AAH Unit 1

African American History

Unit 1 Guide

Ms. Yohe

Index

Africans in the Americas

Unit 1

African Beginnings

African American History

In this unit, you will learn about the history of Africa and its great empires that form the African heritage of many Black Americans today. You will learn how the forced trans-Atlantic migration of Africans to the Western Hemisphere transformed the colonial settlements in North and South America and the Caribbean. Although held in bondage, enslaved people and free people in North America resisted the codified condition of slavery. You will use primary sources to understand and analyze the experience of enslaved people in the early years of the United States.

Unit 01

Unit 1 Lesson Index

African Beginnings

Triangular Turning Point

The Middle Passage

Historical Sources of the MP

Slavery in Colonial North America

The American Revolution and Slavery

African American Culture and Life of an Enslaved Person

Rebellions and Resistance to Slavery

Free Black People in the Era of Slavery

The Abolition Movement

King Cotton and the Expansion of Slavery

Sectional Crisis Deepens

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Unit 01

Studying African American History

"If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated."

Cater G. Woodson

Egypt

Unit 01

African Beginnings

3200 BCE

Kush

1070 BCE

Axum

80 BCE

Ghana

700s

Mali

1230s

Songhai

1460s

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African Beginnings

Egypt

Is the earliest civilization in Africa, formed along the Nile River about 6,000 years ago. Eventually, these settlers of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt were united under the dynastic rule of pharaohs, or kings, in approximately 3200 BCE.Ancient Egyptian civilization was a highly developed hierarchical society. The pharaoh ruled over lower social classes of warriors, priests, merchants, craftsmen, peasants, and enslaved people.

Their complex society was maintained by a bureaucracy that used a system of picture writing called hieroglyphics, mastered by a class of scribes.

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African Beginnings

Kush

The kingdom of Kush controlled Lower Egypt after the New Kingdom dynasties of Egypt weakened in the eighth century BCE.

Axum (Aksum)

By 80 BCE, the kingdom of Axum ruled over the region. Axum was the capital city of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia.

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African Beginnings

Ghana

The empire of Ghana probably existed for hundreds of years before the existing documented evidence shows. With the domestication of the camel, which can travel long distances with little water, trade expanded between Ghana and northeastern Africa.Arab travelers brought silk, cotton, and glass westward in return for salt and gold. The salt was a necessity to sustain life, and the gold was in demand for its value. Neither of these items were supplied by Ghana. The salt was brought to Ghana from northwest Africa, and the gold was mined south of its borders. Instead, Ghana grew especially rich by taxing all of the goods that passed through its empire

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African Beginnings

Mali

The kingdom of Mali emerged under the leadership of Sundiata, who became mansa, or emperor. The empire continued to control the salt and gold trade through its territory. Mansa Musa, who ruled between 1312 and 1337, oversaw the empire's wealthiest and most powerful period. As a matter of fact, some scholars believe his wealth would make him the richest person who ever lived. It was during Mansa Musa's reign that Islam became popular in the region south of the Sahara Desert. Mansa Musa made a pilgrimage to Mecca and welcomed Muslim scholars and knowledge to his empire. In the famous Malian city of Timbuktu, Mansa Musa established the Sankore mosque and university, pictured here.

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African Beginnings

Songhai

Is considered the largest and last of the pre-colonial empires.Timbuktu would become a thriving cultural center of the empire.

The Songhai Empire grew over the late 1300s after fighting within Mali. The empire expanded to the Atlantic Ocean. Like those of Mali, the rulers of this empire were devout Muslims. This empire would become a center of Muslim scholarship and learning. The mathematics and astronomy manuscripts also show that these studies have deep African roots..The leadership of this empire disintegrated by the late 1500s, about one hundred years after Christopher Columbus made his first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.

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African Beginnings

Cultural Connections

There was no single African culture or way of life. This is equally true today. There are more than 1,000 different ethnic groups in Africa, each with its own language, customs, and traditions. Broadly speaking, however, historians can make generalizations about the cultures of Africa in the 1500s from which many African Americans descended. For example:

Villages were populated by large groups of people related by kinship, called clans.
Elder members of the village held great respect and leadership roles in the community.
Communal ownership of land was most common, with people filling specific roles in farming tasks, mostly based on gender.
Most rural Africans practiced polytheistic animism, recognizing more than one divinity or ancestral spirit in religious practice.
Islam was introduced by Arab traders to West Africa and became the dominant religion in trading centers and larger settlements

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African Beginnings

How African History stays ALIVE

West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, or musician. Most griots served in the king's court, and some made their living traveling the countryside. Griots in local villages would serve as the recordkeepers of births, marriages, and deaths in a village and would advise the village leadership. Today, griots are mostly performers and entertainers, predominantly in West Africa.

Tricksters

Many African stories involve animal characters who are tricksters The stories were meant to teach moral values or explain how things in the natural world came to be.Anansi the spider stories were brought to the Americas by enslaved people and are especially popular in Caribbean culture. Enslaved people adapted the stories as a way to mock slave owners, the way Anansi mocked the sky god.

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Unit 01

Slavery is documented in Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, as far back as 3500 BCE

Triangular Turning Point

Classical Greece and Rome were large societies that engaged in enslaving people; as much as one third or more of their populations were enslaved

The main bases for enslavement in ancient times included payment of a debt, punishment for a crime, or being a prisoner of war.

In the classical era, it was common for the condition of slavery to be temporary.

By the Middle Ages, the nature of slavery began to change. Enslaved people were forced to travel farther from their homes and were more often captives from rival groups.

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Triangular Turning Point

Enslavement Based on Differences

Religious wars between European Christians and Muslim countries of Southwest Asia and North Africa continued to result in the enslavement of rival men, women, and children based on religion.

