This presentation covers trends in antebellum life that gave way to some of the sectional tensions, between the North and the South, that will factor into the emergence of the American Civil War. It is the second in a series of textbook/lecture substitutes designed for students in a college seminar on the Civil War and Reconstruction.

1. The Civil War & Reconstruction

2.  Understand the rapid changes in American life &
culture during the antebellum period.
 FYI-antebellum simply means before war.
 Historians debate the origins of the period butfor our
purposes, it spans the period from roughly 1800-1860.
 Understand the sectional identifies, differences, &
tensions that divide Americans.
 Get a preview of how debates over slavery’s expansion
into the western territories and the collapse of the
second party system will exacerbate the sectional
differences that lead to civil war.

3.  Historians have identified changes in American society
during the 1830s-1850s as triggering some of the sectional
strife that became the catalyst to civil war.
 The advanced modernization of the northern states
marked by immigration, industrialization, and
urbanization and the continued agricultural focus of the
southern states marked by slavery, historians
argue, created not only very different ways of life but also
very distinct regional identifications.
 As we will see, this regional identification would manifest
itself most in discussions about westward
expansion, slavery, political parties, and the future of the
country.

4.  Geographic Expansion
 From 880,000 square miles (1783) to 3 million square miles
(1860)
 Demographic Boom
 From 23 million to 31 million
 Higher birthrates
 Immigration from Europe & Asia increases
 Urbanization
 New towns, new cities
 Industrialization
 New technology &better transportation
 The First Emancipations
 A growing free black population

5.  At the beginning of this period, the Northern States’ abolition of
slavery will differentiate this region from the South.
 Ira Berlin describes northern emancipation as a “slow and
tortuous process” because they
 Enacted Gradual Emancipation Laws whereby enslaved people who
were born after a specific date were held to service for a period of
time (18-25 years) and then freed.
 People born into bondage before the date would remain enslaved for
life.
 Some states established apprenticeship riders to these laws which
allowed masters to keep these people in bondage after they reached the
age specified in the law.
 Replaced slavery with other racialized hardships, reflecting anti-
black racism, including
 Rigid racial discrimination in employment.
 Denial of equal rights-(disfranchisement, segregation, property rights,
lack of due process, etc.).
 Sometimes free blacks are banned from entering newly established
northern states like Indiana and Illinois.

6. The Abolition of Slavery in the North
1777 Vermont prohibits slavery via constitutional convention
1780 Pennsylvania begins to abolish slavery gradually
1783 Massachusetts Supreme Court abolishes slavery
1784 Connecticut and Rhode Island pass gradual abolition
legislation
1785 New Jersey and New York legislatures defeat efforts to
pass gradual abolition laws
1799 New York legislature passes gradual abolition bill
1804 New Jersey enacts gradual abolition

7.  Mostly from Germany, British Isles (Scotland), Ireland,
Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), & China.
 More than 3 million arrive, most live in the Northeast,
the Midwest, and the West with few going to the
South.
 Ethnic & racial stereotypes arose as native-born
Americans grew anxious over economic & political
competition from new arrivals and from changes they
made to the nation’s social and religious landscape.
 New arrivals are blamed for the ills of the new society.

8.  Westward Expansion as nation acquires more land
from Great Britain and Mexico.
 Acceleration in crop production provides more food
stuff & generates more wealth.
 Farms, especially those with access to trading centers,
become specialized enterprises participating in the
national marketplace.
 Other farms, those in isolated spaces, continue self-
sufficient production.
 Advances in technology increase production.

9.  Railroads grow, connecting the nation, speeding the
movement of people, information, and goods.
 8,500 miles of railroad in 1850, 30,000 miles in 1860
 Maritime advancements occur
 Water transportation is accelerated by discovery of new
waterways, shipbuilding, and development of steam-
boat technology
 Atlantic Cable
 Telegraph wire escalates communication
 Southerners will also get this technology but they will
embrace it much later and at a slower pace than their
northern counterparts.

13.  Manufacturing Boom
 Work becomes more centralized and mechanized.
 Growth in cotton textiles, glass, paper, machine
tools, woodworking, etc.
 Americans’ & Europeans’ innovation increase
manufacturing.
 Factories grow in number and in size.
 Greater demand for manufactured goods.
 The South will see a much slower manufacturing
boom. Southerners quickly integrate slavery into their
industrialization. For example, they will put enslaved
people to work in tobacco and chemical factories and
in salt mines.

14.  Expansion of industry & transportation support the
growth of cities.
 Cities spring up around trade and access to
transportation (by land or by sea).
 Jobs bring people to the cities to work and to
live, severing social ties of agrarian world.
 Low wages, limited opportunity, crime, disease, etc.
trigger chaos.
 The South certainly has booming cities in
Charleston, New Orleans, Mobile, Richmond, and
Atlanta but there were fewer major cities in the region
than there were in the North.

