officially ended.
-
Principles behind Abolition Movement
 Political - “All men are created equal”
 Religious - equal in the eyes of God.

Abolitionist wanted the immediate, emancipation of all slaves.
Involved men and women.

Who were the Abolistionist?

Frederick Douglass
- Escaped from slavery at age of 20
- Wrote 3 autobiographies
- Published anti-slavery newspaper, The north Star
- Toured the North giving speeches and appearing at public anti-slavery events
- Supported Women’s Rights Movement
William Lloyd Garrison
- from Boston
- Published the Liberator, 1831
- Organized New England Anti Slavery Society, 1832
- Went to Europe to gain support for abolition
- Saw slavery as morally wrong
Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Born into a religious family of Abolitionists
- Wrote the book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in 1853 after meeting runaway slaves and their
experiences
- Book was a best seller that made many Americans aware of the evils of slavery
John Quincy Adams
- In 1836, Congress passes the GAG RULE- preventing any bills restricting or ending
slavery
- Q. Adams fought against the gag rule calling it unconstitutional
- The gag rule was finally suspended in 1844
Harriet Tubman
- Most famous “Conductor” of the Underground Railroad
- After escaping herself, she made 19 separate trips back to the South and helped about
300 slaves escape to freedom – she was called “Mama Moses”
- She served as a spy for the Union during the Civil War
Railroad
- Secret network of abolitionist who worked together to help runaway slaves reach
freedom in the North or in Canada.
- Runaways would travel 10-20 miles before they reached the next “station” which would
be houses, barns, or cellars of white or free black people who chose to help them
escape.
- They would be helped along the routes by people like Harriet Tubman, called
“conductors”