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For example, from the 1600s to the 1800s, Muslim princes from the Mediterranean coast of northern Africa were active traders of enslaved Christian Europeans. Europeans called this part of Africa the Barbary Coast. In Asia, Islamic invasions of India resulted in hundreds of thousands of Indians being enslaved. In China, records from the Tang dynasty show evidence of the purchase of Jewish traders who were enslaved. The larger number of enslaved Chinese, however, were from southeast Asia, the Korean peninsula, and Japan.

Middle Ages

Slavery became less common in Europe during the Middle Ages. However, it was replaced with a feudal system that tied peasants and serfs to the land owned by nobles.

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Triangular Turning Point

Medieval African Slavery

The main basis for slavery in African history was as payment for a debt, as prisoners of war, or as criminal punishment. Medieval African kingdoms traded enslaved people along the same routes used to trade salt and gold.Historians estimate that about a third of the populations of the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai empires were enslaved.Islamic slave traders, whether they came from West African kingdoms or were Arab Muslims from eastern Africa, captured and traded White Europeans, mixed-race North Africans, and Black Africans from sub-Saharan Africa.Most of the enslaved people exported from Africa, however, were shipped from East Africa. Zanzibar became a leading port in this trade. The trade of enslaved people, like the trade in other goods, increased as a result of technological advancements in navigation that brought together buyers and sellers from different parts of the world.

Triangular Turning Point

Our [Portugese] discoveries of coasts and islands and mainland were not made without foresight and knowledge. For our sailors went out very well taught, and furnished with instruments and rules of astrology and geometry, things which all mariners and map-makers must know." Charles Raymond Beazley, Prince Henry the Navigator

The Portugese Open the Door

Portugal developed a new kind of ship called the caravel. The caravel was faster, lighter, and more maneuverable than earlier ships. With the caravel, Portuguese mariners could freely explore uncharted Atlantic waters.The Portuguese established trading posts along the coast to trade with local economies. They negotiated with local kings to trade European goods for ivory, gold, and enslaved people. Most of those enslaved people were used as domestic servants in Europe, where they were often viewed as a symbol of prestige.

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Triangular Turning Point

Portugese in Africa

Portuguese reached Cap-Vert on the western coast of Africa in 1445, they successfully found a way to avoid the land-based trade routes controlled by Muslim traders. This rerouting of trade devastated Algiers and Tunis, two North African trading centers, but made Portugal rich.

Everyone Wants In

Portuguese successes in exploration and the wealth Portugal accumulated spurred a race among the other European nations to:

seek faster trade routes by water to eastern regions
set up trading posts
spread the Christian faith
create colonies in newly explored lands

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Triangular Turning Point

In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue..."

Columbus Arrives

Christopher Columbus is often credited as the person who "discovered the New World."Soon after, Portugal, the Netherlands, England, and France followed, eager to benefit from the natural resources and riches of North and South America and the Caribbean Islands. They created settlements and enslaved the indigenous, or native, people to work on large colonial farming enterprises called plantations. Very soon, large numbers of indigenous people died of European diseases to which they had no immunity.

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Triangular Turning Point

The Triangle Trade Begins

European colonizers needed a new labor force to replace the indigenous population. This demand for laborers caused the largest forced migration of human beings in history, the Atlantic trade of enslaved people.Unlike slavery in Africa, Europe, and Asia, slavery in the Americas became based on race. Additionally, the Atlantic slave trade was chattel slavery, which is the dehumanization of an enslaved person and their offspring to the condition of property, able to be bought and sold.

Europe would use the raw materials sent by colonies in the Americas to produce goods. For example, cotton would be manufactured into textiles and traded to Africa in exchange for enslaved people. Traders of enslaved people also traded firearms with African rulers. With these new forms of weaponry, African rulers were able to conquer their rivals and gain more territory and prisoners, who would later be traded as enslaved people.

Enslaved people were taken to South America, North America, and the Caribbean islands as labor needed to work in agriculture, especially on sugar plantations. This part of the triangle trade system is known as the Middle Passage.

Over time, trade increased between the colonies in North America and the Caribbean. Sugar and molasses produced in the islands would be manufactured into rum, then sent on to Europe. Natural resources, such as wood and livestock, that were plentiful in North America were traded to the islands in exchange for enslaved people.

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The Middle Passage

Middle Passage

The Atlantic commercial system, called the Triangle Trade, was the exchange of commodities, or raw materials or agricultural products, between Europe, the Americas, and Africa. However, one part of this trade cycle traded human beings: the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage was the name of the voyage of millions of enslaved Africans to North America, South America, and the Caribbean.

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Unit 01

The Middle Passage

It was more difficult to cut the men adrift, as each had his neck in the fork of a stout stick, six or seven feet long, and kept in by an iron rod which was riveted at both ends across the throat." David Livingstone

Capture

The people who were captured and sold into slavery sometimes were criminals the ruler wanted to remove from society or unlucky individuals who were captured by surprise. Sometimes, raiders attacked a whole village and enslaved the inhabitants. European traders preferred to take far more men captive than women, for the men's physical strength.Captives were often tied together with rope or chains and marched, sometimes for hundreds of miles, to the Atlantic coast. The forced march was often too grueling for some people to survive.

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The Middle Passage

Demographics and Transport

The fort became a factory of enslaved people, a fortified station where enslaved people were imprisoned while they awaited transport across the Atlantic.Captives were held in dungeons, stripped of their clothing, inspected, and burned with a branding iron. People from rival communities were separated to prevent uprisings.

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Factory

One of the most famous sites of the Atlantic trade of enslaved people era is Elmina Castle, in Ghana. It was originally built in 1481 by the Portuguese as a trading post for gold and ivory. By the 1600s, however, the trade of enslaved people had become the major form of commerce.

