Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States - Chapter 9 Flashcards
Thesis
The government of the US supported slavery by laws, force, and race prejudice
The government used federal force to end slavery
The government set limits to the emancipation of blacks
What were the realities of slavery?
Regulating slavery and the black population
1641 : Massachusetts became the first North American colony to recognize slavery as a legal institution
1662 : A Virginia law stated that the status of the mother determined if a black child would be enslaved
1705 : The Virginia Slave Code codified the status of slaves, further limited their freedom, and defined some rights of slave owners
1793 : The fugitive slave act made it a crime to harbor an escaped slave or to interfere with the arrest of a slave
1850 : The fugitive slave act stated that state authorities must aid the capture of runaways
Removing free blacks from American soil
1816 : The American Colonization Society was founded to transport freeborn blacks and emancipated slaves to Africa
1847 : Founding of the Republic of Liberia
The black community was very divided on the subject
American compromises on slavery
1764-1767 : The Mason Dixon Line
The Northwest (1787) and Southwest (1790) territories : a growing sectional divide Slavery was continued in the South Slavery was banned in the North
Growing opposition between North and South : keeping the sectional balance
1820 : The Missouri Compromise reinforced the dividing line between North and South
Revolt and repression
1831 : Nat Turner led the most lethal slave rebellion in United States history, attracting up to 75 slaves and killing 60 whites
Literary denunciation :
1852 : The anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (by Harriet Beecher Stowe) was published and, by year’s end, 300,000 copies were sold in the US
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) : US abolitionist, orator, and writer
He escaped from slavery and fled to New York in 1838
After the Civil War, he campaigned for blacks’ and women’s political rights
John Brown (1800-1859)
He attacked two farmsteads in Missouri and took the slaves to Canada
Attacked the federal armory at Harpers Ferry
Brown and sons failed and were hanged
End of the national compromise
1854 : The Kansas-Nebraska Act mandated that a popular vote of the settlers would determine if territories became free or slave states
1860-1861 : Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States, southern states seceded, and the US Civil War began
1863 : Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in the rebellious states
As many as 185,000 black soldiers enlisted on the side of the Union
1865 : The 13th Amendment
African-American figures
Denmark Vesey
Preacher of the old Testament, he led a rebellion that killed 60 whites. He was caught and hanged along with 35 other people
Nat Turner
Led a rebellion that killed 60 whites in Virginia in 1831
Harriet Tubman
A civil right activist who helped organize the Underground Railroad, a network of safe houses and conductors who helped runaway slaves escape from the South to the North