15.  Class divisions widen as a result of economic
development.
 More working class women enter the workplace.
 More working class workers (men and women) form
associations to protect their interests.
 Rise of cities exposes more Americans to hardship &
triggers rise of an underclass.
 Economic crisis of 1857 reveals the limitations of the
advances in technology and transportation.
 All of this triggers a series of reform movements
designed to address the social ills.

16. Education
Seen as a way to
level the
socioeconomic
playing field.
Also viewed as a
way to train the
workforce.
Primary and
Secondary Schools
increase.
Seminaries for
women open.

17. Temperance
Organized efforts
to:
Educate Americans
on the harmful
effects of “demon
rum.”
Enact legislation to
protect individuals,
families, &
communities.
Decrease alcohol
consumption.

18. Women’s
Rights
Women
mobilize to
fight being
denied human
rights property
rights
(couverture),
disfranchiseme
nt as well as
discrimination
in employment
and wages.

19. Anti-slavery
Movement
Anti-slavery
societies spring up-
support gradual
abolition of slavery
and colonization.
Rise of
abolitionism-
support immediate
abolition.
Antislavery in some
circles comes to
mean anti-southern.
The painting of the 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention at
Exeter Hall.

20.  Newspapers and journals
 Increased from 1200 in 1835 to 2,526 in 1850.
 Increased power of the press to shape opinion and policy.
 Connects Americans and reduces the space between
individuals, ideals, political beliefs, and events,which some
historians argue will factor significantly into the hostility that
we see leading up to the war.
 Literary Writers
 Longfellow, Whitman, Melville, Thoreau, Emerson capture
the concerns of the time.
 New women writers, like Stowe, capture concerns affecting
the family and women’s oppression.
 The South will have similar cultural developments but they
will be slower in their advancement & smaller in their
numbers.

21.  Modern.
 Industrious.
 Support for tariffs, ship subsidies, and internal
improvement bills that supported railroads, public
education, etc.
 More reform minded to address the ills of society.
 More supportive of industry and urbanization.
 Some are opposed to slavery for moral, economic, and
political reasons but most believe that blacks and certain
immigrants are inferior.
 Believed the U.S. was a place where every man could
succeed.

22.  The South experienced many of same changes as the
North.
 It had a very diverse population; it experienced great
new settlement; some parts of the South were booming
(inland) while some were in decline (seaboard).
 It started to catch up to the North in terms of modern
innovation—factories, cities, newspapers, telegraphs,
and political machines.
 The South, however, was very different.
 It remained mostly agricultural and rural; it had a
smaller white population; it was dominated by a planter
aristocracy; its family arrangements gave men more
patriarchal authority.

23.  Production of agricultural cash crops (hemp, tobacco, rice,
cotton, sugar, indigo, wheat) at the center of southern economy
and life.
 In the Chesapeake region (DL, MD, D.C., VA), selling surplus slaves
into the Deep South (AL, LA, MS, KY, MO, etc.) was a booming
business.
 The slaveholding plantation is the ideal life for most whites.
 The hierarchy of white southern males involved planters,
yeomen farmers, and landless whites.
 30-50% of white farmers owned no land and no slaves-- they were
renters, tenant farmers, and day laborers who scratched out an
existence.
 Of the slaveholders, the majority owned less than 20 slaves.
 The dream of many of these men was to become wealthy by owning
slaves.
 The dominance of planters and slavery varied by region even
within the same state.

24.  By 1860 there were only 393,967 slaveholders out of a total
U.S. white population of 8 million.
 ¾ of southern families owned no slaves.
 Owners of more than 50 slaves numbered fewer than 8,000
(only 3% of the population).
 In other words, only 35% of the population owned a slight
majority of all of the enslaved people.
 Median slaveholding in the antebellum period was 4-6
slaves/master.
 Only a very small portion of slaveholders were black and
most of these people bought their relatives out of slavery
and could only legally free them if the laws of their states
permitted them to do so.

26.  Cotton Gin was created by Eli
Whitney and patented in 1793.
The gin freed enslaved laborers
to pick the cotton and use the
gin to separate the seeds. Cotton
is easier to produce in massive
amounts as a result of this
invention.
 Short staple cotton (with a
shorter growing season)
becomes “king” among the
antebellum cash crops produced
by enslaved people.
 Though other crops (sugar in
LMV) and industries (mining,
factories, lumber) use slave
labor, cotton becomes the
foundation of antebellum
slavery.

27.  Sugar cane cultivation in
Louisiana region grows.
 Refugees from Saint-
Domingue (Haiti) bring
skills and desire to rebuild.
 Sugar becomes a major
cash crop.
 Intensifies demand for
slave labor in the region
and pushes it from a
“society with slaves” to a
“slave society.”

29.  As Americans move
west, so does slavery.
 Northern and
Chesapeake slaveholders
sell surplus slaves further
south and west, creating
a new “cash crop” of
people.
 According to Walter
Johnson, more than 1.5
million people
transported in the
domestic slave trade.