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This is the "Door of No Return" at the Cape Coast Castle, Ghana. It is a symbol recognizing the millions who were forced to leave their African home at this factory and others in West Africa.

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The Middle Passage

Slavers

Captives were rowed to the slavers offshore and were put aboard the ships as cargo.These ships were used for transport, to be used as forced labor in colonial possessions.The voyage across the Atlantic took approximately two to three months, with the first stop in the Caribbean. Shackled people were packed tightly in the ship's hold, often in numbers far exceeding what few regulations existed for slavers.

Conditions

The ship's crew would often abuse the prisoners with whips. Women, especially, were subjected to assaults.Sanitation and water were scarce and human waste polluted the living space of the captives. The tight quarters made the captives easily susceptible to diseases, such as dysentery, measles, and smallpox.Those people who could not withstand the voyage or who were too sick were often thrown overboard and left to drown at sea.

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Unit 01

Historical Sources of the Middle Passage

What are Historical Sources?

Historians must evaluate the sources of the information they collect when studying the past.Historians use two types of sources to understand the past: primary and secondary sources.

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Primary sources are documents, artifacts, and materials created by the people who were eyewitnesses to or participants in the event. Secondary sources are materials that were created after an event, using those primary sources as evidence of the event.

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Who is the author?

Historical Sources of the Middle Passage

What is the purpose?

How reliable is the source?

Questions to Ask About Sources

Just because a source is a primary source, that does not necessarily mean you will get the complete picture of the past from that source. Historians must read multiple sources, from multiple perspectives, to fill in all the pieces of the past. Historians, also, need to ask some questions about their sources.

Who created the source you are investigating? Is it a single person, or an organization or a group?
What do you know about the creator’s identity and background? Is that enough information, or do you need to learn more about the person or group?
Why did this person or group create this source? What was their purpose or motivation? Did they write it to inform or entertain the reader, like an article or a movie? Did they write it as personal notes meant only for themselves, like a diary?
How might the author's background and identity (their place of origin, gender, race, social class, religion, and so on) shape or influence the way they tell the story?

Who did the author have in mind when they created the source? Who did they want to talk to by creating the source?
What person or group was the intended audience, and why? Was the author trying to persuade or convince the audience, or trying to accurately describe events?
How does the author's intended audience shape the source's interpretation or presentation of events? Would the author say something different to another group of people?

How genuine and reliable is the source? Do you believe that what the author is saying is true?
What information do you think the document leaves out, and why is it left out?
Do you think the author purposefully includes or excludes certain information? Why?
Do you think the author is giving a one-sided opinion, or a broad view? Why?

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Historical Sources of the Middle Passage

Sources for Investigation

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Excerpt from Olaudah Equiano, "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, 1789" I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a smell in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness [awfulness] of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me food; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass [machine used to raise an anchor], and tied my feet, while the other flogged [whipped] me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before. . . . The crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down to the decks, in case we would leap into the water: and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often the case with myself. . . . I feared I should be put to death, the white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; for I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty; and this not only shown towards us blacks, but also to some of the whites themselves. One white man in particular I saw, when we were permitted to be on deck, flogged so unmercifully with a large rope near the foremast, that he died . . . and they tossed him over the side. . . . This made me fear these people the more.

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Excerpt from Thomas Phillips, "A Journal of a Voyage Made in the Hannibal of London, Ann. 1693, 1694" (published 1732) There happened such sickening and mortality among my poor men and Negroes [sic]. Of the first we buried 14, and of the last 320, which was a great detriment to our voyage, the Royal African Company losing ten pounds [English currency] by every slave that died. . . . The distemper [illness] which my men as well as the blacks mostly died of was the white flux [an intestinal infection that caused diarrhea, probably dysentery]. . . . The Negroes [sic] are so vulnerable to the small-pox that few ships that carry them escape without it, and sometimes it makes vast havoc and destruction among them. But though we had 100 at a time sick of it . . . we lost not above a dozen by it. . . . But what the smallpox spared, the flux swept off, to our great regret, after all our pains and care to give [the enslaved people] their messes [meals], . . . keeping their lodgings as clean and sweet as possible, and enduring so much misery and stench so long among creatures nastier than swine, only to be defeated by their mortality. . . . No gold-finders [people seeking wealth] can endure so much noisome [unpleasant] slavery as they do who carry Negroes [sic]. . . . We endure twice the misery; and yet by their mortality our voyages are ruined.

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Unit 01

Slavery in Colonial North America

I can't think there is any . . . value in one color more than another, nor that white is better than black, only we think it so because we are so, and are prone to judge favorably in our own case, as well as the blacks [sic], who in odium [disgust] of the color, say, the devil is white, and so paint him. "

Thomas Phillips

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Slavery in Colonial North America

Even though many Africans were separated from family or fellow kinsmen on the Middle Passage, they created new bonds with shipmates and other enslaved people. These new connections took the place of those family connections and African ways. Out of a necessity to survive, the new arrivals adapted to their new environment, foods, and climate, and they created a new culture.

"New Africans" would be trained in the work tasks of plantations. They would be separated from the "old Africans," enslaved people who had already been living in the Caribbean for some time, and Creoles, enslaved people who were born in the Caribbean.

Captives would be scrubbed down, allowed to shave, and exercised in preparation for the sale. Enslaved Africans would remain in the Caribbean islands for a period of weeks, months, or years, called seasoning by traders of enslaved people and by planters, the owners of large agricultural estates, called plantations.

Most ships carrying enslaved people made their first port in the Caribbean islands, which Europeans called the West Indies, misnamed for India after Columbus' voyages. Ship captains would sail among the Caribbean islands, seeking the best island market in which to sell the human cargo. There were sugar plantations on almost all of the islands, eager for the forced labor of enslaved people.

