AMERICAN STUDIES 4

first reasons for the civil war

Incompatibilities between:• the rural place and the city • the feudal system of the South and the

industrial drive of the North• totalitarianism in the South and democracy in

the North.

background for slavery in the US

• In 1619, 20 Africans were dropped off by a Dutch trader at Jamestown, Virginia.

• slavery was not legalized in the colony at the time

• the Africans were treated as indentured servants, gaining their freedom after a fixed period of time.

expansion of slavery in the colonies

BEFORE 1660:

Slaves could receive freedom by completing contracts

(indenturement)

ORby converting to

Christianity.

AFTER 1660:• New laws lowered the status of

Africans• reasons are not clear BUT

measures against the black slaves

• could not own guns or join militia• revoked rights to property• Christian conversion did not

guarantee freedom

stages

• the transition from indentured servitude and "half freedom" to African and African-American enslavement for life

• the brief but bloody Stono Rebellion of 1739 in South Carolina

• the establishment of the "Black Codes," regulating virtually every aspect of slave life– from 1865 and some 50 years onwards

Black Codes• "Negroes must make annual contracts for their labor in

writing; if they should run away from their tasks, they forfeited their wages for the year. Whenever it was required of them they must present licenses citing their places of residence and authorizing them to work. Fugitives from labor were to be arrested and carried back to their employers… Minors were to be apprenticed, if males until they were twenty-one, if females until eighteen years of age. Such corporal punishment as a father would administer to a child might be inflicted upon apprentices by their masters. Vagrants were to be fined heavily, and if they could not pay the sum, they were to be hired out to service until the claim was satisfied. Negroes might not carry knives or firearms unless they were licensed so to do…

Black codes

• "In South Carolina persons of color contracting for service were to be known as "servants," and those with whom they contracted, as "masters…House servants were to be at call at all hours of the day and night on all days of the week. They must be "especially civil and polite to their masters, their masters' families and guests," and they in return would receive "gentle and kind treatment."

Southern whites

• Religious argument• Historical argument• Racial argument• Social argument

• Color of skin became the mark of inferior legal & social status

laws

• 1665: slavery is legalized (Virginia)• 1692: the prohibition of sexual

intercourse between whites & blacks.

SERVITUDE BECAME PERMANENT

Bacon’s rebellion

• after Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) more slaves were being shipped in because they had become cheaper than white servants

the demand for slaves

• practical reasons:– slaves were not as rebellious as

servants– due to their skin color, they could

not fade into the population.

By 1770:1/3rd of the southern population

were African slaves (500,000).

slave culture

• Slave Codes governed lives• marriages not recognized by law• no property ownership• can’t testify in court against a white

person• no contracts for labor

slave culture 2

• Religion–Combined African animism and

Christianity–Use of spirituals - obvious and

secret

slave culture 3

• Methods of Protest–rebellion and escape–folk tales–slow pace of work, fake injury, break

equipment–slave Narratives

slave narratives

• accounts of freed and former slaves either written or told and published

• Douglas’ best seller• written narratives allowed slaves to

confront owners, and expose slavery to the world

life of free blacks

• formed many anti-slavery groups• worked as day laborers• 434,000 in the north• job discriminated, segregated• divided - fear of slavery vs.

abolitionist

life of rural slaves

• lived on large plantations

• conditions varied greatly

• field slave/house slave

life of urban slaves

• owners hired out to mills, factories, shipyards

• shortage of white labor• use of skilled slaves - carpenters,

blacksmiths - great demand

life of urban slaves 2

• less supervision• better fed and clothed• more privileges• easier to blend in, disappear, meet in

groups

abolition of slavery

• The proclamation of Emancipation (1862/63)

• The Thirteenth Amendment (proposed and ratified in 1865) abolished slavery.

• The Fourteenth Amendment proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868 included the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.

• The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, grants voting rights regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude".Abraham Lincoln

(1809-1865)

6th President of the US

status of black citizens

• 1860: slaves• 1870: state legislators, mayors, politicians• 1877: persecuted by the Klu Klux Klan• the system of slaves turned into a system of

servitude and lasted until the civil rights movement in the 60s

• A History of Slavery in America

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

• "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

narrative form

• 1. pers narrative (narrator/protagonist)• two personas

– the young uneducated and oppressed slave– the eloquent political commentator

voice/point of view/tone

As narrator:• reasoned, rational figure.• tone is dry and not exaggerated.• capable of seeing both sides of an

issue, even the issue of slavery. • presents a realistic - if critical -

account of how and why slavery operates.

• his vision allows him to separate slave-owning individuals from the institution that corrupts them.

• presents himself as capable of intricate and deep feeling.

• allows his narrative to linger over the inexpressible emotions he and others have suffered, and he sometimes dramatizes his own tears.

As protagonist: • both a strong and a weak character

and at • some seminal scenes in which he is

only a witness present a composite portrait of the dehumanizing aspects of slavery.

• a character in process and flux, formed and reformed by pivotal scenes

• emerges as a figure formed negatively by slavery and cruelty, and positively by literacy education and a controlled but aggressive insistence on rights.

• largely optimistic• helps others• committed to abolitionism

themes

• ignorance as a tool of slavery• knowledge as the path to freedom• slavery’s damaging effect on slaveholders• slaveholding as a perversion of Christianity

motifs

• the victimization of female slaves• the treatment of slaves as property• freedom in the city

symbols

• Sandy’s Root– ignorance vs. knowledge

• The Columbian Orator– slave vs. master

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

• “There’s no arguing with picture, and everybody is impressed with them, whether they mean to be or not.”

the slave scale

• slave narratives up to date– Wintley Phipps – reclaiming the tradition– Kathleen Battle & Jessye Norman – continuing it– Kathleen Battle & Wynton Marsalis - Handel– Kathleen Battle & Wynton Marsalis - Bach