30.  Pro-slavery, some even supported re-opening the
transatlantic slave trade;
 Farmers were mostly Democrats; urban commercial &
banking interests were Whigs; planters had been Whigs
but they became Democrats in the mid-1830s;
 Opposed the federal government’s tariffs, ship
subsidies, and internal improvement bills;
 Rise of southern nationalism comes in the 1830s;
 Cult of chivalry; public honor; loyalty to kin; white racial
superiority;
 Self-conscious identification with “southern way of life.”

31.  Nation starts to grow in Size and in Population with
birth rates, influx of African slaves and European
immigrants.
 Urban North urbanized and modernized by
technological advances in transportation & rise of
factories.
 Americans start migrating across the continent.
 Rural South remains static with less
modernization, beyond those that support slavery’s
advancement.
 Concerns, anxiety about changes & new political
paranoia.
 A lot of the rhetoric bears signs of not only sectional
difference but also sectional strife.

32.  Proslavery southerners & Democrats decried what
they called the “money power conspiracy.”
 Argued northern bankers, businessmen, and
industrialists controlled the credit were trying to rob
“ordinary Americans” of their wealth & rob slaveholders
of their human chattel so they could replace slaves with
free white laborers.
 Freedom couldn’t be extended to all men at once, so
slavery or personal servitude allows for greater economic
freedom for some.
 Black slave labor preferable to “exploitable” white free
labor.
 Slavery paves the way toward progress for “all”.

33.  Anti-slavery northerners, Federalists, Whigs, and
Republicans decried the “slave power conspiracy”
 Argued southern slaveholders and wannabe slaveholders
used their wealth to rob access to the land, depress
wages of free laborers; were backwards and anti-
progress.
 South lagged behind the North and the Western world
because of a single minded focus on slavery.
 Decaying towns, roads, infrastructure, sky high illiteracy
rates (excluding blacks), higher poverty rates (excluding
slaveholding apparatus), less productive economy
(slaveholders gobbled wealth and kept it for themselves),
backwards—failure to urbanize.
 Argued slaveholders wanted to “infect” the entire nation
with slavery.

34. Democrats Whigs
 Supported limited government.  Supported more expansive
 Opposed national policies limiting government to improve nation &
local control and subverting the grow economy.
individual authority of whites.  Supported more religious influence
 Advocated states’ rights over on politics.
national or federal rights.  Opposed slavery’s expansion into
 Supported the territorial expansion the West.
of slavery.  Were more tolerant of women’s
 Advocated patriarchy. rights.
 It was a national party with support  Became a mostly northern party.
in both regions.  Will be divided by Know-Nothings
 Support Native American removal. & Free Soilers and then supplanted
by the Republican Party.
 Figures—Andrew Jackson, John C.
Calhoun, Stephen A. Douglas  Figures—John Q. Adams, Henry
Clay, Abraham Lincoln.

35.  Although the narrative of a modernizing North and a
slaveholding South is simple and therefore easy to
follow and remember, it is important to understand
that these differences alone did not lead to civil war.
 It would take other factors—namely tensions about
such constitutional questions as where slavery can and
cannot exist and how much power the national
government has v. that of states, as well as political
questions of which party dominates the government—
to ignite the American civil war.

36.  Railroads:
http://www.listoid.com/image/219/list_479_219_20120401_200550_740.jpg
 Steamboats:
http://www.listoid.com/image/219/list_479_219_20120401_200550_740.jpg
 Atlantic Cable: http://atlantic-cable.com/Maps/index.htm
 Horace Mann: http://www.ait.net/technos/tq_09/2eakin.php
 Temperance Movement: http://www1.assumption.edu/whw/old/narrativeguide.html.
 Women’s Rights: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/vc006195.jpg
 American Anti-slavery Society: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Slavery_Society.
 Louisiana Plantation: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/louisiana/159la.jpg.
 Cotton Gin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin .
 Sugar Cane: http://www.topnews.in/tree/Economy/Indian+Economy.
 Cutting the Sugar Cane: http://readinganthro.wordpress.com/.
 Domestic Slave Trade Map: http://highered.mcgraw-
hill.com/sites/0072963786/student_view0/chapter7/map_quiz.html

37.  David Herbert Donald, et al eds., The Civil War and Reconstruction
 Jeremy Atack& Fred Bateman, To Their Own Soil
 Richard Brown, Modernization
 Victoria Bynum, Unruly Women
 Catherine Clinton, Plantation Mistress
 Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders
 Walter Licht, Industrializing America
 Patricia Limerick, Legacy of Conquest
 Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds
 James Oakes, The Ruling Race
 Adam Rothman, Slave Country
 Betram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honors
 David Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought
 David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis
 Charles Dew, Apostles of Disunion

38.  American Slavery
 The Transatlantic Slave Trade;
 The “terrible transformation” to lifelong, hereditary,
race-based slavery;
 The growth of slavery as an American institution;
 Northern v. Southern slavery
 Rural v. Urban v. Industrial slavery
 Enslaved people’s lives and resistance to bondage;
 The North’s abolition of slavery & the South’s expansion
of it; and
 The domestic slave trade