Unit 01

Slavery in Colonial North America

1619

In 1607 the Virginia Company of London sponsored a group of 104 settlers to establish the colony to produce goods that could be resold for a profit in England. This colony would be known as Jamestown. By 1619, there were 32 people of African descent listed as living in the colony, although there is no documentation explaining how they arrived.The first documented arrival of African people into British North America occurred later that same year, in August.A Dutch warship intercepted a Portuguese slaver and took aboard 20 enslaved people. The Dutch traded those people to the people of Jamestown in return for provisions. Those Africans were not enslaved, but rather treated as indentured servants

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Slavery in Colonial North America

Slavery and Race

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In 1640, a Virginia court sentenced an escaped Black indentured servant, John Punch, to slavery as punishment. Two White indentured servants, a Scotsman and a Dutchman, who had escaped with him were punished by extending their contract of servitude. In 1662, the Virginia House of Burgesses established that the status of a child should follow that of the child's mother. By the 1700s, many colonies had adopted slave codes to further establish race as a factor of slavery.

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The Spanish Casta system was a hierarchical pyramid that organized and labeled people according to their status. This status was determined based on one’s “ethnic purity” or place of birth.

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In New France notions of purity of blood intertwined with religion and social rank. Intermarriage, or métissage, was a crucial component of francisation under Louis XIV, a strategy designed to strengthen the empire in North America

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Slavery in Colonial North America

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The American Revolution and Slavery

The French and Indian Wars

France gave all of its territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain. The area of New France, what is modern-day Quebec in Canada, also went to Britain. France lost its entire presence in mainland North America.

Spain, a French ally, was forced to cede Florida to Great Britain. To make up for its loss, France gave Spain its land west of the Mississippi River and the city of New Orleans, an important port.

The most northern area of North America is designated as "unexplored" (by Europeans) in 1763.

Britain also took some French territory in the Caribbean islands, trading posts in India, and posts along the African coast.

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The American Revolution and Slavery

Seeds of Revolution

Here is a partial list of laws British Parliment passed in the decade leading up to the American Revoution.The colonists did not have representation in Parliament, and they thought it unjust that they should be taxed without a say in lawmaking. Their cry claimed, "Taxation without representation is tyranny."

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The American Revolution and Slavery

Patriots and Loyalists

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The American Revolution and Slavery

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The American Revolution and Slavery

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Over the course of the American Revolution, about 20,000 enslaved people escaped bondage and became Black Loyalists. Many served the British war efforts as laborers. In November 1775, the royal governor of the Virginia colony issued the Dunmore Proclamation, promising freedom to any enslaved people willing to fight as Loyalists for the crown. The Dunmore Proclamation was one of the reasons Washington reversed his policy of Black enlistees in the Continental Army. He feared that the proclamation would raise rebellions by enslaved people throughout the colonies.

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The American Revolution and Slavery

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Revolutionary Extras

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African American Culture and Life of an Enslaved Person

Life of Inhumane Treatment

The majority of enslaved people in the antebellum (pre-Civil War) United States lived in large southern plantations and worked as field hands. The constant fear of brutal treatment was part of daily lifePunishments such as whipping, branding, and other forms of torture were doled out for enslaved people who resisted their enslavers or broke a rule of the plantation..

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Slave owners sought to make enslaved people dependent on them and treated them in a paternalistic manner. They did not want enslaved people to feel self-sufficient enough to rebel against the owners. Enslaved people would often appear to be unaware of their surroundings, as the enslavers believed, but in reality, they understood all that was happening around them. It was a way of deceiving the enslavers while protecting their independent identity.

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African American Culture and Life of an Enslaved Person

Family Life of Enslaved People

Enslaved people on the Middle Passage, ripped from their kinship groups in Africa, often created new family ties with other enslaved people out of human necessity for social support and love.

It would take until the 1750s for families based on biological relationships to become common in the British colonies.Most enslaved people could choose their own partners; however, their marriages were not legally recognized. There are also cases where slave owners would force marriages to produce offspring. Slave owners generally believed that enslaved people who cared for one another were less likely to rebel and would instead be docile to protect their loved ones.With no legal basis for marriage, enslaved people developed their own wedding traditions.One such tradition was called "jumping the broom." A couple would jump over a broomstick, signifying their commitment to care for a household together

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Children

About one-half of all children born in slavery died before the age of five. This high mortality rate was mostly caused by the poor nutrition of pregnant mothers and the lack of medical care after a child was born.Enslaved children were forced to work as young as six years old, doing small chores at first and more rigorous work as they became older. Children born of an enslaved mother and a free White plantation owner came to be known as "children of the plantation." These multiracial children were often raised as enslaved people and were rarely accepted in White communities.

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Most enslavers wanted to nurture the children of enslaved people because those children would eventually grow into productive workers on the plantation. Even so, parents faced challenges nurturing new babies in slavery. Some enslaved mothers could keep young children with them while doing their work. On larger plantations, mothers would leave their children in the care of older, infirm enslaved people. As a result, the community of enslaved people served as an extended family, sharing in the care of the younger children and helping each other.

African American Culture and Life of an Enslaved Person

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Christianity

Many enslavers actively converted enslaved people to Christianity out of what they deemed to be a moral duty.Some churches welcomed enslaved people to services, but the pews were segregated by race At the same time, many enslavers feared that Black enslaved people would be encouraged to rebel or run away, emboldened by the Christian ethic of spiritual equality, which meant earthly equality among the races, as well..

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Islam

Recall that Islam was firmly established in the region of West Africa during the reigns of the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai empires. Many brought these traditions with them - Yarrow Marmout is one example.

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African American Culture and Life of an Enslaved Person

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African American Culture and Life of an Enslaved Person

Video

Historian Ibram X. Kendi discusses how the foodways and music of enslaved Africans helped shape American culture as we know it today.

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DR. IBRAM X. KENDI is one of America’s foremost historians and leading antiracist scholars. He is a National Book Award-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of six books for adults and seven books for young people. Dr. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and the Founding Director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. Dr. Kendi is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News Racial Justice Contributor. In 2020, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

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Haiti

Rebellions and Resistance to Slavery

Why was it important we understand the difference between British, Spanish, and French slavery?The answer in a broad sense is the French colony of Saint Domingue (now known as Haiti)In 1791, Toussaint Louverture led the enslaved people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in a successful rebellion against slavery and French control.

Toussaint Louverture was able to tread between the worlds of slave and free men as the social structure in Saint Domigue caused great stratification between groups.People in the United States—free or enslaved, Black or White—viewed the events in Haiti with great interest. Each of those groups, however, viewed the events in Haiti from a different perspective.

Hear is a recommended Podcast that goes in depth about the Haitian Revolution. It is a 19 episode look that covers the revolution in depth and connects to the outside world - like the American Revolution and French Revolutions, how the new country of USA dealt with this, and the racial stratification of Saint Domingue. Revolutions: Season 4 with Mike Duncan

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Rebellions and Resistance to Slavery

"The negroes [sic] are so willful and loth to [hating to] leave their own country, that they have often leap’d out of the canoes, boat and ship, into the sea, and kept under water till they were drowned, to avoid being taken up and saved by our boats."

Slaver Captain

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Rebellions and Resistance to Slavery

Video

It was often the newly arrived enslaved people who were the most resistant to slavery, compared with those generations that would be born into slavery. Nevertheless, Black men and women would resist the control of their enslavers the best they could.

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Examples:

enslaved people would slow down the speed of their work
sabotage machinery and tools
steal or destroy crops.
pretend to make mistakes
pretend they did not understand directions
act as if they were sick or injured to thwart the work on the plantation.

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Rebellions and Resistance to Slavery

Escape

In earlier years of slavery in the United States, most enslaved people who would attempt escape did so individually. These escaped people formed their own communities, called outliers. Living in a familiar area made it easier for the escaped people to continue relationships with others who may have remained enslaved or to steal supplies from farms they already knew about.

Underground Railroad Begins

Others chose to escape to frontier lands or other regions. Many enslaved Africans escaped to Florida in the years before the Revolutionary War, which was under Spanish control at the time. Resistance and escape grew more common throughout the antebellum era of slavery.

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Rebellions and Resistance to Slavery

Underground Railroad

As the abolition movement grew in the early 1800s.No one knows for sure how many enslaved people found their way to freedom by using the Underground Railroad. The longer slavery was legal in the United States, the more people emerged who were willing to join an active support network to help freedom-seeking enslaved people reach freedom safely and securely.The term Underground Railroad is a metaphor. There were no real tracks or stations on this "railroad." Freedom seekers often planned their initial escape alone. Then, following the North Star, they made contacts along the way. There were few safe "stops" in the South, but a more formal system of safe houses and support became clearer as people moved into free states.

There were a number of rebellions against slavery in North America before the Revolutionary War. Another sparked an international dispute in the early years of the republic. The came two important rebellions against slavery were inspired by the principles of the American Revolution and, more directly, the success of the Haitian revolution: Gabriel's conspiracy and Denmark Vesey's revolt. A later brutal rebellion, led by Nat Turner, marks what some call the "beginning of the end" of slavery because its violence forced people—North and South, abolitionists and enslavers—to recommit to their beliefs regarding slavery.

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Rebellions and Resistance to Slavery

Rebellion

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Unit 01

Free Black People in the Era of Slavery

It All Depends on Where You Are

As we learned in the previous lesson, slaves some times took it upon themselves to emancipate themselves -- but what about those who were freed or purchased their freedom?

Freed Blacks Exist North and South

In the North, free Black people most often lived in cities

In the South, most free Black people lived in rural areas,

Upper South states The large cities in this region, such as Baltimore, Norfolk, and Richmond, were population centers for free Black people.n large cities.

The Deep South had the smallest population of free Black people in the country.

Unit 01

Free Black People in the Era of Slavery

The North

After the American Revolution, many northern states emancipated enslaved people and made the trade of enslaved people illegal within their borders A major difference for northern free Black people was that their communities were more concentrated in cities. In the North, many Black people lived in close contact with other free Black people. Black people lived in segregated neighborhoods in urban centers, although in some cities, wealthy Black families lived in White urban neighborhoods. Black neighborhoods were often poorer areas of poverty. Houses had dirt floors and poor public sanitation and water quality. Major northern cities had Black segregated neighborhoods, such as "Little Africa" in Cincinnati, "Hayti" in Pittsburgh, and the Southside of Philadelphia. Most Black families lived in their nuclear family group, composed of parents and children. Black families developed networks to help their extended family and neighbors.White people in the North often held racial prejudices and discriminated against Black people, even though they voted statewide to abolish slavery in their respective states. However, Free Black people were never really free from fear and worry that they could be kidnapped and enslaved.

Unit 01

Free Black People in the Era of Slavery

Deep South

Many feared that they would be enslaved or returned to slavery. To prove their status, free Black people needed to carry free papers, and documents proving they were not enslaved people, at all times The Deep South had the smallest population of free Black people in the country.

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As black codes regarding manumission became more strict in the South, some free Black people became enslavers to protect their families from being sold away. For free Black people in the South, there were only limited opportunities and freedoms, despite their status. For example, black codes restricted education and closed Black churches. They required Black people to gain a "license" from White people to work in trades and crafts.

Upper South

Some slaveholders put into action the ideal that “all men are created equal” and freed the people they had enslaved.In the Upper South to the staple crop of wheat, which did not require large numbers of enslaved people to produce, further increased manumissions.

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Free Black people in the South often lived in close contact with enslaved people because most of them lived in rural areas. Many worked hard, driven by the desire to earn enough money to purchase the freedom of family members. Free Black people in the South mostly worked as tenant farmers, farmers who rented the land they worked.

Free Black People in the Era of Slavery

. . . one universal Father hath given being to us all; and that he hath not only made us all of one flesh, but that he hath also, without partiality, afforded us all the same sensations and endowed us all with the same faculties.”- Benjamin Banneker

The Right to Vote

Many states in the North and South allowed Black men to vote in the colonial period and early years of the republic, as long as they met the land-owning requirement for voting.As black codes became more strict by 1835, suffrage, the right to vote, was restricted for Black men, and free Black landowners lost this right.This would not be addressed until after the Civil War.

Unit 01

Free Black People in the Era of Slavery

Video

The most important institution to the free Black community, as well as to enslaved people, was the church. In growing free communities, the local elite Black leaders worked to organize this important hub of community life. Churches were not only the center of spiritual life, but also a place where Black schools and other groups could meet. They also hosted anti-slavery organizations and activities. In this way, many Black ministers who served the church would also be leaders in the abolitionist movement.

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Unit 01

Free Black People in the Era of Slavery

Education

Many black codes made it illegal to teach enslaved people to read or write. In northern cities, access to education for free Black people was limited. Public education was often segregated and inadequately funded. Most White people did not want their children in a mixed-race classroom.Many Black associations sought to make education a priority for the Black community they served. Churches and other anti-slavery societies established classes and schools for Black children as a form of privately funded education. In Pennsylvania, members of the religious order of the Quakers were early supporters of the education of Black people.

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The End

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of lesson 10

The first Black National Convention was held in Philadelphia, PA

Unit 01

The Abolition Movement

1830

1831

William Lloyd Garrison publishes The Liberatorand the Nat Turner Rebellion takes place

1833

The rise of Nativism increases anti-Black sentiment and violence is seen across the nation

American Anti-slavery Society was formed.

1840s

1847

Frederick Douglass begins the publication of the North Star.

Unit 01

The Abolition Movement

The Black Covention Movement

In 1830 the First Annual Convention ofthe People of Color was organized by Reverand Richard Allen in Philadelphia, PA at the Bethel Church. From 1830 to the 1890s, over 200 Black Conventions would b held.

Leaders used this opportunity to call for and support the cause of ending slavery and improving conditions for Black Americans. Over the coming decade, national conventions would address these causes, and even local, smaller patterns would be held to spread the message. These Black abolitionists often worked independently from larger abolition societies, such as the American Anti-Slavery Society, while still maintaining the overall approach of using moral suasion to persuade others.The Black Convention Movement sought to improve education, Black male suffrage, and civil rights.

Unit 01

William Llyod Garrison

The Abolition Movement

One of the most consequential and effective abolitionists of the 1800s was William Lloyd Garrison. His abolitionist views were formed early in his life, and by his mid-20s, he had founded a weekly anti-slavery newspaper called The Liberator.His devotion to the cause of abolition was steadfast.

Garrison's demand for the immediate end to slavery, with no compromise nor compensation for enslavers, was seen as radical by many White people and welcomed by Black abolitionists. Garrison nearly lost his life in 1835 when a Boston anti-abolitionist mob dragged him through the city streetsHe believed that the the Anti-Slavery Society should not align itself with any political party. He believed that women should be allowed to participate in the Anti-Slavery Society. He believed that the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document.

Unit 01

The Abolition Movement

American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS)

The American Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1833 by William Llyod Garrison, Authur Lewis Tapan, James Forten, and Robert Purvis (as well as other both Black and White colleagues).

The organization was based on the model of London's Anti-Slavery Society, as they had successfully pushed for the British abolishment of slavery.In spite of the violence against abolitionists, there were more than 250,000 members of the AASS by 1838. It became the leading voice of the radical abolitionist movement.By 1840 there were 2,000 affiliate organizations. The organization would publish The Emancipator and The Anti-Slavery Standard.They called for an immediate end to slavery and sponsored speaking tours including Frederick Douglass.The organization would disband in 1870 after the 15th Amendment was ratified.

Unit 01

The Abolition Movement

Immigrantion and Nativism

As the anti-slavery movement grew, the United States was also seeing a rise in immigration from predominantly Roman-Catholic regions. Coupled with the growth of a free Black population, many Protestant, native-born citizens began to form a new political movement that sought to promote their rights over the newcomers. More significant stress was caused as the free Black population was directly competing for jobs in the urban centers where the new immigrants were arriving. In the Northeast, throughout the 1930s and 1840s, there was a sharp rise in mob violence that destroyed Black neighborhoods, businesses, and lives.The Flying Horse Riots of 1834 saw a dispute between sitting on a merry-go-round turn into a three-day riot of violence and destruction. Over 30 Black homes and the First African Presbyterian Church were destroyed.

Unit 01

The Abolition Movement

Frederick Douglass

A formerly enslaved person, Frederick Douglass became one of the century's mot influential figures. Douglass began his journey as a leading abolitionist in 1841 when he was invited to speak to an all-white audience at the Massachusetts AASS Annual Convention. Douglass would publish his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an enslaved American, in 1845. After this publication, he was forced to move abroad, as he became a prized catch for the slave catchers of the day. While traveling abroad, he called for the British to 'remove their boot' from the Irish, thus continuing to advocate for freedom and self-determination for all peoples. He returned to the stated in 1847 ad began publishing the North Star, which in his own words was "devoted to the cause of Liberty, Humanity, and Progress."

Unit 01

The Abolition Movement

I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?"

Women's Rights Intersect

All-female AASS chapters were often racially integrated, empowering both Black and White women of the time.Sojourner Truth was a singular example of how the abolitionist movement and the women's rights movement were interrelated. She also is an example of an independent Black voice that did not rely on predominantly White organizations.After the Civil War, she continued to promote and defend the rights of Black Americans. Throughout her life, she was asked to speak to many groups and share her views and story.

The End

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of lesson 11

Unit 01

King Cotton and the Expansion of Slavery

The Cotton Gin (Cotton Engine)

Eli Whitney invented a machine that could strip the seeds out of cotton fiber faster than enslaved people could do the job by hand. It took about ten hours for a person to remove the seeds from 1 pound of cotton. Using the cotton gin (short for cotton engine), two people could clean the seeds from 50 pounds of cotton in the same amount of time.Easily reproduced and had a profound impact on slavery in the US (specifically the South)The goal was to make the production of cotton easier- however the increase in profits would also increase the neeed for slaves.

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Unit 01

King Cotton and the Expansion of Slavery

Cotton is KING!

Mostly confined to the British Empire (specifically the island of Britain), the 1830s saw the dawning of the First Industrial Revolution. By this time, in no small part due to the Cotton Gin, the US South was the 4th largest economy in the world. This meant it was producing 75% of the world's cotton supply.This supply was vital to the British and their industrialized, factory-driven economy. It also helped to spur the Northern textile industry (specifically New England).

The production of cotton in the South fomented whispers of secession long before the Civil War outbreak. Between the ability to produce cotton at a higher rate thanks to the Cotton Gin and the slave labor economy, the South was sure that it could economicaly sustain it's independence through the cotton trade alone.In fact, when the Civil War did eventually begin in the USA, the southern cotton mills shut down and this was known in Britian as the 'cotton famine.' The southern states believed that this famine and their deep economic ties to Britian would eventually be a key point in an alliance that would bring the British into the Civil War on their side.

Unit 01

King Cotton and the Expansion of Slavery

[T]o sell cotton in order to buy negroes—to make more cotton to buy more negroes . . . is the aim . . . [of the] cotton planter."

Expansion

The lucrative cotton trade meant that as early as 1803, cotton planters were in search of more fertile land. The Louisana Purchase, made by slave holder President Thomas Jefferson, opened an entirely new section of the continent. Southern planters would waste no time in expanding west. In order to make way for this expansion Native American tribes were forciably removed for locations such as Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. This also meant that the southern plantation owners needed to maintain a cheap labor force - so not only would slaves come with them, but also an entirely new expansion of the slave trade would be born.

Unit 01

King Cotton and the Expansion of Slavery

The Second Middle Passage

In 70 years, more than 1,000,000 enslaved people were oved within the borders of the United States.The Second Middle Passage was more lucrative and vast than the intial Atlantic voyage.Virginia would become an epicenter to this trade in the early 1800s and eventually it would expand to other more western states/territories - eventually New Orleans would become the central tading hub.This creation would come to define the phrase 'being sold down river.'

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Unit 01

King Cotton and the Expansion of Slavery

1820

As the US expanded estward, more territories sought admission to the nation and the big question would become, will they allow slavery or not. Remeber the original compromise over the Constitution barred debate on the subject, but by 1820 decisions must be made.

1850

Again in 1850, the prospect of new states joining the union would push the subject of slavery to the forfront of political debate. Only this time keeping the political balance was not the only concern of Southern states.

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Unit 01

King Cotton and the Expansion of Slavery

1850 - The Fugitive Slave Act Gets a Facelift

Commissioners and federal judges had the authority to issue warrants to slave owners, slave catchers, or U. S. marshals to arrest suspected fugitive slaves. However, no arrest warrants were required, and accused escaped slaves could be seized without them.

Between 1850 and 1860, an estimated 15,000 or more slaves escaped slavery in the South. Thousands went as far north as Canada. But only 330 of the escaped slaves were caught, taken before commissioners, and returned to the degradation of slavery

Once in federal custody, a person accused of being a fugitive slave was taken before a commissioner for a hearing to determine proof of his or her identity as an escaped slave. Hearings before commissioners often lasted just minutes. If the identity of the person as an escaped slave had not been proven, the commissioner would order the person’s release and collect a fee of $5. If the person’s identity had been proven, the commissioner would issue a certificate, authorizing the fugitive slave’s removal to his or her owner, and collect a fee of $10.

The law stated that “all good citizens are hereby commanded to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of this law.” Any person who interfered with an arrest, attempted a rescue, or aided or hid a fugitive slave was liable for a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail.

The severity of this statute inspired an increased number of abolitionists, the development of a more efficient Underground Railroad, and the establishment of new personal-liberty laws in the North. Many Northern cities formed biracial Vigilance Committees to alert fugitive slaves about the presence of slave hunters. Some black communities formed armed militias.

Unit 01

King Cotton and the Expansion of Slavery

Anthony Burns

The case of Anthony Burns is an example of how the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law forced people to think about the condition of enslaved people. For many White northerners, the events of this case made them realize the injustice of slavery. For many southerners, they were alarmed at the fervor of White northerners in protecting a freedom seeker.

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Anthony Burns was enslaved in Virginia but was able to keep some of the money he earned after being hired out in Norfolk. He saved his money and stowed away in secret on a boat bound for Boston in February of 1854. Burns accidentally revealed his Boston location in a letter to his enslaved brother in Virginia. His master, Charles Suttle, intercepted the letter and then went to a judge. He told the judge that his "property" was in Boston and obtained an order to retrieve Burns according to the law of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Burns was captured on May 24, 1854.

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The White and free Black abolitionist community was present in the courtroom when Burns's hearing was set. They began to plot Burns's rescue from the jail. That attempt ended violently with the death of a deputy. The mob retreated. Other abolitionists began the nonviolent effort to purchase Burns's freedom. The court found that Burns was the "property" of Suttle. Military personnel had to line the streets of Boston to stop the angry anti-slavery protestors as Burns was led away to his return to slavery in Virginia.

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After months in a jail in Richmond, Suttle sold Burns to a trader of enslaved people in North Carolina for $905. Later, the trader sold Burns to Leonard Grimes, a Black abolitionist preacher from Boston, for $1,300. Burns returned to Boston in 1855 a free man. Burns studied theology at Oberlin College in Ohio and later moved to Saint Catharines, Ontario, Canada. He worked as a Baptist minister. He died in 1862, before the end of the American Civil War.

The End

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of lesson 12

Unit 01

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

Sectional Crisis Deepens

Bleeding Kansas

Preston Brooks and Charles Sumner

Dred Scott Decision

Harper's Ferry

The balance between free and slave states was achieved after the Compromise of 1820. However, in the years immediately before the Civil War, more free states (California, Minnesota, and Oregon) entered the Union. Political and social tension was rising during the final decade before the Civil War.

The Decade Before the War

Unit 01

Sectional Crisis Deepens

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Senator Stephen Douglas, a Democrat from the free state of Illinois, made a proposal that would further expose the sectional crisis. The proposal was called the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

To get the support of the southern Democrats, he proposed splitting the Nebraska Territory and creating the territory of Kansas in the southernmost part.
The citizens of Kansas would be permitted to determine for themselves if the state would allow slavery or not, an idea called popular sovereignty.

Unit 01

Sectional Crisis Deepens

Bleeding Kansas

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John Brown was a farmer and a wholly religious man. He was a fierce abolitionist who believed that the enslavement of his fellow humans was evil and must be ended immediately. To that end, he founded a group called the Subterranean Pass-Way. The group was similar to the Underground Railroad; however, Brown envisioned that it would eventually take all enslaved people out of the South to freedom. Brown moved to Kansas from New York after learning from his sons who had settled in Kansas that anti-slavery settlers were under attack by pro-slavery activists. On May 21, 1856, pro-slavery settlers and border ruffians from Missouri invaded Lawrence, Kansas, the home of the anti-slavery government. They were angry that the anti-slavery residents of the town ignored demands that they give up their stance as the free-state seat of the government in the territory. The town's hotel, several houses, and the printing presses of two abolitionist newspapers were destroyed. Three days later, on May 24, Brown led a a group of abolitionist settlers to the town of Pottawatomie Creek. They killed five people, using swords as their weapons. This event is called the Pottawatomie Massacre. Brown said that those victims were traders of enslaved people and supporters of a pro-slavery Kansas. These five men had not been a part of the attack on Lawrence.

Unit 01

Sectional Crisis Deepens

Sumner Caning

On May 19 and May 20, 1856, Charles Sumner, a Republican senator from Massachusetts, gave a speech denouncing the Kansas–Nebraska Act.The long speech argued for the immediate admission of Kansas as a free state and went on to denounce "Slave Power."In the speech, he also criticized the authors of the Act. Although Butler did not hear the speech, his nephew Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina heard the attacks on his uncle.On May 22, Representative Brooks walked into the Senate and quietly told Senator Sumner, sitting at his desk, that Sumner had offended the honor of his uncle and fellow southerners in his speech. He then proceeded to beat Sumner with his wooden cane

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Sectional Crisis Deepens

They [African Americans] are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States."

Dred Scott Decision

The enslaved man Dred Scott and his enslaved wife, Harriet Scott, sued for their freedom from slavery in 1846. They claimed that their master, the army doctor John Emerson, had taken them to live in the free areas of Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory. The laws in both of those places stated that enslavers gave up their rights to own enslaved persons if they stayed for an extended period of time.The case was a victory for southern enslavers. It outraged abolitionist northerners. At the same time, many northerners who opposed the expansion of slavery into new territories did not support the migration of free Black people to northern regions. For example, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Illinois all had laws that prohibited the migration of Black people, whether free or freedom seekers, into those states.

Unit 01

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The 3 Questions of the Dred Scott Case 1. Did Scott, an enslaved person, have the right to sue in a federal court?

No. The Supreme Court ruled that any person descended from Africans, whether enslaved or free, was not a citizen of the United States, according to the court's interpretation of the Constitution.

2. Was Scott free because he lived in a state in which slavery was illegal?

No. The Supreme Court ruled that even though Scott lived in a free state, he was still considered property. The property rights of the enslaver took precedence over Scott's rights. The court said that since he was not a citizen, Scott did not have the right to sue for his freedom.

3. Did Congress have the authority to make laws about slavery for territories that were technically not states?

No. The Supreme Court said that Congress did not have the authority to enact the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act because both of those laws gave citizenship rights to Black people, which would deny the rights of the enslavers.
*Added by the Supreme Court Chief Justice (not asked or filed as an argument)*

Unit 01

Sectional Crisis Deepens

If it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance . . . of justice . . . I say, let it be done"

He's Back, This Time in Virginia

After Kansas, John Brown traveled across the North and into Canada, seeking support for a plan he believed would bring an end to slavery.He developed a plan to sieze the federal armory at Harper's Ferry, VA with 18 other men.Once completed, he planned to move his armed attack south, freeing enslaved people. He expected that the former enslaved people would join his army and that eventually thousands of people would fight their way southward, freeing more and more enslaved people.On October 16 and 17, 1859, Brown and his group took hostages and freed enslaved people in Harper's Ferry, but no enslaved people answered Brown's call

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